The Culture of Speed and the Counter Culture of Slow Movement

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Today I'm going to write about The Culture of Speed and the Counter Culture of Slow Movement task given by our Professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. So Let's see....

WHAT IS THE SLOW MOVEMENT?

“Is it possible in today’s superfast world to live slow? Would I be able to keep my job? Provide a good living for my family? Does being ‘slow’ mean low efficiency, low effectiveness?”

– G. Berthelsen

“…perhaps, the most powerful reason — why we find it hard to slow down is the cultural taboo that we’ve erected against slowing down. ‘Slow’ is a dirty word in our culture. It’s a byword for ‘lazy,’ ‘slacker,’ for being somebody who gives up. You know, ‘he’s a bit slow.’ It’s actually synonymous with being stupid.”
– C. Honore

The Slow Movement aims to address the issue of 'time poverty' through making connections. If we think about the following trends. Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in the world today. People are turning to organic food in droves. Schools are in turmoil.

How slow can you go? Home schooling is becoming commonplace. People are downshifting. The Slow Food movement is gaining popularity with 811 convivia worldwide.

Stress is leading to unprecedented health problems. “Stop the world I want to get off” is a feeling we all have sometimes.

Why is this happening? What is wrong? What are we searching for? The one thing that is common to all these trends is connection. We are searching for connection. We want connection to people - ourselves, our family, our community, our friends, - to food, to place (where we live), and to life. We want connection to all that it means to live – we want to live a connected life.

This desire for connectedness is not new. Traditionally, in times past, our lives were connected. Most traditional cultures still have these connections.

Cultures with connection These people are connected to their culture, to people, to place and to their lives.

It is not so long ago that the extended family was a real live entity with the extended family often living under the same roof. Children grew up knowing their cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and other relatives. These children felt connected.

In these not too long ago times people were connected to their food. Most people grew their own vegies and some fruit. Backyard vegie gardens were the norm not the exception. Many families had a house cow for milk, cheese, butter and cream. Most families also had poultry or other meat animals. When visitors came unexpectedly, dad would be sent out back to kill the chook for dinner. Families used fresh produce and meat to make traditional recipes. Everyone was involved in cooking and mealtimes were a social event. When the meal ended most of the family was involved in cleaning up and washing up. How different is the situation today?

Our fast paced life has weakened these connections. Technological advances have meant that the work we do is different from work in the past and it is less connected to living and life than it has been in the past.

Technological advances have resulted in labour saving devices for the home. Who would complain about vacuum cleaners, electric stoves, hot water systems, flush toilet, or the bread maker, but have these technologies really given us more time to enjoy life as was their claim? Or have we used this time to become even more busy. We are engaged in constant fast-forward motion whereby we are often over scheduled, stressed and rushing towards the next task. This rushing is not restricted to our work environment. We rush our food, our family time and even our recreation.

This website supports a growing cultural shift towards slowing down. On this site we discuss how we have lost connection to most aspects of our life and to the natural world and rhythms around us, and how we can reconnect – how we can live a connected life. The Slow Movement is a worldwide movement to recapture

Meaningful Connection this state of connectedness. The movement is gaining momentum, as more and more people recognise their discomfort at the fast pace and disconnected nature of their lives.

Recognising the disconnection and pace of our life as an unwanted state of affairs is an important first step in re-establishing the connections and slowing the pace. What we all want to know is how do we reconnect? whilst at the same time meeting our most important responsibilities?

This website tells us how. It is gives examples of ways to live slow and be part of the slow movement. It points out the areas of our life that have become disconnected. We are often unaware of just what it is that isn’t ‘right’, we just know that something is ‘not right’.

Time to rethink priorities This website tells you where the disconnections lies and, more importantly, it shows you how you can reconnect. It provides you with tangible, easy-to-do steps to becoming a practicing slow mover, and member of the Slow Movement. You will find the sanity you so desperately crave.

Some of the things I talk about are easy to do – some are not so easy. Perhaps the hardest thing to do is to change our attitude and mindset. We have to rethink our priorities and rethink the way we approach life and all thing in it.

Some of us may take the step of downshifting. Downshifting is a fast growing movement of people who choose voluntary simplicity in all aspects of their life. Down shifters go beyond materialism – beyond the fast life. They downshift to a slow connected life.

Green Damselfly is an Australian business supporting eco ethical enterprises to alleviate poverty in developing countries.

What is culture of speed ??

This disapproval doesn’t always amount to a direct rejection of the value of speed. If Aesop’s tortoise enjoys moral approval it is, ultimately, because he won the race: it is the hare’s overconfidence and subsequent indolence, rather than its innate dynamism that is disapproved of. ‘More haste less speed’, in a similar way, warns against a certain type of ill-considered and counterproductive disposal of energy and effort rather than attacking the goal of speed itself.

Indeed, on the other hand, there is a wealth of positive associations which reach back to the archaic meaning of speed as success or prosperity – as in ‘God send you good speed’ – and of ‘quick’ as meaning ‘alive’ – as in ‘the quick and the dead’. This association with vitality and life energy is the one that has survived most into contemporary language.To be quick – quick witted, quick on the uptake – is to be lively, alert, intelligent. Such a person is liable to succeed in life – to have their career ‘fast-tracked’ and, perhaps, to end up living life in the fast lane. If we aspire to this sort of career success and prosperity we need to get up to speed with the latest developments in our field. Clearly the underlying cultural metaphor here is of life as a competition, as a race to achievement.We may, of course, disapprove of this sort of attitude to life, regarding it as part of the insidious ideology of western capitalist-consumerism, or more simply as a rather unreflective ‘heads down’ conformity to the modern rat-race. And, indeed, if this were all that was implied, a life lived at speed could scarcely be deemed a particularly rich or virtuous one. However, this would be to neglect the deeper existential associations – though frequently cashed, it has to be said, in the vulgar currency of material accumulation – of speed.

For example, to ‘quicken’ is also ‘to give life or vigour, to rouse, to animate, to stimulate’ (OED). In an archaic usage it is to kindle a flame, to make a fire burn brighter – in a sense, to bring light into the world. When the Virgin Mary ‘quickened in her womb’ she reached the stage in her mysterious pregnancy at which the first movements of the foetus – of a biological life which was to become a principle of spiritual life – could be felt.These associations are, to be sure, slightly remote from the contemporary discourse of speed, but they nonetheless point us towards a significant evaluative connection between speed, energy, dynamism, vitality and (pro)creativity. There may be something rather particular to the Judeo-Christian tradition here. It is notable that sloth – ‘laziness, reluctance to make an effort’ – makes it into St Thomas Aquinas’s list of the seven deadly sins, while there is no specific censure of impatience or impetuosity. (Although to be quick tempered gets dangerously close to the sin of anger and certainly does not imitate the forbearance of God who, viewing things sub specie aeternitatis is, of course, ‘slow to anger’.)

Beyond these particularities, however, the association of speed with vigour and vitality seems to be quite general. Speed as a measure of physical prowess and sporting achievement has been common in most cultures. Running was originally the single event of the ancient Olympics. But more significantly, to maintain a certain brisk pace to life itself, in the sense of making the most of the enigmatic finite gift of existence, or of actualizing our human potential – at least of not squandering it in brutish indolence – has been widely considered a virtue.

Whilst it may be unwise – hasty, even – to draw any strong lessons from these commonly expressed cultural values, they do point us towards two other important questions. One of these is the question of how values and attitudes towards speed may be changing, of how older implicit senses of the appropriate pace of life may be losing ground to new sensibilities and even associated senses of social virtue. This is something we shall considerlater in the book. But, more immediately, there is the question of how these diverse, ambivalent and frequently contradictory common attitudes and values have been shaped into more or less coherent, if generally implicit, narratives in the complex cultural discourse of modernity.

Paul Virilio - Dromology

Dromology is derived from the Greek ‘dromos’: avenue or race course. The theory of dromology interprets the world and reality as a resultant of velocity. In Paul Virilio’s 1977 essay entitled “Speed and Politics”, the french philosopher makes a compelling case for an interpretation of history, politics and society in the context of speed. Extending the definition of “dromomaniacs”, Virilio argues that speed became the sole agent and measure of progress. He contends, that “there was no ‘industrial revolution’, only ‘dromocratic revolution’; there is no democracy, only dromocracy; there is no strategy, only dromology.”