The Slow Movement

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One of the things I find appealing as an Aspie is the slow movement. After reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, I came to see the crucial importance of slowness. It provides better health and a happier society. One thing I learned even includes the proper conception of justice as Michael J. Sandel writes in Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? He gives a unique scenario that I think applies well to the slow movement. Using my own example, imagine a surgeon working an all-nighter and a singer who only lip-syncs. You would think the surgeon deserves more money than the singer, but according to price theory, modern people have a higher subjective value towards the singer and give her more money from increased demand than the surgeon you would imagine deserves more money. Modernity seems to be twisting justice since we modern people value more what deserves less value. I know I may be seeming to veer off topic, but there is a reason why I am mentioning justice right now.

I also read that the Knights of Templar used to hand out merit coins to anyone in the order who performed a righteous deed. You would imagine righteous people deserving more money, but modernity makes it difficult. I suggest having a merit-based local economy where people volunteer at a non-profit organization like a soup kitchen for the homeless and receive a coupon or a gift card for local businesses as a reward for the service, helping people perceive the types of labor that deserve more praise. Someone did tell me that modern society would not likely support a merit-based local economy, but it might at least work in anti-materialist cultures like the American South to prevent modernity from twisting justice.

The slow movement has a high value for localism since slow cultures work best within the community. Social trust usually works with the people you know best, most of whom likely live in the same community as you do. Solidarity forms from social trust, and a collective conscience forms from community solidarity as people in the community have shared experiences. People do not grow up alone, and socialness helps cultivate the Self. Cultures serve then as the formation of the Self. Merit-based local currencies should help bind the community together since you improve your own home and rely less on welfare programs. There exist more features of the slow movement like slow food, slow education, slow philosophy, etc. What does anyone else think about the slow movement?

I like slow. Modern life seems in too much of a hurry and the quality of a lot of work suffers as a result. Most tasks aren't urgent.

Not so sold on merit-based pay. Hard to get a consensus on which tasks have more merit than others, except at the extremes.

https://youtu.be/B73k8VMnEDE

I don't know much about the Slow Movement. Sometimes I've said that if American culture could be summed up in one word, it would be "HURRY!" and it might be nice to slow down.

I'm probably focusing on the wrong thing here, but I'm wondering, what is a "singer that only lip-syncs?" Lip-syncing when you're supposed to be singing live is generally considered an embarrassment. If the audience discovers you're only lip-syncing to someone else's singing -- i.e. Milli Vanilli -- that's a career ender.

Also, I'd generally associate surgeons with being rich and singers with being poor, except for very famous singers. I don't know much about economics, but it seems to me that a job for "a singer" will make less money because there are a lot of singers looking for work, while if someone wants...who are the kids into now? Taylor Swift? They'll have to pay a lot because there's only one Taylor Swift. Likewise with being "a surgeon" vs. being one of the top surgeons in the country.

I'm an artist, so I believe in placing a high value on art and music. However, I'm also a cashier, who makes very little money because of the view that anyone can do my job.

A lot of this seems to ignore the Labour Theory Of Value. Although I agree that it's not always a good predictor of prices and wages, as a moral touchstone I think it has its uses. I think supply and demand for example distorts real prices and wages away from the fair levels, so that we have such injustices as people getting an unearned income because their product is in great demand and they raise their prices to exploit the situation. So if you're trying to figure out what people should be paid, the Labour Theory Of Value may be helpful to a degree.

A surgeon once told me that he was entitled to his rather high salary because he'd spent several years training for it. My view was that if he hadn't been paid during his training years, he was now entitled to a bit extra on top of the national average wage, such that if he'd been training for 8 years and expected to work as a qualified surgeon for 40 years, he should get an extra fifth, assuming hours worked per month was constant, to fully compensate him for those unpaid labour years.

Not that I think there's a perfect way of calculating fair remuneration and prices. An hour's labour at one task might be a lot more horrible than an hour's labour at another task. And the same task hurts different people who do it to a different degree. Surely people should be rewarded for the pain they suffer in order to supply us with the things we want? But it probably wouldn't work to cut somebody's pay if you caught them enjoying their job.

I like the idea of the slow movement. It's refreshing after society has put obsessive amounts of emphasis on fastness, especially mental fastness.