This Year's Goal: To Slow Down

Some of you may have already heard about the whole Slow Food or Slow City movement, but I think it's necessary that we extend those ideals into a Slow Economy. An economy in which money is kept circulating locally, supporting local entrepreneurs, struggling artisans and honest laborers. I'm sure I've extolled these virtues somewhere along the line in this blog, but I feel it's worth reiterating for the new year. It's time to permanently alter our perspectives.
Things don't have to happen so quickly after all, it tends to suck the life out of the simple pleasures. Compare our existences with that of our great-grandparents. The differences are striking. They were much happier with much less. I don't think the perceived progress of today's society is necessarily a good thing. There's less self-reliance and a whole lot more useless specialization. Hardly any of our youth have the practical skills to keep themselves alive outside of our cheap, plastic paradises. Recapturing slow lives doesn't necessarily entail old-time frontier living. Though I don't think that's such a bad thing.
Basically there is a need for so-called 'conscientious capitalism' in today's day and age. These practices favor more benevolent business practices and harness the productive capacity of creative individuals. When people are more emotionally invested in their products of labor and consumption, there's less call for faceless corporations that harbor impenetrable legal protections and trample public health for the sake of the dollar. How we came to rely on them in the first place is still a mystery to me. If we can escape the need for their services, I think we will all be much far more contented.
In order to bring these changes about, the most practical solution is to think of each dollar spent as a political act. One dollar = one vote. We consumers hold much more power than we tend to realize. This influence remains largely untapped. By concentrating our money in slow practices, there is no end to the benefits.
Producers will respond to our investments and preferences. How else did a company like Walmart become one of the largest distributors of organic milk? They strive to appease us. If we're content consuming cheap, unhealthy products, then they're fine producing them. So the next time you're in the grocery store, or any store really, think about who and what you're supporting. Is it a local farm, or an Iowan monocrop? A Chinese import or a handcrafted piece of art? It's high time we started considering these factors in our economic decisions. Our health and the health of the environment is often neglected because they don't carry strict monetary values. By changing the speed at which we operate and expect things, we can rectify the problems, freeing ourselves from reliance on greedy corporations and the like.
Just bear some of this in mind for the new year.