Electronic Highways
Slow is beautiful
“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.”
—Soren Kierkegaard
Americans are not a patient people—fast food, microwave ovens, drive-thru pharmacies, instant pudding, text messaging, speed-dialing and speed-dating all attest to that fact. But is slowing down even an option in this velocity-addicted age? Carl Honoré, the author of “In Praise of Slowness”, thinks that excess speed negatively affects our health, work productivity and, ultimately, our happiness. He feels that “fast” and “slow” do more than just describe a rate of change: They are shorthand for the ways we live our lives. Fast is hurried, stressed, controlling, superficial and impatient, while “slow” is calm, reflective, patient and peaceful. Honoré is no Luddite—he couldn’t image his life without his BlackBerry or the Internet—but in his book he details the global backlash against the “cult of speed,” a backlash that is just starting to move into the mainstream.
One of the movements mentioned in Honoré’s book is Slow Food, an organization that was created to “counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.” But Slow Food is just one of several organizations that are interested in promoting the deceleration of time. Thousands of people are involved with Japan’s Sloth Club, a group that advocates for slow, environmentally friendly living. Take Back Your Time is an American/Canadian initiative that challenges the epidemic of overwork and over-scheduling. Slow Movement addresses the issue of “time poverty” and provides information on “slow books,” “slow cities,” “slow living,” “slow money” and “slow schools.” Slow Down Now provides a humorous antidote to workaholism, while the folks at Slowness for Sustainability would like people to slow down and create breathing space for reflection and contemplation. Obsession with speed can lead to short-term thinking, so the Long Now Foundation was established to provide a counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mindset and to promote “slower/better” thinking. The organization’s timeframe? The next 10,000 years!
So the next time you find yourself in a mad rush, stop what you’re doing, get out your iPod, put in your earbuds and start playing Simon and Garfunkel’s “59th Street Bridge Song”. Focus on the opening line: “Slow down, you move too fast, you gotta make the morning last.”
When you’re finished, you may not feel groovy, but at least, if only for a brief moment, you have freed yourself from the slavery of speed.
—Don Hartman, University Libraries
Reader Comments