Now slow is not lazy but this book is worthwhile.
Gini, Al. The Importance of Being Lazy: In praise of play, leisure and vacations., Routledge, 2003, New York
This well-researched book is a great place to start to learn about the slow lifestyle. Al Gini is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He’s also a business consultant. He previously explored a mixture of business, work, and philosophy, in his book My Job, My Self. Be warned, he describes himself as addicted to work.
The Importance of Being Lazy is about personal identity in culture. Our most frequent response to the question, “who am I”, is to say what we do for a living. The book is about who we are and what we do when not at work. Professor Gini’s own university has only a few books on leisure but thousands on work, jobs, and careers. We value work, we don’t value leisure.
If vacations are a project of self-definition, then what does it mean to not even take vacations? Vacation starvation becomes a malady. The consequences, as Josef Pieper pointed out, is the destruction of culture. The idea of leisure time was to refresh and renew to have a life outside of work. But market forces have largely been against this.
Adam Smith said, “Consumption is the sole purpose of all production.” Al Gini says, “To Shop is to be. “ Our culture has degenerated from a society based around people to those around things.”
There are five problem areas:
1.Lack of Self Development. Without adequate time and energy we become passive consumers of entertainment. This makes us dull.
2. Lack of Autonomy. Time away from constraints and conformity of work is necessary to build a more authentic sense of self. Spending all our time at work makes us compliant, and often against our own best interests.
3. Effects of Social Life. Less time means more superficial interactions with others. Lack of social involvement degrades our social environment. We are too busy to be courteous. We are too busy for civic involvement.
4. Positional Competition: In other words, “Keeping up with the Joneses.” Our focus is on the superficial. We self identify through our buying habits.
5. Cognitive and Valuational Confusion. You might expect a title like this from an academic (and a word like valuational!). However, the book is wonderfully free of academic writing.
What does Professor Gini mean? Advertisers create discontent by holding up impossible promises and standards to which consumers aspire.
Professor Gini cites a host of thinkers including, Hegel, Kipling, William James, Marcuse, and Aristotle. My own favorite is Mark Twain, “I do not like work even when someone else does it.”
We need to find a balance between work and leisure. We are responsible for at least some of the choices we make. The notes are a wonderful resource for further reading.
It’s National Handwriting Day.
The handwriting police race up to you, there is a screech of tires and the from the bull horn you hear: “Step away from the keyboard!”
Or at least that’s how I imagine it. But it really is National Handwriting Day. Handwriting may be a lost slow art. But even those who scrawl can enjoy the sensuality of pencil (in my case) or pen on paper.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I like my handwriting these days. And it’s getting better. It used to be appalling, so I won’t show you an example of that. Even I couldn’t read it. And the real reason for my previous obfuscating scrawl was that I was a nervous speller. Bad spelling was a source of keen embarrassment to me. I was even caned for not learning my spelling list as a schoolboy. It didn’t help. In fact it made me more nervous.
It’s easy to overcome bad spelling with software. And for me, the computer has improved my spelling as I now have the confidence to practice handwriting every day.
In France employers take handwriting seriously. They believe that you can make assumptions about people by the way they write. This maybe true, but like any test, be it Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, or any other system, the danger is to categorize and then only react to the label.
Handwriting does seem to be heritable. I see influences of my mother’s and father’s handwriting. In those days it was important to have an elegant hand. That was unless you were a doctor. I believe they had special illegibility classes for them in medical school.
My parents’ generation used to write, and calculate by hand. Handwriting mattered. It is a art, and like most art it’s a practice that improves over time. Handwriting has an immediacy that the keyboard doesn’t have. It’s authentic and expressive. Writing is drawing. It’s more somatically connected.
Even though having a handwriting day is probably a commercial idea, in these fast-paced times, receiving a handwritten letter or note can make a difference. It’s certainly a demonstration of slowing down.
I received an email from a friend yesterday who warned me of Christmas drivers who will kill you on their way to being charitable. He got into a car crash on Monday and broke his ribs, sternum and neck. Now he has to keep so still in order not to become paralyzed.
This friend of mine spent years in Kenya and he related how most people there have a very different sense of time.
Once he saw an old goat herder on a hillside. Most of the time just leaning on a pole and watching the goats is considered a worthwhile activity. Now you’d think this job is boring, but it isn’t. Which of course brings up the topic of what exactly is boredom and our need for constant stimulation.
What my friend Matt found remarkable about this goat herder was just how relaxed his face was. It had none of the tensions that we see in those walking about. Have you noticed how many people look as if they are in pain? The mouth is tight. The brow is furrowed. But this goat herder was genuinely relaxed and smiling.
Matt thought about those harried stock brokers and lawyers running in pursuit of something-or-other back home in the United States. How many of them had such a calm, relaxed, and smiling face? Most of those elders made a few key decisions, but spent most of their day in the shade of palm trees not doing much.
There is a lesson in there somewhere. I may not spend all day leaning on a pole, but anglers, gardeners, knitters and others know how do appreciate going slow.
You go to the doctor’s office he scribbles you a prescription and shows you the door. On the way out he says, “And what was your problem?” I exaggerate. It’s not really like that. But you never hear of a doctor ordering you to take it easy for a few months for no other reason than you’ve been overdoing it.
This seemed to happen all the time in early twentieth-century novels. Doctors were always prescribing a few months rest and relaxation (R & R) for their patients.
But according to a Reuters article last week (we don’t like to rush things on this blog, last week’s news is quite current enough) Taiwan’s hot springs businesses are petitioning government to pay for therapeutic immersion through health insurance.
I feel a whole lot better every time I relax in a hot spring. Will Taiwan’s government soak up the idea? We shall find out soon as, next week, discussions are being held with the Republic of China Hot Springs Tourism Association. Now that sounds like an august body that does a good job of ruminating. I hope they will be holding their meeting in the hot tub. Once you’ve had a good soak you see the world in a more friendly way. Taiwan has 500 hot springs.
Here in California we have a number of geothermal hot springs, so I hope our government is watching the outcome with interest. Well, one can always hope.
Aging Today, a bi-monthly newspaper from the American Society on Aging, has an article on brain-health. According to the articles’ author, Paul David Nussbaum, animals exposed to overly stressful environments show slower brain development, and recent research suggests the same is true for us humans.
Of course, slow is not a good thing when it comes to brain development.
Mr. Nussbaum wisely urges us to slow down. He suggests meditation, prayer, and relaxation are the sort of spiritual practices that promote health and help us slow down.
Businesses suffer from speed and overly ambitious projects too. In an article on falling quality standards at Toyota in this week’s Economist, problems may be addressed by slowing production plans. At some point there is a trade off between speed, resources, and quality. Toyota’s problem is that there are not enough qualified engineering inspectors. Slowing down to produce a higher-quality product is a remarkable concept. Who would have thought it possible!
Ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote eight-five percent of his new book, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, in the bath. It just goes to show that those who pooh-pooh our slow ways have got it wrong.
In 1971, Mr. Greenspan’s orthopedist advised him to take hot baths for a couple of months to heal a back injury. Clearly, Mr. Greenspan can afford the best in medical advice. I’m certain this sort of advice doesn’t come cheap.
The experience of being in the bathtub had such a beneficial effect on the ex-chairman that he continued the practice. In a BBC interview this week, he said he can write, read and think more effectively in the bathtub. He said it’s where he does his conceptual work best. Why is this not common practice? Perhaps the super successful keep it a slow secret.
I’m not sure if Mr. Greenspan has read our Slow Manifesto, but I suspect he discovered slow wisdom a long time ago. There is no proof that rushing about will turn your mind to mush. But at least some people admit to the healing power of the hot bath and slowing down.
I wrote this in the bathtub.
[This is a guest post from Lynnette Rogers (a.k.a. the missus)]
I love the contrarian spirit of the slow movement. It runs so against the predominant grain of our culture. I think truly committed slow practitioners quickly see the benefits of slowing down – less stress, more enjoyment of life, better gas mileage. But I suggest that slow food, long baths, arriving early – these are aperitifs. True contrarians don’t stop there. They understand this is only the beginning, the peel, as it were, of the luscious fruit of absolute slow.
There is a hidden world of slow available only to the deeply committed. (By that I don’t mean institutionalized.) If you’re willing to risk more ridicule from your speedy friends and family, I suggest trying meditation. A warning: this should only be attempted by advanced practitioners. The most excellent benefits don’t begin to show up until after at least ten years of slow practice, if you’re lucky.
If you’ve spend any time watching the workings of your own mind, you’ve noticed the wild and fragmentary nature of thought. Add to this the shifting clouds of emotion you experience. Pile on the non-stop change in all your physical processes. In the face of this frenzied activity, it’s hard to make a case for a solid “you” in there. This, I suggest (and I’m not the first to do so), may be a primary cause of human suffering and discontent. It’s either this, or too much coffee.
Here’s where slow skills have much to offer. By sitting quietly, kicking into slow drive and just observing, we can discover some very cool stuff. There’s been much discussion over the years about what this might be, but with permission of the IINDM, I call it Absolute Slow. It’s possible to actually get relief for a little while from the tyranny of being oneself.
I’d be interested to know if anyone else has experienced your own version of Absolute Slow …