Much of the panic and hysteria surrounding children today is focussed on their safety. Many kids are not allowed to venture outside alone. To modern parents, the world beyond the front door looks like a vast cesspool of drug dealers, bullies, paedophiles and rampaging traffic. As a father of two,I know that fear all too well. Sometimes I think it’ll be okay for my children to start walking to school alone when they’re 12. Or maybe 23. The instinct to protect our kids is a natural and noble one, but over the last generation it has tipped so far into paranoia. Even when statistics show that are streets are no more dangerous than before, they still feel more dangerous to us parents. The upshot is that many children are almost being raised in captivity. And they’re missing out on some valuable life lessons: how to handle risk, how to get along with their peers without adults hovering overhead, how to know when to trust a stranger. For years the rallying cry at schools has been “Stranger Danger” – the implication being that the outside world is a hellish, apocalyptic place where every unknown adult is a potential threat. Is that the right message to send to the next generation? Probably not. But thankfully the backlash has begun.This morning, at the House of Commons in London, I attended the launch of a campaign to help children navigate the streets alone by showing them that most adults can be trusted. It’s called Safer Strangers, Safer Buildings. A shortvideoteaches children that they can turn for help to people in uniform (police, doctors, check-out assistants, etc) and certain buildings (churches, shops, post offices, etc). It’s not rocket science, but it punctures the pernicious assumptionthat every stranger is a danger. And anything that makes parents feel less anxious and gets kids outdoors more has to be a good thing.
Category: Blog
Can money make us happy?
One big argument for slowing down and working less is that more money doesn’t always make us happier. The roots of this thinking lie in a 1974 study by Richard Easterlin at the University of Southern California. He found that the happiness of a nation’s inhabitants rises in tandem with growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but only up to a certain point. Thereafter, getting richer stops making us any happier. This, of course, calls into question our obsession with maximizing economic growth. But over the last 30 years the boom in happiness studies has encouraged other academics to revisit the data. Apparently, two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are about to publish a comprehensive survey of the literature which shows that happiness and per capita GDP continue to rise more or less in unison. In other words, making more money does make us happier. I haven’t read the study yet, but already it raises some intriguing questions. What does it mean for the Slow revolution if working longer and earning more does in fact make us happier? How much does our happiness depend on the kind of work that we do? Do we need to build other criteria, such as health, education and the environment, into any measure of economic growth? How do we even define happiness? Lots to think about here….
Seeing slow fast food in action…
On my last day in San Francisco, I visited a branch of the Chipotle chain (see blog entry from April 22, 2008). Even on a busy, bustling working day, there were several office types happily waiting for their food. One woman, a fortysomething accountant, ordered a chicken burrito. “I don’t mind waiting the extra time,” she said. “It’s reassuring that you can see them making the food fresh rather than just pulling it pre-made off the shelf like they do in other places.” The man behind her, a young lawyer, nodded his head. “A lot of fast food is just too fast,” he said. “If you slow things down a bit you get a more quality experience.” I told them both about Slow Planet so maybe we’ll see them on here soon. I can’t speak for Chipotle’s food, however. I was too stuffed from my own slow lunch even to try the chips and salsa
Blast from the past
The first leg of my North American book tour for Under Pressure is over. My last interview here in San Francisco had a nice symmetry to it.Back in 1990, when I was in the final year of my undergraduate degree at Edinburgh University in Scotland, ABC’s Good Morning America came to town to do a few shows. I got taken on as a runner and ended up working with one of the presenters, Spencer Christian. We got along well and I’ve always remembered him fondly. So what a happy surprise to find Spencer waiting to interview me onView From the Bay.We even had a laugh about it on air. Sometimes TV can be a lot of fun…
Can fast food be Slow?
My blog here serves two masters. Or two books, anyway: In Praise of Slow and Under Pressure. Although the newly-published Under Pressure is my top priority at the moment, I still have things to say about Slow. And you can delve deeper into these on www.slowplanet.com. So here goes with a Slow post…
The fast food industry has always seemed at odds with the Slow movement. Just consider the Big Mac: everything from the way its ingredients are sourced to the way it is prepared and consumed is all about speed ? at the expense of quality. But can fast food also be a force for good? There is an article in the current issue of Fast Companythat supplies some food for thought. (Yes, I know, what is a proponent of Slow doing reading a magazine with a name like that? Well, it offers a sparky and insightful take on modern culture. And for some reason I have been given a free subscription…) Anyway, the article is about a chain of Tex-Mex restaurants called Chipotle. It’s growing like a weed across the US, and could have 840 branches and sales of $1 billion by the end of the year. What makes Chipotle stand out from the crowd is that it takes a very ethical ? perhaps even Slow? ? approach to feeding the public. Staff make every burrito by hand, which means that customers queue for much longer than the four-minutes that is standard in the fast food industry. But they’re happy to do so because they prefer hand-made over prefab fare and the burritos taste good. What’s more, the company seeks to use naturally-raised meat wherever possible. It uses rBGH-free dairy products. All its pork is free of growth hormones and antibiotics and is humanely raised. The same goes for 80% of its chicken and 50% of its beef. This means prices are higher than you find at fast food rivals but again customers are willing to pay. This begs some intriguing questions. Is Chipotle’s business model just a niche in the fast food market or is it the beginning of a sea-change? Already two of the biggest fast food giants, Wendy’s and Burgher King, are exploring how to bring humane pork into their supply chain. If enough of the market swings in the right direction, we could be on the verge of a great leap forward in agriculture. But can a large corporation with hundreds of branches like Chipotle ever be Slow? Or Slow enough? And does that even matter if its business practices are nudging the market in a healthy right direction? As it happens, I have just arrived in Seattle to start promoting Under Pressure in the US. Maybe I should go sample one of these Chipotle burritos for myself…
Maiden blog
Hi everyone! My new site is finally live. I will be blogging here and at www.slowplanet.com. At the moment, I’m in Ottawa, four days into the North American tour for my new book, Under Pressure. There is nothing less slow than a book tour but it has to be done every few years. The upside is that the reaction to the book has so far been very favourable. People seem to get it. And it’s not just parents. Yesterday, a 24-year-old told me about her over-scheduled childhood. Her college application contained two pages for extracurricular activities and she won a scholarship based on her work in community development. But as soon as she left home and school, she dropped everything, including the community development. “I feel ashamed because everything I was doing in high school had an ulterior motive,” she said. “Looking back it would have been nicer to done things for their own sake.” Sure, she got the scholarship, but what did she lose along the way?
Slow Film
All over the world, artists are making works inspired by the Slow revolution. Here is a wonderful 90-second film sent to me by someone in Montreal. It’s his entry for Biblioclip, a contest where participants submit short videos exploring the rebirth of the public library. The film is beautifully shot and crafted, dreamy yet sharp-eyed, hypnotic almost; and it features a haunting soundtrack from Radiohead. It’s narrated in French but I’m told it works for non-francophones too. Click HERE to watch it.
Slow Driving
One of my pet peeves is people talking or texting on their mobile phones while driving. Are their conversations so pressing that they can’t wait till it’s safe to chat? Studies show that speaking on the phone can dull your reflexes more than being drunk. Here in Britain talking on a mobile phone while driving is banned but millions still do it. Just a moment ago in my street I saw a woman doing a reverse, uphill parallel park while talking on her phone. And that in an area filled with small children. Today another woman was sentenced to four years in jail for killing a cyclist while driving and texting at the same time. Read more by clicking HERE.
Slow Reading
Wow. Last night I finished reading to my children the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series. What an odyssey – 3,407 pages in all. We must have started two years ago, and we read other books along the way, but Harry Potter was always there, a fellow traveller on this leg of their journey through childhood. When we started out, my daughter couldn’t read. Last night she was peering over my shoulder trying to see what was going to happen next with Lord Voldemort before I got there. Reading seems to me the ultimate act of slow. At a time when so much reading involves skimming bite-sized chunks, it is a relief and joy to tackle a very long work that repays the investment of time and attention so handsomely. I wouldn’t read Harry Potter to myself but I loved reading it to my kids. I hope the three of us will always remember those long hours spent huddled together on beds, in tents, in airplanes, by the beach, in forests, even in the car while stuck in traffic jams listening to the story unfold, slowly but surely. The question now is what big book to read next. My son is lobbying for the Hobbit and then Lord of the Rings. My daughter thinks there will be more princesses in the Narnia Chronicles. Any suggestions welcome…
Slow homes
It was only a matter of time before someone applied the Slow label to housing. Calgary, the biggest city in my home province of Alberta, is booming at the moment. A forest of cranes looms over the sky-line and the construction industry can’t build homes fast enough to meet demand. But in all the hurry, and with everyone focussed on turning a quick profit, corners are being cut. Much of the new housing is of the one-size-fits-all variety found across North America, complete with large carbon footprint and low-grade materials. Many new neighbourhoods have very little character. But now the fightback has begun. A local architect named John Brown has launched a Slow Homes movement. He wants Calgarians to invest more time and thought in the way their homes are built and their neighbourhoods assembled. He wants to replace the high-turnover, homogenized model of house-building with something that is not only more sustainable and aesthetically pleasing but that also promotes stronger communities. Something slower, in other words. Sounds very sensible and timely to me. To find out more, clickHERE.