frogblog

The Listener has a wonderful cover story this week, with a succinct Green message: slow down! It’s the quality of your time on this earth, not how hard you work or how much you produce, that matters most.

It quotes at length from Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slow - How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed. A good bit:

What it all boils down to is … taking pleasure in everything - food, sex, relationships, work. I don’t think we enjoy ourselves properly when we’re hurrying through them and I think people know that. They feel it in their bones, but we’re so marinated in this whole culture of busyness. The faster you go, the less time and tranquillity you have for thinking about the bigger questions: am I happy, is my family growing up in the right way, is my community functioning properly, are politicians making sensible decisions on my behalf? We’re all so rushed that all of that becomes just a blur. Speed becomes a form of running away from these questions because we sense below that something’s wrong, but we’re scared to confront it.

The Slow Movement has much in common with the Green vision. Compare the above to what Mike has to say about modern life:

Lack of time is the greatest impediment to balance and any moves towards saner lifestyles.

We desperately need to work fewer hours and more regular hours but all the signals suggest that the opposite is happening.

Mum, Dad and the kids are all hard at it. 24×7 is the name of the game these days.

When and how are families and friends meant to interact when they are expected to fit leisure, education and family around increasingly bizarre work patterns?

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