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Slow Is Beautiful: Living As If Life Really Mattered

Posted on: Wednesday, 2 March 2005, 03:00 CST

A worldwide movement challenges the cult of speed.

When was the last time you sat happily doing absolutely nothing? Can't remember? You're not alone. Millions in today's overscheduled world are so busy getting on to the next thing in their lives that they don't realize how much they lose by neglecting the here and now.

This might sound like futurist heresy, but taking stock of the present is or should be an essential prerequisite for sound futures planning. Clearly, if you don't know where you are right now, you can't possibly judge which path is most likely to take you somewhere you would rather be.

U.S. journalist Carl Honor first realized his life was off course when he spotted an advertisement offering "condensed" bedtime stories to help busy parents save time. At first, the idea sounded great to him-then he asked himself what he was saving time for that was worth more than half an hour alone with his little boy.

Massage therapist Jack Hayes slows down a worker in Akron, Ohio. On-site massage therapy is a growing trend at many workplaces as a way to help workers slow down, decompress, and increase productivity.

So began a quest that led Honor around the world, tracking down individuals and organizations dedicated to opposing speed for its own sake. He wasn't looking for laziness, but for people seeking balance in every aspect of existence. Going slow doesn't mean ignoring deadlines, but assigning to one's duties and pleasures more appropriate measures of time and attention.

Studies in many countries find that more and more people are living on the edge of exhaustion, neglecting the quality of their lives as they futilely strive to maximize quantity and cram more activities into every hour of every day.

The price paid for constant speed is high, whether measured in money or human lives. The rush for quick profits is fruitless when it spawns pollution and environmental degradation that end up costing businesses and society billions. Hurried meals lead to bad eating habits, poor nutrition, and chronic illness.

The lure of speed behind the wheel is a major factor in the estimated 1.3 million traffic fatalities that occur worldwide every year. Psychological costs of speed include community breakdown, family stress, and poor work and school performance. The Japanese have a word for it-karoshi ("death from overwork")-and officials reported a record 143 victims in Japan in 2001 (critics claim even higher death tolls).

To counteract the swiftness of twenty-first-century existence, new, less-accelerated products and activities are making inroads on our careening daily lives.

* Slow housing applies to nonstandardized construction methods and traditional materials that customize units within large urban housing complexes. Careful work by artisans helps meet the special needs of individual families while still realizing the savings and economies of scale that come from prefabrication and large-scale planning for infrastructure and construction.

* Slow exercise encompasses not only such low-stress techniques as tai chi, yoga, and walking, but also super-slow weightlifting and brief but intense workouts you can perform in your street clothes without ever breaking a sweat.

* Slow reading allows for complete immersion in a text. Honor reports on a London reading circle that read one of Dickens's novels in monthly installments spread over a year and a half. Group members agreed that the excitement of looking forward to each month's new section, together with the close attention to detail made possible by rereading existing sections, added greatly to their enjoyment of the story.

* Slow professions include lawyers who take the time to conduct long, wide-ranging first interviews with new clients, thus saving time and achieving better results by learning in detail the client's needs and objectives. In the same way, taking the time to learn about life experiences, expectations, values, and concerns of a new patient can help doctors provide better care and achieve faster cures.

* Slow sex-the mystical blend of yoga, meditation, and sex known as "tantra"-is convincing more people every day that taking the time to luxuriate in physical sensations can add exciting new dimensions to love making and the formation of lasting relationships.

Ultimately, Honor hopes consumers and citizens will embrace the values of slowness in such numbers that their votes and economic clout will pressure businesses and governments to effectively rewrite the rules of marketplace and workplace. The result, he believes, will be that leisured lifestyles, long available only to a wealthy elite, will at last become available to the majority of humankind. -Lane Jennings

Source: In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honor. HarperSanFrancisco, www.harpercollins.com. 2004. 256 pages. $24.95. Order online from www.wfs.org/bkshelf.htm.

The Attention-Deficit Workplace

As the result of our "make it quick" culture, attention deficit disorder is becoming rampant in modern society. To be successful in today's workplace you have to incorporate some elements of the disorder into your workstyle, says brain scientist Richard Restak.

"You must learn to rapidly process information, function amidst surroundings your parents would have described as 'chaotic,' always remain prepared to rapidly shift from one activity to another, and redirect your attention among competing tasks without becoming bogged down or losing time," Restak writes in The New Brain. "Such facility in rapid information processing requires profound alterations in our brain. And such alterations come at a cost-a devaluation of the depth and quality of our relationships."

The Communications media are not only swamping us with information, but giving us a new vocabulary for describing our personal reality.

"While driving to work in the morning we 'fast-forward' a half- hour in our mind to the upcoming office meeting," Restak writes. "We reenact in our imagination a series of 'scenarios' that could potentially take place. A few minutes later, while entering the garage, we experience a 'flashback' of the awkward 'scene' that took place during last week's meeting and 'dub in' a more pleasing 'take.'

"In response to this media torrent, the brain has had to make fundamental adjustments," notes Restak. "The demarcation between here and elsewhere has become blurred. Thanks to technology, each of us exists simultaneously in not just one here but in several. While talking with a friend over coffee we're scanning e-mail on our Palm Pilot. At such times where are we really? In such instances no less is involved than a fundamental change in our concept of time and place."

Source: The New Brain: How the Modern Age is Rewiring Your Mind by Richard Restak. Rodale Press, www.rodalestore.com. 2003 (paperback edition, 2004). 228 pages. $23.95. Order online from www.wfs.org/bkshelf.htm.

Copyright World Future Society Mar/Apr 2005

Source: Futurist, The

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