Photo: Gail Albert-Halaban

Quick: slow down. Try to disengage from the world and do absolutely nothing, just for a second.

Difficult, isn’t it? Our faith that faster equals better has buried our speedometer and made us relate to time like a lab rat relates to cocaine. Surrounded by a blitzkrieg of cell phones, microprocessor upon microprocessor, four hours of TV a day, always-on internet, eight-lane highways, 50-hour work weeks, drive-thru culture and “just-in-time” economies, it’s little wonder we crave time more than anything else. We think we never have any.

There’s a trick involved. While we have 24 hours a day, a cultural needle injects us with anxiety about time. The side-effect is evident whenever we fretfully wait for someone stalling in line at the grocery store, or as we simmer rage in a traffic jam, or when we buy yet another product promising convenience (read: more time).

So, what’s in that needle? Is it consumerism, advertising, capitalism, technology? Perhaps “progress”? Try all of the above. We call it a lifestyle but it’s really a go-fast cocktail, and you’re likely buzzing on it right now. But beware: our fast ways also warm our planet, destroy ecosystems, and fuel mass attention deficits, anxiety, hyperactivity, stress and a desire for meaningless consumerist escapism.

Aldous Huxley wrote that speed was modernity’s only gift. The trouble is, today, we’ve got too much of a good thing. Enter the Slow movement, a needed salve for a culture with road rash. One of Slow’s messengers, Carl Honoré, argues in his new book In Praise of Slow, that the future will be a slower time. “Speed in of itself isn’t evil or bad,” he says. “What’s bad is our addiction to speed, hurry and hecticness. Time is the greatest gift we have. The trouble is we think, ‘how can we get the most value?’ and the answer is, invariably, to go faster.”

We rational number crunchers have forgotten the timeless, spiritual and universal sides of life which soothe our hearts and clear our minds. We have become, as Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit write in Occidentalism, “. . . efficient, like a calculator, but hopeless at doing what is humanly important.”

Take that screaming vortex of speed and insanity in our world called capitalism. Today, we exist “to serve the economy, not the other way around,” says Honoré. Life, as your grandpa would say, wasn’t like this in the old days. But the ‘just go faster!’ circle of speed’s logic has made capitalism accelerate, and the side effects are clear. We’re headed toward human and planetary crash, so “time-poor” and “time-sick” that we neglect our friends, families and partners. “We barely know how to enjoy things any more because we are always looking ahead to the next thing,” says Honoré.

Our Fast way of life is controlling, aggressive, stressed and impatiently obsessed with quantity over quality, he writes. Slow life is the opposite, “about making real and meaningful connections – with people, culture, work, food, everything.”

Slow life is slowly spreading: in Japan, Namakemono Club or the Sloth Club members emulate the slow life of a sloth “to find a way to live in harmony with the Earth.” In the United States, the Long Now Foundation seeks to promote slower, better thinking to foster creativity “in the framework of the next 10,000 years.” And Europe’s Society for the Deceleration of Time sets ‘speed traps’ for fast walkers in cities.

But Italy is Slow’s philosophical homestead. The country has produced both Slow Food and Citta Slow, or Slow cities. As well as pure pleasure from good food, “eco-gastronomy” is Slow Food’s mantra: the belief that eating slowly prepared food sourced from local farmers puts less pressure on our world than industrial farming, high mileage produce and fast food restaurants. Citta Slow is the next step, an entire city living by pleasure before profit, slowness before speed. Honoré says there are more than 30 towns participating, and that the number is growing.

Thanks to our information-rich world hitting warp speed, Honoré believes today is the dawn of Slow’s era. We simply can’t go much faster. “I think we’ve either reached the breaking point, or we’re very close to it. We’re starting to see it in the breakdown of our health and our relationships.

We keep coming back to this feeling that somehow, something’s missing.”

Honoré says the word itself is becoming shorthand for a “better, more balanced way of living” around the world, regardless of language. There are people who swear by Slow sex, Slow thinking, Slow film, Slow exercise and Slow travel almost everywhere.

But if Slow is better, why then do we find it so hard to embrace a slower pace of life? Consider Milan Kundera’s observations in his 1995 novella, Slowness. “Our period is obsessed with the desire to forget, and it is to fulfill that desire that it gives over to the demon of speed; it picks up the pace to show us that it no longer wishes to be remembered, that it is tired of itself, sick of itself . . .”

We are wearing an existential noose, unable or unwilling to break from the cult of speed, yet about to choke from its nastiness. Confronting speed means confronting our spiritual vacuousness. While Honoré argues we can step away from speed, perhaps his gaze is fixed on the long term. In the short term, contradictions within our lifestyle may need to be reconciled before we can re-pace our lives. Consider today: six-year-old kids with cell phones schedule after-school activities, play turbocharged video games for hour upon hour, stressed about which Ivy League school they’ll go to.

The whole generation is living beyond warp speed.

Soon they’ll hit 20 and feel like they’re 50 and see their planet struggling to keep up. Hopefully, they will completely reject speed and build balance into life. It will be a complete mindshift, but one Honoré is confident will happen. “I think that 40 or 50 years from now we’ll look back and wonder why we ever thought it was so hard to slow down.”

_Timothy Querengesser

 

COMMENTS:

Yes! I wish we were more Type B. This whole rush rush lifestyle is horrible. It's no wonder that more people are needing to see a therapist...we need to slow down, and take it easy!
N. Pagador

I like this mag and all, but that was some hippy bullshit....and I like hippies
Carl

I grew up in the States. Worked there and grew to be a faithful hurrier/consumer/worker bee. Good fortune landed me in Thailand where the sheer pace of life is three beats slower than my last home, Seattle. This country has afforded me a different perspective, one which I have embraced fully. Now, I feel more balanced, spend far less, and have begun to connect with others on a more meaningful level. Life goes by so quickly. I feel like I can now enjoy the everyday moments more rather than grasp at fleeting expensive vacations that never seem to last. Thank you for this article. It helped me understand why I have been progressively happier these past few years. I think I'll stay for awhile.
believer

Very limited view of life. Perhaps people are no longer sophisticated and urbane, but I feel that citing these slow movements in other parts of the world is a bit ill informed. If you've ever lived on another continent or island then you will realize that it is just their way of life eg. sidewalk cafe cultures, siestas, countries where everything is closed on Sundays, etc.. Also, many people do and have lived balanced lives before this slow movement took gained notoriety in simple ways such as getting out of their cars and going outside or something as innocuous as cooking their own meals. Americans don't appreciate life anymore unless it is branded, resold to them, and has buzz words surrounding it.
Greg

hurry hurry hurry rush rush rush can't go fast enough, hurry up and ...realize you missed it all.
Anon Y. Mous

Brraaavvooo!
Daniel

Yus!!!! There is a whole lot to be said for going slowly! I spent the summer living on a farm training horses and giving lessons and it was amazing! Sure, i already knew how to ride but never have i done just that and nothing else. I spent NO money! i boiled water in a pot on the stove for a cup of coffee made with leaves not powder. It was fantastic. Im a student, and am back in the rat race, studying hard working hard blablabla. But sometimes i go outside, sit under a tree and read a book. People think im nuts. I can just think.
M

I've been thinking of it for so long, since I started to guess about jobs and things like that. It's really hard to understand this invisible machine which needs to accelerate causing mind troubles and lowquality lives. I think maybe this whole hurry is what cientists see as chaos. Very weird to understand nature, see ourselves as part of it and get in the middle of this. I believe we should fight for a slower end, too. All in all is what's all about. That's how I see, not being pe3ssimist. Please, get me right. Hugs from Brazil.
Olavo

How can a student get out of this fast moving hell? Almost seems hopeless.
Jo

While I agree we should live slower, I STILL WON'T have 4hour dinners!
Mike Smith

Whilst the world might benefit from taking the pedal off the metal, this article doesn't further convince me. It generalizes humanity into one faceless homogeneous organism that is burning calories too fast. Humanity isn't like that, humanity is simultaneously obese and starving. Cut the generalized intellectually lightweight fillibuster out already and take a clear stance for once.
Bletchly Park

I think, deep down, people want to lead less stressful lives, but they're afraid of losing money if they hop off the speed train. So I think the best strategy is not to build up speed as the villain, But wealth. Money truly is the root of all evil. The rest is just side effects.
Jupiter

Jupiter made an excellent point. Anyway, about the article, I totally agree. Everyone in my school is worried about college and stuff, but we're all so young! I won't say which grade but, trust me, it's a little bit early to think about college right now! I tried to help them. I said, Please, take a breath and get lost in your imagination for once. The only response was: Rush rush rush! Work work work! Blah blah blah! After a while, I gave up and decided to sit in the grass, soak up the sunlight, and watch the speeding blur of society crumble under its own destruction. It's a very scary thing, and I want it to stop, but what is one girl like me to do? I'm just going to have to continue to enjoy the simple, beautiful things in this world that one who takes it easy can notice.
Mia

What turned me on to slowness was crashing my car in '98. Not kidding. Had to walk, ride a bike, or take public transit everywhere. I saw things I hadn't seen in years, and made little discoveries like I came to know which house had a wild rabbit living somewhere in the yard, because I saw it, like clockwork, every morning. I talked to people I never would have met, instead of getting angry and frustrated at my 7 miles in 45 minutes commute to and from workno exaggeration. Ironically, by slowing down, I sometimes got to work faster by bike, and enjoyed the route a whole lot more and got healthier doing it. de, you're so right about meditation. I've noticed when I stop passing judgment on meditation itself, and my thoughts, and just let them flow by, the wonderful peace of slowness just washes over me... Miaare you sure you're not already a college student?? You sure sound like one, in the best possible sense. Good insights. When you stop and slow down long enough, people will notice, and maybe a few of them will want what you have enough to try it for themselves...that's how you stop the crumbling, by stopping it inside first.
Michelle

I think that the root of the problem is how future-oriented we are and how mapped out we need our lives to be because of all the pressures placed on us. How often do we actually stop our rapid thoughts to just breath and truly observe the moment? We are just too focused on what's next to care about what is going on right now. I had a professor who emphasized this; he introduced our class to basic meditation as a way to slow down our minds for a few minutes a day. Since then, I feel like have been able to be more aware of what is going on around me, and it has definitely made me more content with my life right now. As for wanting stressful lives...I think that this selfperpetuating society is what now creates the stress, and we accept it because of the impression that those who can't handle it get left behind. We need to move away from this impression and figure out what we really want.
de

Greg hit the nail on the head: Americans dont appreciate life unless it is branded and resold to them and has buzz words surrounding it. The whole Slow movement stinks of another trend or fad developed in response to a fastpace lifestyle that never should of existed to begin with. Its quite amazing how Slow people have been living for the last 100,000 years of existence without the convenience of the slow movement title.
Dan

Best piece I've read, anywhere, in a while. Very thought provoking. Keep up the good work!
Taylor

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