In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (Plus)

LOVE, even if there are portions that already feel a bit dated. ( )

This book really annoyed me, the author is clearly an upper-middle class Londoner who seems to have no idea that not everyone in the modern world shares his lifestyle. He begins a lot of sentences with "nowadays we all..." and his basic grasp of the concept of slowness seems to be that "we all" rush around at a pace dictated by our yuppie bosses and are all raising dual income families in "money rich, time poor" circumstances and therefore this helpful new movement, the slow movement, has come along to help us rethink our lifestyles. He seems totally unaware of the existence of other lifestyles which have never subscribed to the "cult of speed" to the extent that his demographic probably has, and almost all the ways he suggests of engaging in the slow movement are expensive and elitest - for example, he claims that fruit and vegetables from farmers markets are cheaper than those at the supermarket and therefore accessible to those in lower income brackets, while totally ignoring the fact that working class London markets have always sold cheap fruit and vegetables and are nothing to do with the slow movement. One thing I found particularly ridiculous was the brainchild of a particular businessman he quotes who wants to set up a 'slow hotel' with no electronic gadgetry allowed; the rest of the description (horse-drawn carriages, etc) makes it clear that this would be a very expensive form of holiday - has this man never heard of going camping? Or perhaps that sort of back to basics slowness isn't sexy enough for the book due to its lack of commercial value.. ( )

No one can deny that our modern world is a very fast place. People zoom around in cars or public transport, crunch through work as fast as they can (and for as long as they can, most days), start focusing on the next thing as soon as the current event has started, rush through their food and their play and their time with their kids as if reaching the end on time - or before time is up, even better! - is the true target of these activities. Not enjoyment, not fulfillment, not even necessarily doing the job well. No, speed, speed and punctuality is the key.

I first encountered this book, In Praise of Slow, a few years ago, and it's taken me a while to get around to reading it. Part of it is that, well, I feel that advocating slowing my life down all over isn't feasible, and so I felt that reading a book like this would only make me feel bad about myself and somewhat ashamed that I can't take control of my life the way that the author suggests, even if I may want to. Thankfully, this isn't the case. The stories that the book advances resonate with me not just because I can recognize details of my own life in them, but because the morals and suggestions stemming from a lot of them seem practical and usable.

Honore details just how speed and constantly watching the clock, feeling like we're always battling against time, came to be one of the defining characteristics of our society, starting from the Industrial Revolution and moving onwards towards the present day, and the harms it has for our society - making us sicker, making us less happy, giving less time to the activities and connections we say are important to us. He then goes through a variety of different movements (which all seem to have some version of the word "slow" in them somewhere) that are trying to ameliorate things. The Slow Food movement, I'd already heard of: it consists of people who believe we should take longer to eat, enjoying better, more local food and the atmosphere and company that should go with it. And that's certainly something I can get behind.

What I hadn't connected up before, and what's the real interesting throughline of the book, were all these other ideas: Slow Cities, encouraging changing the use of cities to get more people walking, more green space, less cars, etc.; changes in how to work, including job-sharing, more flexible hours, being able to step back, etc; different movements for slowing down in education, and letting kids explore and learn at a more natural pace for them. Trends for slower, more relaxing forms of leisure, like knitting, reading, or gardening - even slowing down classical music to the way it used to be played; trends for differing approaches to medicine, to meditation, to sex. I think I'd heard of a large number of these, but having them grouped together like this really pointed up that they all stem from similar desires for things to proceed at a more reflective pace.

That's what this comes to, in the end, and that's what makes the book practical and useful: the real take-home message, reinforced regularly through the book, is that this isn't meant to be a slow-down-in-everything philosophy. Speed has its place, too. It's an argument for taking each element of one's life at the speed it's best appreciated. Rushing through things that should be savored doesn't make us happier, and not taking time to reflect and calm ourselves before rushing on leads to consistently worse results. Honore puts this before us time and again, referencing studies, giving testimonials, drawing back to point at the ways we damage ourselves and our world with too much speed, and trying to show how people can succeed more by taking things more naturally. The style is a little bit cutesy sometimes - man, he adores alliteration ad nauseam, to take a quote from somewhere I can't recall - but it's engaging and keeps you into it. I read it slowly, so it'd sink in. And I think others would probably enjoy reading it, as well. A lot of these books, I finish, and I can't see how I'll be able to keep applying it; this one, I think I can really use. ( )

Great book unveiling the myth that doing things faster is always better. Great for those feeling overwhelmed by the ever increasing speed of things nowadays. The author shows us this trend of slowness in many groups of interest ranging from cooking to sex life. I think the book is a great effort in mapping this trend on many different segments and unifying them in one place. ( )

I must be getting a reputation. I don't think there are many people left who don't now know that my early report card read "You can't hurry Helen". Well, Tamette loaned me what she figured was the perfect book for me: In praise of Slow. I had no idea that there are whole movements across the world with the aim of "slowing down" in one arena of life or another, complete with theories that everything from health to productivity improves as a result. It was an informative and enjoyable read, and I was particularly fascinated by the musical concept of tempo giusto, which argues, among other things, that our current reading of early metronome markings is incorrect. There used to be two beats to every note, not one, meaning that most music is probably played twice as fast as it ought to be. The idea is not that everything should be played ridiculously slowly, but that each piece should find its natural rhythms, or its tempo giusto. Apparently, much music is more complex and beautiful than we are able to comprehend at the speeds normally played. An example of inappropriate speed is Mozart's Rondo alla turca which is meant to be a march, but which is usually played at something more closely resembling a flat out sprint.

But, most fascinating of all, for me, was the fact that so many people, including the author before he began his research, need to be persuaded that slowing down can be less rather than more stressful, and that it might not be boring. But then, I was always very slow - noone was ever going to convince me that hurrying up was a good idea!

One of the supposed benefits of slowing down in at least some areas of life is that when we slow down, we allow our brains to enter their more creative thinking mode. At such times our thinking becomes less linear and rational (no wonder I'm not logical!) but makes more and deeper connections, meanings and new ideas. Perhaps this could explain why I sometimes catch people whispering to each other that I'm actually pretty intelligent. I never know whether they're finding that I'm more intelligent than they had realised or expected, or whether they believe that I don't recognise the level of my own intelligence. What I do know is that I have many times caught people at finding a need to express the fact of my intelligence, as though this is a thing that needs to be mentioned.

This seems quite strange really, because while they're busy reading biography, science and literature, I'm reading children's books. While they're catching up with the news and the latest discoveries, I'm surfing the net for barbie dolls. Not much comparison really - I'm pretty much an intellectual barbarian. But then, it's a bit like Maslow's hierarchy for me. It's not that I have no interest in or capability to read and do the things that others routinely do; it's just a matter of priorities. Reading (basic, imaginative reading) is at the priority level of sleep for me. If I have read enough stories and walked enough and thought enough, then I might have some brain and spirit room available for higher orders. But, by the time I have finished with work and people, there is not enough time even for my basic priorities, so I quite firmly leave everything else alone. But perhaps because I am so stubborn, I have a bit more time for my brain to simply wander as it needs to do, so that, even though I have taken in little useful information, my brain has thoroughly processed and connected the information it has received, with the result that I appear surprisingly "intelligent". If that's the case then all the swots out there are wasting their time - they should just relax and have a good read!

This also makes me think of C S Lewis. I remember reading, with enormous envy, that for a good part of his life he managed to work according to what, to him, was the perfect schedule. He worked in the morning for 4 hours. After lunch he spent the whole afternoon walking, and then in the evenings he read and conversed with friends. That always sounded absolutely divine to me but very "unproductive" by current standards. However, according to Slow, we are actually more productive if we spend more time in unstructured ways and less time "working". And, given the nature of Lewis' work, imagine the meanings, connections and ideas that could be developed with so much time spent in solitude, with the mind wandering freely, and then in reading and dialogue. He would have been much healthier than most people today and probably capable of much greater levels of intellectual prowess. What a wonderful template for living!

I think I have a new (corny) slogan: "Born to be Slow"! ( )