Slow Tempo

"Our modern economy privileges pure profit, momentary transactions and rapid fluidity. Part of craft`s anchoring role is that it helps to objectify experience and also to slow down labor. It is not about quick transactions or easy victories. That slow tempo of craftwork, of taking the time you need to do something well, is profoundly stabilizing to individuals. When people are forced to do things quickly it becomes a type of triage. In the process of working very fast, we don`t have the time for reflection and being self-critical. We tend to go into autopilot and mistakes increase. This is founded on a basic principle of cognition, which is the inverse relationship between speed and quality. Self-critical faculties decrease with speed, and the brain does a better job of processing when it goes slowly than rapidly. The way the capitalist economy is designed sacrifices the logical of craft, which results in poorly made objects  and degraded physical environment. This capitalist model of productivity then feeds back into the schools, so the very training of people becomes industrialized. The craft model of education–slow, concentrated, repetitive– is seen as something dysfunctional and irrelevant in the modern world."

Richard Sennett in American Craft oct/nov 09

http://www.richardsennett.com