Slowness is hard for most of us
January 13, 2024 2:17 AM Subscribe
You want tomorrow to be different than today, and it may seem the same, or worse, but next year will be different than this one, because those tiny increments added up. The tree today looks a lot like the tree yesterday, and so does the baby. A lot of change is undramatic growth, transformation, or decay, or rather its timescale means the drama might not be perceptible to the impatient. from Slow Change Can Be Radical Change by Rebecca Solnit
...the status quo must be changed, and it will take steadfast commitment to see the job through. It’s not accepting defeat; it’s accepting the terms of possible victory.posted by amtho at 5:31 AM on January 13 [10 favorites]
I have thoughts on this. First, it's a great little essay (of course, considering the author!). I love the Greta and MLK references: the cathedral-building of climate activism, the slow arc of history. And I understand slowness. When I still taught Aikido, before the pandemic, I tried to teach my students about feeling the incremental shift in an attacker's body during a longer technique - a shift from being the defender to being the one in control. Doing things too swiftly would only tense up an attacker and make the technique one of brute force and not skill.
But at the same time, there was also a moment in many techniques where, if you were *too* slow, you'd find yourself with the attacker back in control, and with no way to recover.
My experience in activism has been that warnings about the need for gradual, incremental effort are often voiced by those who can most afford a slow trajectory. There are places suffering from climate change *now*, not just twenty years in the future. There are people without a home *now*, LGBTQ victims of violence *now*, and knowing that a societal response to homelessness, poverty, or homophobia is in the making will not save them.
Rebecca's advice on slowness is well-considered and holds a grain of truth - but we cannot let the assault of climate change - or the assault of bigotry - gain the upper hand, or we will find ourselves the victims of our own complacency.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:28 AM on January 13 [26 favorites]
But at the same time, there was also a moment in many techniques where, if you were *too* slow, you'd find yourself with the attacker back in control, and with no way to recover.
My experience in activism has been that warnings about the need for gradual, incremental effort are often voiced by those who can most afford a slow trajectory. There are places suffering from climate change *now*, not just twenty years in the future. There are people without a home *now*, LGBTQ victims of violence *now*, and knowing that a societal response to homelessness, poverty, or homophobia is in the making will not save them.
Rebecca's advice on slowness is well-considered and holds a grain of truth - but we cannot let the assault of climate change - or the assault of bigotry - gain the upper hand, or we will find ourselves the victims of our own complacency.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:28 AM on January 13 [26 favorites]
My experience in activism has been that warnings about the need for gradual, incremental effort are often voiced by those who can most afford a slow trajectory.
One of my co-workers, a straight white man, in his 70s, who is an ally of trans and queer people and generally liberal, told me that he's not worried about the possibility our country will become a dictatorship. If that's what the majority of people vote for, fine. But he's confident that in the long term, that mistake will be corrected, because "60 million people might vote for it, but 70 million will be against it."
I said, "But people are suffering right now. We have internal refugees right now in the form of trans people leaving Florida, families with trans kids uprooting themselves from Texas. We have people who need abortion access having to go to court to get it, or travel long distances. We have laws being introduced in most states, hundreds of them, aimed at denying trans kids appropriate care."
Just acknowledging your point, Flight Hardware. I see this playing out as well. I'm absolutely certain that though I am queer and disabled, I've had similar white complacency many times. There have been situations that absolutely roiled the country—like the real estate crash in 2008—that passed me by. I cared, I paid attention, but i wasn't hurt by it.
Haven't read the essay yet. I'll do that now.
posted by Well I never at 6:49 AM on January 13 [9 favorites]
One of my co-workers, a straight white man, in his 70s, who is an ally of trans and queer people and generally liberal, told me that he's not worried about the possibility our country will become a dictatorship. If that's what the majority of people vote for, fine. But he's confident that in the long term, that mistake will be corrected, because "60 million people might vote for it, but 70 million will be against it."
I said, "But people are suffering right now. We have internal refugees right now in the form of trans people leaving Florida, families with trans kids uprooting themselves from Texas. We have people who need abortion access having to go to court to get it, or travel long distances. We have laws being introduced in most states, hundreds of them, aimed at denying trans kids appropriate care."
Just acknowledging your point, Flight Hardware. I see this playing out as well. I'm absolutely certain that though I am queer and disabled, I've had similar white complacency many times. There have been situations that absolutely roiled the country—like the real estate crash in 2008—that passed me by. I cared, I paid attention, but i wasn't hurt by it.
Haven't read the essay yet. I'll do that now.
posted by Well I never at 6:49 AM on January 13 [9 favorites]
I'm glad to have seen this and would love to see other voices dialogue about working in coalition among those with differing theories of change.
The pace of change is one thread in this conversation. Another is the way actions (quick or slow) do or do not shift power relations, e.g. reformist vs. non-reformist reforms.
Where Solnit ends her essay is where I'd like the conversation to continue. If there is an "uninformed despair" that people feel from not seeing immediate results after one action, then there is also an informed perspective (despairing or not) of daily engagement with exploitation and injustice. For those theories of change that ask for time, I'd also like to see a theory (and action) of deep networks of support and mutual aid that sustain people while the arc of history bends, or is bent, toward greater justice.
posted by audi alteram partem at 6:58 AM on January 13 [9 favorites]
The pace of change is one thread in this conversation. Another is the way actions (quick or slow) do or do not shift power relations, e.g. reformist vs. non-reformist reforms.
Where Solnit ends her essay is where I'd like the conversation to continue. If there is an "uninformed despair" that people feel from not seeing immediate results after one action, then there is also an informed perspective (despairing or not) of daily engagement with exploitation and injustice. For those theories of change that ask for time, I'd also like to see a theory (and action) of deep networks of support and mutual aid that sustain people while the arc of history bends, or is bent, toward greater justice.
posted by audi alteram partem at 6:58 AM on January 13 [9 favorites]
I'm absolutely certain that though I am queer and disabled, I've had similar white complacency many times. There have been situations that absolutely roiled the country—like the real estate crash in 2008—that passed me by. I cared, I paid attention, but i wasn't hurt by it.
Absolutely, me too. Every time something upsetting happens, I turn around and look backward and see all the analogous things I've missed. It's sobering.
Really enjoyed the essay, nevertheless. These things can both be true -- that the pace of change is never fast enough and people will die, and that the pace of change is the pace of change.
posted by eirias at 6:58 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]
Absolutely, me too. Every time something upsetting happens, I turn around and look backward and see all the analogous things I've missed. It's sobering.
Really enjoyed the essay, nevertheless. These things can both be true -- that the pace of change is never fast enough and people will die, and that the pace of change is the pace of change.
posted by eirias at 6:58 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]
I loved this, both because it’s a wonderful little essay, and because I’m personally much more invested in the nuts-and-bolts process of building a new world than destroying the old. To riff off the essay, I don’t find that “destruction seems exciting, construction boring” — my experience is that construction is wonderfully satisfying, and destruction (or even sudden change) are usually devastating for all involved.
However, I appreciate you pointing this out Flight Hardware:
My experience in activism has been that warnings about the need for gradual, incremental effort are often voiced by those who can most afford a slow trajectory.
Because both things can be true at once! People need housing now, need food now, need rescue from climate change catastrophe now. We need to be able to both provide relief to people who are suffering, and to make time-consuming changes to avoid those interventions being needed again.
posted by learning from frequent failure at 7:14 AM on January 13 [13 favorites]
However, I appreciate you pointing this out Flight Hardware:
My experience in activism has been that warnings about the need for gradual, incremental effort are often voiced by those who can most afford a slow trajectory.
Because both things can be true at once! People need housing now, need food now, need rescue from climate change catastrophe now. We need to be able to both provide relief to people who are suffering, and to make time-consuming changes to avoid those interventions being needed again.
posted by learning from frequent failure at 7:14 AM on January 13 [13 favorites]
Interesting article. Is anyone else looking into joining their local Extinction Rebellion chapter?
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 7:52 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 7:52 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]
My experience in activism has been that warnings about the need for gradual, incremental effort are often voiced by those who can most afford a slow trajectory.
This is a truth, to be sure, but let me add another truth to the dialectic:
Hope is sustained by seeing victories around us. If we define victories as perfect or sharp, immediately noticeable change, we run the risk of failing to see them and becoming burnt out: workers without pay or bread to see us through. We need victories and celebration to feed hope and motivate ourselves over the long haul.
Solnit's metaphors are the tree and the baby, right? A baby isn't a child overnight, let alone a teenager with a strong back or an adult with clever hands. But we don't celebrate a baby only at the points of its life when it becomes able to enact lasting change, and we define the successes of a baby—the milestones—in terms of the baby's growth. We don't care for the baby because it's a useful member of our society now; we care for it because one day it might be, if we nurture it as we were once nurtured.
Perhaps I'm being too utilitarian about babies. Consider the metaphor of the tree. About a year and a half before I left Texas, I planted a black persimmon tree. It was a little sapling when I left. It won't bear fruit for years to come. But I celebrated it each year and I took care of it even so, because it will bear fruit one day. And when I looked at the photographs of the tree between planting day and the day I left my old house, the tree was indeed bigger—even though there was never any day I saw it growing or noticed the change in progress. It just happened very slowly over time.
Perhaps gardening is yet a third metaphor. I am learning to garden vegetables, yes? In a month, I will pack soil into small containers and place a few seeds in each. I will watch them with interest for a few days, and then I will get in the habit of watering them and otherwise forget they exist until suddenly my brain us startled by little seedlings hatching from the pots. Then I will become used to that, and they will fade into the background of my life once more until the frosts leave and I can put them in the dirt. They will occupy my attention for a week or so then, and I will set up a watering routine, and then my attention will wander again, and one day I will walk past the garden and see that the squash is flowering. Again I will be excited for a few days, again I will lose interest, until I notice there is a fruit—and another—and suddenly my garden is overflowing with Hubbard squash, cheerfully colonizing the tomatoes.
The point is not that you should declare that things are going to be okay and it's important that slow change work, too. The point is that you need to find moments to celebrate that are smaller than "the problem is totally fixed forever, hooray!" in order to motivate yourself to keep working. I only reaped the fruit of that squash (and tomatoes, among others) for the first time months after I planted seeds, but each point at which I used other reminders about times to change my effort or noticed that a sea change had taken place renewed my motivation to keep going.
I haven't just been planting literal seeds, you understand. I have grown communities the same way. I've made lasting changes the same way. In my experience it's just as Solnit says. The point of being aware that the best, most robust changes are very often slow, gradual ones is not to say "we shouldn't be concerned" or "we shouldn't do triage to make changes now." The point is to find inflection points to celebrate the changes your intervention has already wrought, quietly, when you weren't paying attention—and to use the knowledge of those changes to feed your enthusiasm and commitment to changing more things.
posted by sciatrix at 8:49 AM on January 13 [20 favorites]
This is a truth, to be sure, but let me add another truth to the dialectic:
Hope is sustained by seeing victories around us. If we define victories as perfect or sharp, immediately noticeable change, we run the risk of failing to see them and becoming burnt out: workers without pay or bread to see us through. We need victories and celebration to feed hope and motivate ourselves over the long haul.
Solnit's metaphors are the tree and the baby, right? A baby isn't a child overnight, let alone a teenager with a strong back or an adult with clever hands. But we don't celebrate a baby only at the points of its life when it becomes able to enact lasting change, and we define the successes of a baby—the milestones—in terms of the baby's growth. We don't care for the baby because it's a useful member of our society now; we care for it because one day it might be, if we nurture it as we were once nurtured.
Perhaps I'm being too utilitarian about babies. Consider the metaphor of the tree. About a year and a half before I left Texas, I planted a black persimmon tree. It was a little sapling when I left. It won't bear fruit for years to come. But I celebrated it each year and I took care of it even so, because it will bear fruit one day. And when I looked at the photographs of the tree between planting day and the day I left my old house, the tree was indeed bigger—even though there was never any day I saw it growing or noticed the change in progress. It just happened very slowly over time.
Perhaps gardening is yet a third metaphor. I am learning to garden vegetables, yes? In a month, I will pack soil into small containers and place a few seeds in each. I will watch them with interest for a few days, and then I will get in the habit of watering them and otherwise forget they exist until suddenly my brain us startled by little seedlings hatching from the pots. Then I will become used to that, and they will fade into the background of my life once more until the frosts leave and I can put them in the dirt. They will occupy my attention for a week or so then, and I will set up a watering routine, and then my attention will wander again, and one day I will walk past the garden and see that the squash is flowering. Again I will be excited for a few days, again I will lose interest, until I notice there is a fruit—and another—and suddenly my garden is overflowing with Hubbard squash, cheerfully colonizing the tomatoes.
The point is not that you should declare that things are going to be okay and it's important that slow change work, too. The point is that you need to find moments to celebrate that are smaller than "the problem is totally fixed forever, hooray!" in order to motivate yourself to keep working. I only reaped the fruit of that squash (and tomatoes, among others) for the first time months after I planted seeds, but each point at which I used other reminders about times to change my effort or noticed that a sea change had taken place renewed my motivation to keep going.
I haven't just been planting literal seeds, you understand. I have grown communities the same way. I've made lasting changes the same way. In my experience it's just as Solnit says. The point of being aware that the best, most robust changes are very often slow, gradual ones is not to say "we shouldn't be concerned" or "we shouldn't do triage to make changes now." The point is to find inflection points to celebrate the changes your intervention has already wrought, quietly, when you weren't paying attention—and to use the knowledge of those changes to feed your enthusiasm and commitment to changing more things.
posted by sciatrix at 8:49 AM on January 13 [20 favorites]
the analogy I heard a while back and it stuck, is of being on very large and crowded ship carrying a vast and complex cargo that must reverse course in a very narrow channel. It can be done, but not quickly. To act too quickly would be disastrous. Even if we're already caught up in a storm which keeps getting worse, which is already causing damage, claiming lives. And of course there are many on board (many in the upper levels but really all over the ship) who see all to well the peril we're in and demand haste, extreme haste. And of course, there are also those (many in the upper levels but really all over the ship) who don't want to change direction at all, who (for reasons) just don't trust the captain and the crew and the various navigators and pilots and meteorologists, or maybe they just rate the pain of inconvenience as worse than any imagined horrors should the change in direction not be acted on, not hastily, not rashly, not carelessly, but nevertheless immediately ...
And so on ...
posted by philip-random at 9:05 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]
And so on ...
posted by philip-random at 9:05 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]
This essay means a lot to me today.
I'm dealing with the daily frustrations of climate change in general.
And also despairing about the very, very slow pace of academic transformation.
posted by doctornemo at 10:23 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]
I'm dealing with the daily frustrations of climate change in general.
And also despairing about the very, very slow pace of academic transformation.
posted by doctornemo at 10:23 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]
To act too quickly would be disastrous
I hear you, Captain, but the chief mate says if we take on any more water the cargo will liquefy and we'll capsize.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:53 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]
I hear you, Captain, but the chief mate says if we take on any more water the cargo will liquefy and we'll capsize.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:53 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]
> I'm personally much more invested in the nuts-and-bolts process of building a new world than destroying the old.
fwiw, reading a bit about expanding circles of moral concern, there's at least some research/activism in this regard on animal rights, taking the long view: "I would say by 2100 all forms of farming will seem outdated and barbaric." which of course does nothing for those in slaughterhouses now, but 'it's accepting the terms of possible victory'?
posted by kliuless at 11:27 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
fwiw, reading a bit about expanding circles of moral concern, there's at least some research/activism in this regard on animal rights, taking the long view: "I would say by 2100 all forms of farming will seem outdated and barbaric." which of course does nothing for those in slaughterhouses now, but 'it's accepting the terms of possible victory'?
posted by kliuless at 11:27 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
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