Abstract
There is a powerful message permeating our social lives today, found in our self-help networks, talkback television and radio shows, and online forums. It is a warning that, through technology and modernisation, our lifestyles have become increasingly hectic, fast, complex and immediate. ‘Life’, writes online author Leo Babauta (2009, para. 2), ‘moves at such a fast pace that it seems to pass us by before we can really enjoy it’. We are encouraged to take a step back, to breathe deeply and ‘slow down’, in order to recapture the essence of ‘real’ living. By doing so, we can escape the seemingly endless stresses associated with our multi-tasked, time-compressed and instantaneous speed culture (Tomlinson 2007). This book presents illustrations of how people are beginning to disentangle themselves from a speed culture by embracing slowness. It is not simply a matter of slowing down, as the term implies, but of undertaking changes in the way we do things at an everyday level. Underpinning these transformations is a concern, as Babauta (2009) suggests, with the uniquely stressful lifestyles we are living in contemporary culture.
If we carry on at this rate, the cult of speed can only get worse. When everyone takes the fast option, the advantage of going fast vanishes, forcing us to go faster still. Eventually, what we are left with is an arms race based on speed, and we all know where arms races end up: in the grim stalemate of Mutually Assured Destruction.
(Honoré 2004, p. 11)
To keep up in this competition, the average individual needs to earn more money. This means that he or she must work longer hours, take higher-paying but more demanding jobs, and so on. Ceteris paribus, these processes will lower the fraction of productivity growth which individuals desire to take as free time, and increase their demands for income.
(Schor 1998a, p. 123)
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Osbaldiston, N. (2013). Slow Culture: An Introduction. In: Osbaldiston, N. (eds) Culture of the Slow. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319449_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319449_1
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