Slow Down, You Move Too Fast...

I've heard about Carl Honore's book In Praise of Slowness and had it on my to read list for some time. But when I heard him on the raidio a few months ago I decided it was time to get around to reading the book. I had high expectations. I was expecting numbers, facts, case studies, research. There was some of that but not enough for me. Most of the book consists of traveling to different places and talking to different people in the Slow Movement. There is nothing wrong with this, I had just wanted something different. Honore begins by talking about "time-sickness" a term coined in 1982 by Dr. Larry Dossey. Dossey uses the term to describe the "obsessive belief that 'time is getting away, that there is never enough of it, and that you must pedal faster and faster to keep up.' " Honore thinks the whole world is time-sick and wonders what it is at the heart of it and can it be cured? One of the things at the center of our drive to go ever faster is out view of time. Most of us view it as linear, an arrow going from A to B. It is finite and, therefore, a precious resource. It is keyed to our mortality. Some, however, find speed to be not a race against death, but an escape from life. These people speed up to avoid confronting how unhappy they are. Another issue Honore sees is consumerism, the need to buy and have more and more. To fuel this need we work more to make more money in order to buy more and more. In Japan there are so many people who die from overwork they have a name for it: karoshi. It is possible to slow down. There is the Slow Food Movement, The Slow Cities Movement, the Slow Sex Movement, the Slow Exercise Movement. You name it, there is probably a slow movement for it. Much of the Slow Movement seems to come from those who are affluent. Honore admits this to an extent, but he also makes a weak effort to say that the less well off can join the movement too, especially Slow Food--it's not about how much your food costs but that you make it from scratch, that your family sits down together to eat it. Does Honore think that a single mother of four who works two or three jobs to make ends meet has time for this? It's very likely the eldest sibling is doing the cooking and what is that child going to make? Real macaroni and cheese or the kind from the blue box? Back when the Industrial Revolution was getting underway there were all kinds of grand theories that soon machines would be doing so much of the work that people would would only have to work a few hours a day. We'd have so much leisure time we'd be able to enrich our lives through literature and museums and study. The idea is beginning to emerge again with robots that cut your lawn and vacuum you house. I don't see these as leisure creating devices, however. I see them as one more item to work more hours to be able to afford. One of the things in the book that was good for a laugh was the idea of "slow reading." Honore writes about Dale Burnett, a professor of education at the University of Lethbridge, who, when he reads a book "of substance," keeps a web-based diary about it. Honore's book was published in 2004 and he writes about lit blogging like it is a rare thing. Unfortunately, I was unable to find his site. If you are a person who is in the fast lane, this book will certainly provide you with some eye opening ideas. But if you, like me, don't wear a watch and don't even have one with a battery that isn't dead, then the book won't be as horizon-expanding. In case you are interested, here are some slow links for you: Society for the Deceleration of Time The Sloth Club The Long Now Foundation Slow Food Slow Cities Slow Exercise Slow Sex Work to Live Tempo Giusto