The Culture of Speed and the Counter Culture of Slow Movement

Our lives become very fast with passing time. In every work we need more speed and want to complete all the things in less time. But by running behind the time something is lacking, something we are leaving behind us. And it is connected with society and society is subject of cultural studies. That is why the slowness has become a part of study here in cultural studies.

We can say that, 

Slowness is a new way of thinking about time

When we can do everything on time, then why should we hurry ? In the speed, we forgot to balance things. But in slowness, we can balance everything. So if you must hurry, hurry slowly ! We find lots of works also written about slowness. Let's discuss about it. 

In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore.

In this works Honore discuss about slow movement and the importance of slowness. In a way it is as the title, praise of slow and it's effect on the world. Here is TED talk about slowness by Carl Honore. Here is the video link of that TED talk, 

https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_honore_in_praise_of_slowness?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare 

In the video we find interesting things that praising the slow movement and the importance of slowness. Honore said that, A world obsessed with speed, with doing everything faster, with cramming more and more into less and less time. Every moment of the day feels like a race against the clock. We're so marinated in the culture of speed that we almost fail to notice the toll it takes on every aspect of our lives like on our health, our diet, our work, our relationships, the environment and our community.  

Honore discussed about two questions. The first was, how did we get so fast? And the second is, is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down? Now, if we think about how our world got so accelerated, the usual suspects rear their heads. We think of, we know, urbanization, consumerism, the workplace, technology. But he said if we cut through those forces, we get to what might be the deeper driver, the nub of the question, which is how we think about time itself. In other cultures, time is cyclical. It's seen as moving in great, unhurried circles. It's always renewing and refreshing itself. Whereas in the West, time is linear. It's a finite resource; it's always draining away. You either use it, or lose it.

 "Time is money," 

-Benjamin Franklin

So the talk makes the things clear about slowness and it's importance. According to Honore,

The purpose of the Slow Movement, or its main goal, really, is to tackle that taboo, and to say that yes, sometimes slow is not the answer, that there is such a thing as "bad slow."

-Carl Honore

So we can say that Honore believes the Western world's emphasis on speed erodes health, productivity and quality of life. But there's a backlash brewing and all people started to taking break. 

Here are some other works also about slowness. One of them is Paul Virilio's work on 'Dromology'. Dromos is an Ancient Greek noun for race or racetrack, which Virilio applied the activity of racing (Virilio 1977:47). Meaning of this Dromology is "science (or logic) of speed".  He noted in his work, that the speed at which something happens may change its essential nature, and that which moves with speed quickly comes to dominate that which is slower. 'Whoever controls the territory possesses it. Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation. 

So at the end we can say that this movement makes aware people about the slowness, it's different aspects and it's impect on our life. There are the questions that were answered in the video talk also. If we want to balance the things we can be slow and that helps us to do things correct, because in our busy life we were damaging our relationship and other things that can be a serious problem for us.