Slow Is Beautiful

I was excited to come across a booked, published four years ago, which extolls the Slow Life. The author is an American academic, Cecile Andrews and the book is called “Slow is Beautiful”. Her theme is that we should encourage joie de vivre, an enjoyment of life and that we should take more leisure time and use it constructively. But for all her good ideas and her emphasis on humour and light heartedness it is evident that the author herself is consumed by anger, bitterness and sometimes downright hatred. Her anger is directed at corporations, the capitalist system, even the idea of competition itself and, most of all, George Bush, for whom she reserves her most potent venom. 

To achieve her ends she wants to change the law; she wants to ban; she wants to control. She thinks she knows best and wants to impose her will on others. This is not my idea of the Slow Life. I don’t want to change the world by compulsion. I only want to influence people’s actions by the strength of my arguments and the force of my example.