Yesterday I had lunch with the director of the Quality of Life Challenge, a new policy unit attached to the UK Conservative Party. David Cameron, the party’s young leader, has shaken up the polticial landscape not just by changing his hair-style every few days (which he has done) but by stressing the importance of things that never used to register on the Tory radar: the environment, communities, leaving the office in time to be with your children. Can you imagine Margaret Thatcher, a woman who once boasted that her kids only ever fell ill on weekends, talking along these lines? The Quality of Life Challenge is looking for ways to phrase the Cameron message in a way that will win over the Conservative grassroots. The director of the Quality of Life Challenge is exploring how the Slow message might be brought into play. I’m not sure how far this will go, or if Cameron can really move the Conservative party into line with his rhetoric, but it seems to me a good sign that even British Tories are now interested in the Slow revolution. The tectonic plates are shifting….
Month: March 2007
McYoga, anyone?
How’s this for a sign that the speed culture is on the defensive. A while ago, McDonald’s started offering healthier food like salads and bottled water. Now I’ve just heard that any customer who orders an Asian chicken salad gets a free yoga DVD. Could there be a more absurd paradox? A company that built its fortune on the drive-thru Big Mac encouraging punters to chill out in the Lotus position. I suppose the upside is that this underlines how far the Slow revolution reaches. But I’d be more impressed if McDonald’s took the really bold step of handing out DVDs of Morgan Spurlock’s documentarySuper Size Me.
Slow email
The Slow email movement from IBM has a rival. The good people at Slowlab are developing a new email service that will slow down the pace of electronic messaging. It’s called SLOWmail. It works like this. You tag your message with a description of your relationship with the recipient (lover, sibling, etc), where they are in the world and the mood of the message (ironic, angry, frivolous, etc). Based on this data, as well as on your emailing history with the recipient, the SLOWmail software will then assign a delivery time. You can then track the email’s progress through cyberspace. It all sounds fascinating. If you want to know more, clickHERE.
Consultant time
I gave a talk this morning to a group of management consultants at the Accenture headquarters in London. Not an easy audience, you’d think, but they seemed very open to the idea that slowing down might be good for them, the company and the world in general. Afterwards, a woman from the audience told me about the incident that persuaded her it was time to put on the brakes. She spotted a good friend in the street but, deciding she was too busy even to stop and say hello, ducked into a shop to avoid catching his eye. He died suddenly a few days later and so the next time she saw him was at his funeral.
Pasternak redux
I have been emailing Naomi Stadlen, author of What Mothers Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing, to arrange an interview for my next book. This morning she sent along a splendid quote from Boris Pasternak, the Nobel-winning poet and novelist (think Doctor Zhivago). Amid the turmoil of the Russian revolution in 1917, someone told Pasternak that it was crucial in such times to react quickly and shoot (literally) from the hip. His answer was short and to the point: “In an epoch of speed one must think slowly.” A sentiment worth pondering today.