Interview with Carl Honore - In Praise of Slowness
Andrew May interviews Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness - how a world wide movement is challenging the cult of speed and founder of www.slowplanet.com.
Listen to the interview
What is the Slow Movement?
It is a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace. It’s about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. It’s about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting.
When was this Slow idea born?
People have been defending the value of slowness for at least 200 years - think of the Romantics, or the Transcendentalists or even the hippies. But the idea of a “Slow Movement” which seeks to blend fast and slow to help people work, live and play better in the modern world is more recent. Born in Italy in the early 1990s the ****Slow Food movement helped recapture the word ‘slow’ as something positive. But they concentrate on food. More recently “Slow” has become a universal label to explain the benefits of doing everything at the right speed: sex, work, education, exercise, etc.
Why do we need a Slow Movement now?
It seems to me that we are moving towards an historical turning point. For at least 150 years everything has been getting faster – and for the most part speed was doing us more good than harm in that time. But in recent years we’ve entered the phase of diminishing returns. Today we are addicted to speed, to cramming more and more into every minute. Every moment of the day feels like a race against the clock, a dash to a finish line that we never seem to reach. This roadrunner culture is taking a toll on everything from our health, diet and work to our communities, relationships and the environment. That is why the Slow Movement is taking off.
Have we reached the point of trying to accelerate the unacceleratable?
Definitely. You can even do courses in Speed Yoga or Speed Meditation these days. All this technology connects us in ways that can be wonderful but it also tempts us into trying to hurry up relationships too. So on Facebook or MySpace you find people claiming to have 4,356 friends! The very idea of friendship is devalued. And maybe we’re also losing the ability to make friends: in Britain, a major survey found that between 1986 and 2006 the number of teenagers who say they have no best friend in whom to confide rose from under one in eight to nearly one in five. Or consider the phenomenon of Speed Dating, where singles gather at events where they get three minutes (sometimes less) each with 30 members of the opposite sex and have to choose who might be a suitable romantic partner. Actually, I read recently that in the latest version of Speed Dating the participants no longer even meet face to face (that’s too slow, you see). Instead, they get three minutes to appraise each other via email or instant messaging. A magazine in Britain even published an article recently on how to bring about an orgasm in 30 seconds! So even in the bedroom it’s “On your marks, get set, go!” Our speedaholism is out of control, and we all know it.
What are the tell-tale symptoms of living too fast?
When you feel tired all the time and like you’re just going through the motions, getting through the many things on your To-Do list but not engaging with them deeply or enjoying them very much. You don’t remember things as vividly when you rush through them. You feel like you’re racing through your life instead of actually living it. Illnesses are often the body’s way of saying “Enough already, slow down!”