#3 Slowing Down Is A Radical Act

Written and read by Middlebury College student Kylie King on the importance of slowing down and taking more time with what she calls long-form content, and less time with social media sites that thrive on shortness and speed. As King explains, "deep understanding and insight are a result of being fully absorbed by what you are learning and opening yourself up to it. Spending an extended amount of time with one topic opens one to the possibility of being changed. Therefore, slowing down and being intentional about where you direct your attention is necessary for change in self and society."

Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27655086 to read this pamphlet.

Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Radical Pamphlets Here and Now, an audio production of the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College. For centuries, pamphlets were utilized to demand reform, equality, and justice. Sadly, it is the necessary work that must be taken up with every new generation. Our pamphlets are rooted in the local and written by teachers, farmers, students, artists, community caretakers, and neighbors. They offer common sense and practical advice to slow down and attend to the here and now wherever you are. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Slowing down is a radical act, a new perennials publication written and narrated by Kylie King. In a culture that values efficiency and growth, the power of slowing down is often ignored. Capitalist consumerism values the rate of growth rather than the depth of growth. This rate-centered form of growth is unsustainable. It is similar to the rapid and brief life cycle that annual plants undergo. They have a relatively shallow root structure that allows them to grow and produce seeds, but then they die at the end of the season. An alternative to this rapid growth and death cycle is a slower pace, much like that of a perennial plant, where growth is a result of deep connection and understanding, and the plant's deep-reaching roots are able to support its continued development. The value that society places on quantity over quality is visible in the type of media we consume. There has been a rise in the amount of short-form content available, which is designed to spread copious amounts of information in the shortest amount of time possible. There are countless sources of new information published each second. Content consumption is a rat race, exposing people to as much information as possible. The goal has become how much you can learn rather than how deeply can you learn. Rapid information gives the illusion of learning, yet after hours of scrolling, we know nothing. We are not machines, so why do we expect ourselves to take in information as if we are? Another issue with short form content is the behavior that it encourages. Social media, a type of short form content, encourages individualism and novelty. People are encouraged to brand themselves in order to gain popularity and money. This results in competition to continuously create new ideas and content, even if it sacrifices depth and meaning. We are not encouraged to explore the ideas of previous thinkers and seek to understand the information that is already present, because novelty is valued more than depth. The quantity of production is like the above-ground growth of a plant. The quality of production is like the roots of the plant. When the rate of production supersedes the quality and depth of the roots, the plant ultimately collapses. Societal progress does not need to look like exponential growth, but could rather look like a thoughtful, deeper understanding of pre-existing ideas. Aside from social media, short form content includes any type of content that is designed to be consumed relatively quickly. For example, book summaries. While reading a summary of a book allows you to gain a general understanding of the book's main messages, it removes the most important part of reading, which is developing the ability to take in information and think about it critically. Being presented with someone else's analysis before having the opportunity to think for yourself makes it difficult to achieve the same level of critical thinking. I notice the more that I read other people's opinions on a topic, the more confined my thinking becomes. I feel limited to the scope of what other people have already decided is true. When thinking about environmental solutions, it's important to think critically about what we currently believe to be true. Meaningful change requires that we change the way we think about the environment. Therefore, the ability to find solutions to our current climate crisis requires that we first open ourselves up to new ways of thinking and new realities. How can we change our reality if we are not even able to envision a new reality? One solution I propose is to look to long-form content. Unlike short form content, long-form content seeks to deepen the audience's understanding of a topic. The difference between long form and short form content is attention levels. Short form content requires your attention to be spread thinly across many ideas, whereas long form content requires you to put a lot of attention into one topic. Long forms encourage deep thinking and feeling. They call the reader to reflect on their experiences rather than drawing them away and distracting them from their experiences. Long form content is not just about transmitting information, it also creates a conversation of sorts between the content and its readers. I believe the best kind of content is that which asks the reader to reflect on their current views of the world and introduces new ways of thinking about the world. Long form content encourages slowing down and reclaiming the power of your attention and energy so you can invest them in the things that matter to you. It can encourage you to be more selective about what information you consume and how you interact with it. Deep understanding and insight are a result of being fully absorbed by what you are learning and opening yourself up to it. Spending an extended amount of time with one topic opens one to the possibility of being changed. Therefore, slowing down and being intentional about where you direct your attention is necessary for change in self and society. The way we consume content influences the way we think and therefore affects the way we approach environmental concerns. Progress must be redefined to exclude notions of exponential growth and should instead center the perennial idea of deep roots. Progress can be considered doing fewer things in a more intentional way. It's unrealistic to expect that we should be able to take in endless amounts of information and retain it all meaningfully. Yet, our current society values this type of quantity over quality. What would it look like if we all slowed down? What would the world look like with a slower flow of information? Overwhelming amounts of information make it difficult to process, and it reduces our sensitivity to our own internal messages and observations. A step in the right direction is to lean into the power of observation. We cannot seek a solution if we do not understand what is causing the problem, or even acknowledge the problem. The key to becoming more sensitive to messages from the environment and developing our intuition is to slow down. It's difficult to pick up on subtlety when being constantly bombarded with information. Being overwhelmed by rivers of facts, opinions, data, observations, and conclusions that can come from almost anywhere prevents us from tuning in to innate knowledge. This pamphlet sits in the center of the short to long form spectrum, as each of the ideas presented could be turned into its own pamphlet. I hope that you will use the ideas presented as inspiration for further research and conversation. Think deeply about what I've said and decide for yourself whether you agree. I encourage you to take time to reflect after reading this, observe the feelings that arise in your body, and allow yourself to be changed.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

To learn more about the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College, visit NewPerennials.org, where you can download free versions of all of our books, pamphlets, and educational materials. Special thanks to audio engineer Johnny Melli and to our authors and readers. Music composed and performed by Caitlyn Miss Adams. Introductory narration by Caitlyn Miss Adams. You can contact us at newprennials at middlebury.edu. Thanks for listening.