“Speed Kills: Slow Down and Live.” So say American road signs urging drivers to lighten their feet on the gas pedal. But little else has slowed down in the U.S. or elsewhere in the decades since traffic planners instituted a 55 mile-per-hour national highway speed limit -- and later repealed it. In a global culture driven by the impatience of youth, counted in nanoseconds and fueled by “just-in-time” supply chains, everything needs to be done “yesterday” since today is no longer soon enough.
But just when it seems warp speed has altogether extinguished the present, movements to slow down and savor life’s pleasures are springing up in those very cultures most addicted to acceleration. Call it “The Great Switcheroo”: Ancient Eastern cultures like China and India, long trapped in poverty and technological backwardness, now leap forward, sweeping away centuries of slow-moving village life – and much rich culture with it -- in frenetic industrial development. Meanwhile, Western societies long addicted to speed find themselves stalled in life-altering recession.
As Eastern cultures eager for affluence trade traditions of communal life and meditative stillness for the speed and status of private cars, Westerners find they have less income and inclination to drive or fly. A downward-trending economy is forcing many Americans to stick closer to home. Once an eagerly anticipated adventure, air travel has become an expensive, often excruciating ordeal. Flight delays, intrusive security screens, frustrated passengers and irritable flight attendants are persuading many to swap vacations for "stay-cations." Unemployment and under-employment are reversing the priorities of mainstream middle- and working class Americans. With less money but more time, many are rediscovering the pleasures of non-monetary work and play.
Some of these changes are less self-chosen than forced by shifting conditions. But there are also highly conscious movements. Slowness advocates trace their genesis to Italy's "slow food movement" founded by Carlo Petrini in the 1980's during a campaign to prevent a MacDonald's from being built near Rome's Spanish Steps. Slow food advocates seek more attention not just to the arts of cooking but to a more locally sourced and sustainable agriculture, a more compassionate animal husbandry, and a more leisurely savoring of flavors, making an art of eating.
Slow food has now morphed into slow travel, art, design, even slow sex. As the sultry Mae West once noted, "Anything that's worth doing is worth doing slowly." Journalist Carl Honore, whose book, “In Praise of Slowness,” first drew together the disparate threads of this burgeoning movement, emphasizes that theirs is not a rejection of advanced technology, a Luddite resistance to all things new and fast. Instead, it is about striking a better balance between fast and slow, movement and stillness. So, for example, we use instantaneous communications to move electrons rather than bodies from place to place. We coordinate with distant colleagues towards common ends and establish heartfelt connections even when we never see them.
The Seattle-based "Take Back Your Time" movement (www.timeday.org) argues for jumping off the juggernaut as a means of regaining control of your life, reducing your impact on the environment, improving personal and public health, and saving money in an era of reduced incomes. National Coordinator John de Graaf points to startlingly counter-intuitive statistics to conclude that for all their inescapable hardship, on balance economic downturns have been good for both personal and public health. For every one percent increase in unemployment, there is a half percent decrease in the death rate. The greatest lengthening of American lifespans – six years -- occurred during the Great Depression.
Moreover, during the current recession there has been more volunteerism, a 40 percent increase in home gardening, and a 20 percent decrease in U.S. traffic fatalities -- 10,000 fewer deaths per year. With official unemployment over 10 percent and the underemployed adding another 7 percent, the average workweek for those with jobs is 33 hours, its lowest level since 1964. With less driving, there’s been less air pollution and correspondingly lower rates of asthma.
Until recently, the slow movement was largely confined to those with the leisure and means to afford to slow down. But the Great Recession may drive a much more mainstream American culture to begin exploring slower, less consumptive ways of being and doing, though when the economy picks up they may soon forget their discovery. The energy, environmental, and health benefits of slowing down in the speed-addicted West are potentially enormous. But they may well be diminished, if not altogether overwhelmed, by the increasing acceleration of Eastern economies.
Western Europe is decades ahead of North America in its turn towards slowness. Having endured centuries of war, revolution and industrialization, Europeans breathed a collective sigh of relief after the losses of the Second World War and embraced a more relaxed lifestyle. Now, as the declining superpower, the U.S. is about to experience a definitive downsizing. For some, a refusal to face facts is fueling a defiant “pedal to the metal” mentality. But for many others, this deceleration is an opportunity to slow down and savor what’s been lost during generations of hot pursuit. And for still others, it’s a necessity that could just become a discovery and delight.
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