Slow down!

It's starting, the Red Queen is being dethroned

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass

Youtube videos, social media posts, films, you name it, try and get as many hits as quickly as possible. Content, content being pumped out all the time, faster and faster. Products, invented, improved and then put to market all the time, ‘chase the dream’ we are told.

I have a friend who watches a lot of films and series and recently he has noted that some of them are taking longer to develop plots. The rhythm is slower, the characters rush around less and the speed of the dialogue is more sedate.

We are also seeing more and more Youtube videos showing people taking time to do something well. People are getting fed up of the frenzy and are becoming more drawn to a slower pace. Grandpa Amu seems to be leading the way!

So does LuLei :

The increasing popularity of podcasts is another example of this. Rather than getting ‘information’ from speed posts on TikTok and Co. they are taking the time to listen to people explaining stuff more completely at a slower pace.

We are starting to hear more and more about de-consumerism, underconsumption, normal core and normal consumption. Millennials and generation Z opting out of the ‘rat race’ to live with low incomes, but few outgoings, a ‘softer life’. Laziness, attacked as being ‘wasting time’, ‘not contributing, ‘snowflake’ is being transformed into a virtue. Take time to live instead of staying on the produce/consume treadmill, rejecting the ‘I am what I possess’ and adopting the ‘I am what I live’ way.

Permaculture designers, myself included have sometimes been branded as ‘lazy’. Years ago someone who didn’t understand what PmC is labelled it ‘lazy gardening. Together with my peers we developed laziness to a fine art, we certainly didn’t see it as a problem. I often mention that when I go to buy a wheelbarrow I’ll choose the one that is most comfortable to sit in.

I’m never going to rush in and design a system as quickly as possible, we listened to Fukuoka when he said something like ‘I’ve got work to do today because I made a mistake yesterday.’ This is at the heart of PmC design, take the time to observe, spend time visualising, researching and reflecting. We often say that one needs to spend a year observing a site before starting to design it, sit in the wheelbarrow and watch the seasonal changes. Slow it all down and that way avoid making the mistakes that will give you more work tomorrow.

Have you ever woken with that feeling that ‘today isn’t the day for it?’ You’ve got stuff to do but you’re not feeling it? In the land of the Red Queen you have force yourself to get on with it anyway, in the office this can lead to making mistakes. In manual jobs it tends to involve hitting your thumb or cutting yourself or hurting someone else. When we adopt laziness and a softer life we don’t have to force ourselves to go against our feelings and intuitions. Things will get done when the time is right, they will be done better and we have pleasure in accomplishing these tasks.

One of the things I say to clients is to plan in at least one day off a week and organise longer breaks. In my experience the excitement of getting on with a project can lead too easily to a 24/7 rush and eventually to burn-outs, seperations and divorces. Caring for people means also caring for oneself and we can’t do this with our heads down hurling towards an imaginary finishing line.

Taking time out and just relaxing is also very creative, it’s a way of working with our nature and not against. The mind is continually processing information and we have to give it time to do so. The solution to a problem is more easily and efficiently found if we let the mind process stuff, the solution will eventually rise up and be obvious. Pushing, forcing, struggling to find a solution tends only to lead us up false paths and tomorrow we’ll have work to do because today we made a mistake.

There is a profound difference between reacting and acting. The former makes us rush and trip over our own feet, it makes us frenzied and too prone to rush in blindly. In the UK recently a lie flew around the social media and, without even checking, some people rushed out in a reactive hysteria to damage and destroy. Acting, on the other hand, involves taking the time to analyse, find out more and make clear decisions. We are more easily controlled if we are always reacting.

Over the centuries we’ve developed ways to potentially reduce our workload. After using animal labour for centuries we then developed machines that used the force of water and wind. We went on to using fuels, wood then charcoal, coal then coke, petrol and nuclear. Today we could be seen to be going back to the roots of the ‘industrial revolution’ which was powered by water and wind. Yet today’s wind and water turbines rely on petrol, to make them, transport them and dispose of them.

It’s strange that, despite all this technological help, we are still pushed to work all the time. We are still told that to adopt a ‘work ethic’, lazy is still a four letter word. Labour saving devices don’t save labour they just displace it, they cost money which equals work. The more labour saving devices you want the more you’ll have to labour, classic Red Queen. People cheered in France when the 35 hour working week was adopted, now we are being told to work until we are 64, a rise of two years. This is still lower than most European countries, in the UK those born on or after 5 April 1977 will be the first cohort to work to 68. Life expectancy in the UK is about 82 so that means a full 14 years to do something other than work full-time.

This is all virtually the opposite of what we target in Permaculture. Putting a system into place will require considerable work but the labour needs will decline. Once the system is at maturity it will need far less work than at the beginning. Martin Crawford tells us that he feeds his family from his forest garden and spends around 3 days a week in it which is mostly harvesting. He spends around 6 days a year on maintenance and upkeep of the garden.

We’ve gone on to add nature based solution to Shumacher’s ‘small is beautiful’. Why would I dig over my market garden beds when earthworms do it so much better? Why would I spend all my time growing annual crops when perennial ones just keep giving?

Building my Vardo didn’t in any meaningful way boost France’s GDP but it really didn’t cost much (about 1200€), was fun and quick to build and comfortable to live in. Job done.

People have talked about ‘getting out of the rat race’ over decades yet things have continued to accelerate but the trend seems to be slowing. Permaculture shows how we can design our way towards slower, fuller lives less cluttered with stuff we don’t need. Health, well-being, leisure and having time to spend socialising are basic Human needs. They are also counted in as part of the overall yield of a Permaculture project.

It would be a bit strange to say ‘let’s hurry up with slowing things down’ but fortunately slowing things down just means doing less and doing it better, swapping quantity for quality and having a siesta in the wheelbarrow