Byline: Tokyo
I had several beers with an old friend who is the leader of the Japanese organic farm movement and active in the global organic farm organization.
I also ate at a Slow Food restaurant, A.O.C. (as in wine) a top end French bistro. Slow food (in Japan) means the chef personally knows the farms and farmers who supply all his food, most of which is organic.
This tells you about me. I have extended and ancient connections to the organic movement and the simple living movement (the predecessor to the Slow Life movement). Both of these movements have been historic dead ends. Fortunately neither of these dead end movements was harmful to life and society, as Marxism and Socialism were.
I know, some readers will claim that the organic food movement is alive and growing. Yes, sales are growing and yes, acreage is growing, but organic farmers are not the idyllic group once dreamed of -- they are ordinary farmers with bigger and bigger and bigger farms.
Worst of all, by now millions of people have been eating organic food for decades and there isn't a shred of evidence of health benefits. Big populations over long periods, even though they are self selected, must show dramatic differences if there are differences. There aren't. Organic food is a dead end movement. The same has been true for vegetarianism, really dead for several decades even though the definition of vegetarian has changed over that time.
Simple Living and Slow Living are just names given to periodic hopes. The public, since Thoreau's days 150 years ago, has been wishing for a simpler, slower life. The wish is, in 99.95% of all cases, sentimental, melancholy and romantic.
Anyone, as I can attest with my own life, can choose a simpler life and a slower life. It doesn't require a movement. Simple living requires a conscious choice and a continuous series of the same conscious choices.
There will always be a few wise members of every society that make the simple living choice and get to spend a lot of time sitting in coffee shops. The richer a society gets -- and a billion people already live in societies that are rich enough to offer this choice -- the more people who can make the choice to live simply and more slowly.