Urgent vs. Relaxed

In contrast to "patient vs. impatient", which are loaded such that patience is good and impatience is bad, or "complacent vs. engaged", where complacency is bad and engagedness is good, I could say "relaxed vs. urgent", hoping that that is not loaded.

A good time for urgency is to prevent a child from walking into oncoming traffic. A good time for relaxedness is at the end of the day so you can fall asleep. Relaxedness (to the point of a lack of urgency) is bad in the former case, and urgency is bad in the latter. So there is a place for both.

I listened to talk radio a bit and wrote my impressions:

Listening to NPR is like sitting in a cafe on an overcast day. Low key jazz is playing in the cafe. The information you get from NPR is your tea that you sip. Sometimes it makes you feel sad. Sometimes it makes you feel calm, or contemplative. You can spend hours in the cafe, more or less relaxed.

Listening to conservative talk radio is like driving around on a hot day, trying to get things done. Somebody cuts you off in traffic. You have to do business with a supplier and you think he might be screwing you over. You think back to the fight you had with your wife last night and feel angry about it.

NPR is part of relaxed culture, and conservative talk radio is part of urgent culture. I don't know that either are very good for motivating sustained productive work. At least, I don't feel like it after listening to either. I feel passiveness or even despair after listening to them, though they each have their own flavor. But if there was a talk radio that resembled the works of J. S. Bach, that would image a kind of relaxed engagedness. (As well as some other traits from my notes:)

Listening to both liberal and conservative talk radio makes me think of a third kind of talk radio. It's something I can't really do myself, but here is the show I would make:

It airs during the afternoon rush hour. It is called "Bach Talk Radio" (or a better name than that). It promotes the vibes of J. S. Bach, specifically "delayed gratification", "prolificness / productivity / diligence", "solidity / stability", "patience", "complexity".

We face a world full of things that need doing. Maintaining a kind of urgency is good, but during your afternoon rush hour, maybe you need to be calmed down. But you can remain engaged, without being dragged down into the despair of NPR or conservative talk radio. That's what "Bach Talk Radio" is for.

(BTR would feature public domain Bach recordings, practical life advice, no-spin news analysis (or news analysis spun by Bach values), an emphasis on the bigger picture, and a segment where people call in with problems and people call in with advice and support. It would have a lighter side, and would emphasize the listener's agency.)

Academics have (or used to have) job security, and their jobs are more based in being thoughtful, relative to many other careers. They have developed a form of writing that is relaxed, even if abstruse. You have to think to understand it, and that makes you contemplative. Academic thinking is something to be sipped on in a cafe. When it denounces things, it often sounds like a kind of poem, and when academics read their writing out loud, it often sounds like the reciting of a speech, and beautiful speech is a kind of wine. Academic culture influences NPR.

Entrepreneurs have very little job security (they could always go out of business). They have to go out in the city and deal with people. Relatively few people have their backs, and relatively many are indifferent to their well-being, some directly hostile or treacherous. Business culture influences conservative talk radio.

I grew up in an academic-influenced church, which had the upsides and downsides of relaxation. I also spent some time with a church that was headed by a man who ran a business to make a living. I could sense that that church had some of the upsides and downsides of urgency.

Reality calls for urgency, but urgency is like a fruit that can go bad. Health calls for relaxedness, but relaxedness is also like a fruit that can go bad. My sense is that we need high-quality urgency, as much as possible, and when that is not possible, high-quality relaxedness. Or I think it's possible to have both at the same time.

--

As I think about this some more, I'm not sure that Bach exactly has an urgent side, but I think something that is close to urgency is profundity (something I think I've heard mentioned by other listeners to Bach which I am not sure I have noticed, but which I can believe), because both are forms of connecting with importance. BTR could emphasize the profound among its other values.

--

Is life life or death? Or do we have so much abundance that we do not have to think about survival? What do the facts say? Not everyone is going to be saved, and God will feel their loss eternally. Despite the fact that God exists, some may be eternally destroyed, no longer existing -- so, dead. So we have life, and death, as possibilities in life. Therefore life is life or death.

When we try to save lives, it often can be effective to be relaxed in a productive way (whether living a Bach-like work life, or resting so that we can go back to work fresh). Relaxedness has a lot going for it. But the truth remains that life is life or death.