In Praise of Slowness

One of the first pieces of advice that I was given when I started graduate school 30 years ago was to make a habit of reading the scientific literature. Keep up with the journals. Stay current. So I dutifully made a list of eight leading chemistry journals and began to read.

I understood the purpose of reading – this was going to be the principle mechanism for advancing my knowledge (I wouldn’t be taking many classes in grad school) and furnishing me with research ideas – but I wasn’t too clear on the actual practice. Should I read critically? Should I take notes? (One of my mentors suggested that every time I had an idea I should record it on a 3×5 card and drop the card in a filing box, so I began doing that.)

I was also uncertain how much to read. I knew that I didn’t have to read every article, but I also knew that I should read well beyond the narrow boundaries of my dissertation research.

I needed only a few months of not-so-dutiful reading to fall far behind the stack of journals that kept growing in the chemistry library and I eventually gave up. But after a few guilty months, I resolved to start again and do better. But I quickly fell behind again and gave up. And so it has continued for 30 years. The interruptions sometimes last just a few months, and sometimes several years, but either way I continue to feel a compulsion to read, to keep up, to stay current, and it is a compulsion that I have never satisfied. In fact, it is getting harder than ever because the amount of material that is published in my field each week has grown considerably in the past 30 years and I have far less free time for reading and for reflection today than I ever did as a graduate student. Today I’m lucky if I read a dozen published articles each year.

Journal reading is just one of several treadmills in my life. There are many things that I can’t keep up with, not just reading. Unread books are stacked up all around my house and office. Unpaid bills. Computer files that haven’t been read. Software that was purchased, but never used. Photos that are waiting to be filed into albums. Albums that waiting to be looked at a second time. And so it goes. Life keeps generating more and more things to do, and I keep falling farther and farther behind.

So when a friend pushed In Praise of Slowness into my hand and said, “you’ll like this,” I was more than ready to agree. Anything that could show me how to slow down the treadmills, figure out how to step off a few of them, order my priorities properly (reading First Things First a few years ago had given me an inkling how to do this: separate The Important from The Urgent), and generally create a more satisfying life would be much appreciated.

Unfortunately, In Praise of Slowness didn’t prove to be the right book for me. This is not a book that gives you analytical tools. I didn’t develop an understanding of life’s treadmills, of why unrealistic expectations appear uninvited, or why modern (?) life seems geared to create more and more treadmills.

In Praise of Slowness is truly a “praise” book and little else. It has just one story to tell — if you work (eat, drive, learn, have sex, think, play music) more slowly, you’ll enjoy life more and you’ll get more done — and it tells this story over and over again, chapter after chapter, by drowning you in anecdotes that are always a little too sweet and much too similar. Even though the author knows this kind of writing can be off-putting

Today we are assailed by books and documentaries about urbanites who go to raise chickens in Andalusia, make ceramics in Sardinia or run a hotel in the Scottish Highlands. (p. 93)

he plows a straight line towards the same target.

But if it is possible to offer too much (uncritical) praise for Slowness, some praise is needed. This wasn’t the right book for me, but if you have never questioned the relationship between quantity and quality of experience, i.e., if you think you must do more in order to have/enjoy more, this might be the right book for you.

Some quotes that I relished:

“even sleep is no longer a haven from haste. Millions study for exams, learn foreign languages and brush up on management techniques by listening to tapes while they doze.” (p. 35)

“In 2000, David Cottrell and Mark Layton published 175 Ways to Get More Done in Less Time. … Tip number 141 is simply: ‘Do Everything Faster!’” (p. 36)

“The city keeps us in motion, switched on, constantly in search of the next stimulus” (p. 92)

“It is pointless to speed everything up just because we can or because we feel we must” (quoting Uwe Kliemt, p. 232)

“It is stupid to drink a glass of wine quickly” (again quoting U. Kliemt, p. 234)

In Praise of Slowness also contains a generous set of Notes with many wonderful references to the Slowness literature. And while I haven’t listened to any Slow Music yet, I’m looking forward to sitting down with Maximianno Cobra’s 2001 recording of Beethoven’s 9th. If I can find the time, I might even listen to Longplayer.

Stumbling on Happiness

Have you ever tried to help a young person, say a teenage child or a college student, make a big decision?

To someone between 18 and 22, every problem seems to involve one of life’s major crossroads. Should I go out with Tim? Should I major in biochemistry? Should I sign up for morning classes or night classes?

These are heavy problems and, in the right company, they can be discussed endlessly. For my part, I decided a long time ago that I should try not to get too involved in my students’ lives. Everyone has different likes and dislikes. I have no business interfering in personal decisions about personal happiness.

I might have been mistaken.

In Stumbling on Happiness, Professor Daniel Gilbert makes a persuasive (and highly entertaining) case that individuals are remarkably incompetent when it comes to predicting how “crossroad” type choices will affect their future happiness. Referring to imagination, our ability to see the future, he writes:

“Imagination has three shortcomings.

[Its] first shortcoming is its tendency to fill in and lave out without telling us. No one can imagine every feature and consequence of a future event, hence we must consider some and fail to consider others.

Imagination’s second shortcoming is its tendency to project the present onto the future. When imagination paints a picture of the future, many of the details are necessarily missing, and imagination solves this problem by filling in the gaps with details that it borrows from the present.

Imagination’s third shortcoming is its failure to recognize that things will look different once they happen – in particular, that bad things will look a whole lot better. When we imagine losing a job, for instance, we imagine the painful experience without also imagining how our psychological immune system will transform its meaning (“I’ll come to realize that this was an opportunity to quit retail sales and follow my true calling as a sculptor”).” from Chapter 11, “Reporting Live from Tomorrow: Finding the Solution”

Since we can’t anticipate our future feelings reliably, he recommends finding someone who is going through the things we are considering and asking them how they feel. He also admits that few, if any of us, will take his advice.

“Kill Buddhism,” says Sam Harris

“There is much more to be discovered about the nature of the human mind. In particular, there is much more for us to understand about how the mind can transform itself from a mere reservoir of greed, hatred, and delusion into an instrument of wisdom and compassion. Students of the Buddha are very well placed to further our understanding on this front, but the religion of Buddhism currently stands in their way.” Killing The Buddha, by Sam Harris, Shambhala Sun, March 2006. [emphasis not present in original]

I’m not affiliated with any religion at this point in my life, but there once was a time when religion was a hot issue for me. What I recall from that time is this: it was practically impossible to have an open-hearted conversation about religion with someone once the possibility of “killing” their religion got placed on the table.

So I might have expected Mr. Harris’ suggestion to be anathema to Buddhists. I certainly didn’t expect a magazine like Shambhala Sun, which subtitles itself, “Buddhism Culture Meditation Life,” to publish his article.

Mr. Harris’ argument resonates with me because I have been drawn to the Buddhist understanding of mind and the Buddhist practice of mindfulness this past year, yet I am hesitant about the religion itself. I’ve been involved with religion before. Do I want to go there again? Can I approach a practice and an understanding that are rooted in a religion, yet distance myself from that same religion?

“Killing Buddhism” might be a practical solution for my problems, but I don’t think it will catch on with most Buddhists. Many factors determine how effectively an idea can compete with other ideas for survival and growth. When it comes to religion, history seems to tell us that religious organizations have a way of perpetuating themselves and their ideas, while unorganized groups of people who are only united (if that is the correct word) by a common philosophical understanding are much less successful. While we may prefer a world that contains only ideas that are true, elegant, and internally consistent, the real world allows all kinds of ideas to flourish, both good and bad, and religion can help promulgate ideas.

So Mr. Harris may prefer to divorce understanding from religion, but religion is almost certainly here to stay. Rather than doing battle with religion, it might make more sense to find room inside the religious community for different points-of-view.

Reading recommendation: “Super-replicators” in Chapter 11, “Reporting Live from Tomorrow”. “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert. “If a particular belief has some property that facilitates its own transmission, then that belief tends to be held by an increasing number of minds.”

Monks in the Laboratory

The 14th Dalai Lama, widely recognized as the public face of modern Buddhist practice, wrote to the New York Times in the aftermath of 9/11:

“I believe that there are practical ways for us as individuals to curb our dangerous impulses …

For the last 15 years I have engaged in a series of conversations with Western scientists. We have exchanged views on topics ranging from quantum physics and cosmology to compassion and destructive emotions. I have found that while scientific findings offer a deeper understanding of such fields as cosmology, it seems that Buddhist explanations — particularly in the cognitive, biological and brain sciences — can sometimes give Western-trained scientists a new way to look at their own fields …

I have been encouraging scientists to examine advanced Tibetan spiritual practitioners, to see what benefits these practices might have for others, outside the religious context. The goal here is to increase our understanding of the world of the mind, of consciousness, and of our emotions.” (NY Times, April 26, 2003)

These experimental studies, still ongoing, have uncovered remarkable aspects of awareness and consciousness, and especially, how these attributes can be cultivated through patient long-term training. Monks in the Laboratory follows the participants in these studies, the scientists and the monks, from temple to university laboratory to mountain hut again.

Watching a minivan filled with instruments and scientists negotiate a washed out road on an Indian mountainside tells you all you need to know about the dedication of these scientists. Still, the potential for cultural clash is enormous. When a monk, his head buried inside the magnet of an MRI device, requests 60 seconds of additional time to enter a meditative state, the scientist’s frustration at being asked to alter experimental protocol is palpable.

But the movie does not dwell on conflict, nor does it reveal much concerning the outcomes of these experiments (for this, one should consult the publications of the Mind & Life Institute). Rather, we spend 50 minutes peering over the shoulders of scientists and monks as they search together for “deeper understanding”.