What's the Hurry?
Dinovella, Elizabeth
Books What's the Hurry? In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honor? HarperSanFrancisco. 310 pages. $24.95. By Elizabeth DiNovella Carl...
...posits that the biggest challenge is our neurotic relationship with time itself...
...The modern mentality is that doing something slowly means it's not intense or productive-and that applies to exercise, too," Hutchins says...
...Given the current Administration's attempts to dismantle the social safety net and turn back the clock on labor laws, concerns about the hectic pace of life fall pretty far down on the list of progressive priorities...
...People think that unless you are performing a frenzied activity like aerobics you're not getting any benefit...
...He wears a white vest and cream-colored yoga trousers and smells strongly of armpit...
...The Slow Food manifesto says it all: "Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model...
...recognizes the buzz speed induces...
...In a recent thought-provoking article entitled "Time for Bread and Roses," John de Graaf takes up where Honor...
...Grassroots groups are cropping up worldwide...
...He is in his thirties and has a crooked smile and a ponytail," the author writes...
...closer to standards already in place in most other industrial countries, and in many poorer countries," writes de Graaf...
...If you look around the world, there is a growing desire to slow down," founder Alberto Vitale tells Honor...
...From schools to offices, at hospitals and gyms, in kitchens and bedrooms, "people are refusing to accept the diktat that faster is always better," he writes...
...Along with bread and butter, we need time to plant and pick and prune and smell the roses...
...President George W. Bush does like to take long week-ends-if only his adjustment of overtime laws could have given people more time, rather than less money...
...In my opinion, the best place to start is in bed...
...But this hasn't always been the case...
...goes on to catalogue other offshoots: Slow Cities (also based in Italy), Slow Schooling, which emphasizes creativity in children over test scores, and Europe's attempts at shortening the workweek...
...He lifts weights under the guidance of Ken Hutchins, creator of the SuperSlow weightlifting regimen...
...Be fast when it makes sense to be fast, and be slow when slowness is called for," he writes...
...And they played a similar role in the past...
...People like to stay busy, and the pro-Slow movement will have to confront that...
...Italy is also home to the Slow Sex movement...
...Bread and roses, symbols of the two important sides of life: bread, the money to live, and roses, the time to enjoy life-higher wages and shorter hours," writes de Graaf...
...three weeks of paid annual vacation for all workers...
...And here we are, 100 years later, with high productivity and not enough vacation time, checking our e-mail at midnight...
...doesn't have an answer...
...But actually the opposite is true...
...Dinner at the table instead of in front of the TV is free...
...Elizabeth DiNovella is Culture Editor of The Progressive...
...And in their many and diverse acts of deceleration lie the seeds of a global Slow movement...
...The author is enthusiastic about what he's found...
...It is the slowness that makes exercise so productive...
...Nor is he a hippie urging us to go back to the land and to the natural rhythms of country life...
...It is easy to think that if we are busy, we must be important...
...His description of his arrival at a tantric sex workshop is hilarious...
...France's labor laws limiting work to thirty-five hours a week has not been without significant problems...
...John de Graaf 's article "Time for Bread and Roses" can be read online at http://www.alternet.org/story/20786...
...Still, he enjoyed the session...
...Running from one activity to the next allows us to escape the gnawing feeling of emptiness that can plague modern life...
...and limits on compulsory overtime...
...The author suggests legislation may be necessary to affect all workers, but he doesn't give specific examples...
...Recommendations include guaranteed paid childbirth for all parents...
...left off...
...Seek to live at what musicians call the tempo giusto-the right speed...
...But he also sees its obstacles...
...That doesn't trouble Honor...
...He reminds me of the host of a particularly toe-curling Tantra video I have seen...
...Nearly 100 years ago, women textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, demanded bread and roses, too...
...Many people opt to slow down without feeling part of a global campaign...
...To teach workers the new time discipline demanded by modern capitalism, the ruling classes set about promoting punctuality as a civic duty and a moral value, while denigrating slowness and tardiness as cardinal sins," he writes...
...By Elizabeth DiNovella Carl Honor...
...He also limits his purview to Europe, Japan, and the U.S...
...This Londoner is game for everything...
...I would have been interested to see what didn't work...
...A home-cooked meal is more nutritious and economical than takeout...
...Advocates believe that we can eat well and save the planet...
...is a gifted storyteller, making the book a pleasure to read...
...But some ways of slowing down don't cost a penny...
...Women have played a crucial role in the development of worker-friendly programs like flex-time, parental leave, and job sharing...
...Limiting your kids' scheduled activities could save money...
...And that's why his book In Praise of Slowness is worth reading...
...Japan's Sloth Club, Europe's Society for the Deceleration of Time, and the U.S.'s Take Back Your Time coalition advocate an unhurried approach to life...
...He's not some Luddite who curses the invention of e-mail and BlackBerrys...
...I want to slow down without being bullied into finding God or embracing crystals and astrology," he writes...
...We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes, and forces us to eat Fast Food...
...De Graaf is also the editor of Take Back Your Time, another book that delves into how to put the brakes on the breakneck speed of modern life...
...Each of these legislative points, if adopted, would only bring the U.S...
...There are no international headquarters, no leaders, no coordination, not even a website...
...But "movement" implies a coherence that proponents of slowing down lack...
...He has found a way: slowness...
...But somewhere along the line, we got 'bread and butter' unionism focused solely on wages...
...There's even a Tempo Giusto movement of classical musicians who believe conductors should slow down...
...A workshop assistant greets people at the door...
...Once, led by organized labor and enlightened church leaders, American progressives were champions for more time," writes de Graaf...
...The roses were left to wilt...
...tells of a "backlash against speed that is moving into the mainstream...
...My heart sinks...
...It could also spark conversations about living wages and universal health care...
...A journalist by trade, he directs his reporter's eye on details...
...It's easy to scoff at the idea of time poverty or of the need to slow down...
...The Slow Food movement, based in Italy, promotes "the very civilized notion that what we eat should be cultivated, cooked, and consumed at a relaxed pace," writes Honor...
...Some pro-Slow organizations focus on a particular element of life...
...digs into other topics, too...
...is a busy Londoner trying to figure out how to take the hurry out of bedtime stories with his son...
...Is slowing down a luxury for the affluent...
...We confuse a full calendar with full and meaningful lives...
...The Industrial Revolution fundamentally altered people's connection to time...
...guaranteed one-week paid sick leave...
...In "Time for Bread and Roses," de Graaf writes about a coalition of groups that are proposing a "Time to Care" national public policy initiative...
...But his balanced philosophy makes sense...
...Every act of deceleration gives another push to the Slow movement," he says...
...Most of the workers who are gaining control over work schedules are white collar...
...Developing nations are rarely mentioned, unfortunately...
Vol. 69 • March 2005 • No. 3
