The slow life, the long now

If you were asked to think of words to describe the present times, or how the future would be; would you use slow, long, subtractive, simple, basic, sustainable or don’t do it?

Probably not. At least, they won’t make the top 10, I think. But for the growing number of followers of the Japanese “Slow Life” movement, such words echo their vision for society. Their slogan, ‘Ganabaranai!’ (Don’t go for it!), sums up their stance against the fast-paced, replace- everything, accumulation-driven mentality of today.

The practice of Slow Life revolves around the following themes:
SLOW PACE: We value the culture of walking, to be fit and to reduce traffic accidents.

SLOW WEAR: We respect and cherish our beautiful traditional costumes, including woven and dyed fabrics, Japanese kimonos and Japanese night robes (yukata).

SLOW FOOD: We enjoy Japanese food culture, such as Japanese dishes and tea ceremony, and safe local ingredients.

SLOW HOUSE: We respect houses built with wood, bamboo, and paper, lasting over one hundred or two hundred years, and are careful to make things durably, and ultimately, to conserve our environment.

SLOW INDUSTRY: We take care of our forests, through our agriculture and forestry, conduct sustainable farming with human labor, and ultimately spread urban farms and green tourism.

SLOW EDUCATION: We pay less attention to academic achievement, and create a society in which people can enjoy arts, hobbies, and sports throughout our lifetimes, and where all generations can communicate well with each other.

SLOW AGING: We aim to age with grace and be self-reliant throughout our lifetimes.

SLOW LIFE: Based on the philosophy of life stated above, we live our lives with nature and the seasons, saving our resources and energy.

The growing sentiment for slowness amidst the fast-paced, technology-driven society draws a lot of insights to mind. It reminded me of several paradoxes, like U2’s “Running to Stand Still”; and the film, “Hero”, where Jet Li’s character learned that the measure of a true Swordmaster is the ability to fight without the sword.
This also called to mind McLuhan’s 2nd and 4th Media Laws, also known as Reversal and Retrieval respectively:
• When pushed beyond the limit of its potential, it will reverse into what were its original characteristics; into what does it reverse?
• What does it retrieve from the past that had been formerly / obsolesced?
Speed and accumulation are birthing slowness and reflection. A longing for what used to be the way of life is emerging once again.

But then again, can we afford to take it slow? How can you live slow, when life is so short? Or is this precisely the best reason to slow down, look around and take it all in. Why hasten towards the end when you can walk slowly and make the here-and-now longer?

The cultural anthropologist, Shinichi Tsuji, explains this paradox with striking clarity:

“ ‘Slow’ embodies the idea of subtraction. The idea is that an affluent life is not achieved by adding to what you already have…. In today’s society, people have the idea that leisure involves adding something. In other words they think that a slow life can be achieved by adding something spatially or temporally. To be able to do this, they try frantically hard and work fast so that one day they’ll be able to enjoy a leisurely life.” ( http://www.ntt.co.jp/kankyo/eco_e/talk3_e/talk_page2.html )

But that day never seems to come, eh? No matter how fast we work, or how meticulous we plan, what we do never seems to be enough to achieve that ideal picture of a serene, slow-paced and leisure life. A very ordinary and little example: I try to finish all my projects way before the deadline, not necessarily always in the name of good planning, but so that I can begin, as soon as possible, with doing nothing. Sometimes, this works, but most often, it doesn’t. I just end up being stressed out and barely having free time before the next project starts.

Stewart Brand of The Long Now Foundation writes:
“Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where ‘long-term’ is measured at least in centuries.” (http://www.longnow.org/about/)

A slow pace and longer view of the here-and-now is needed to balance the frenzied rush to the future. But where to begin? I think I will try to daydream more, for starters ;-p . And try not to panic when the great plans I’ve made for my life suffer setbacks (this will be difficult!). Oh yeah, and also not obsess with projects deadlines…like doing this blog instead of making my internship plan 😉
Related links:
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70013-1.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
http://www.japanfs.org/db/database.cgi?cmd=dp&num=202&dp=data_e.html