Waiting for Patience: Guest Editor's Introduction

Abstract: Patience and impatience are not best treated as simple opposites of oneanother. Analyzed separately, they reveal different dimensions of disposition, worldlycircumstance, and ethical orientation. It is no surprise that they have produced differentlymeaningful worlds and different ideas about whether patience is a virtue or a crutch in aworld of unfair waiting. In those societies where some sort of idea of God remains theanchor for human life, patience remains a godlike virtue and impatience a symptom ofgreed, haste, or excessive ambition. Once capitalism becomes the dominant framework ofany society, patience is reserved for the masses, and speed and disruption become thehallmarks of the entrepreneurial masters of the universe. Institutions like universities andpolitical systems such as democracy, which thrive on deliberation, deferral, and debate, donot flourish in a world where impatience seems to have replaced patience as the best recipefor a humane life.