Jennah Ferrara, 2010
How would your life change if you chose to slow down? Consider the sloth. Rather...re-consider the sloth. A lot of other people have.It's been a sleepy, quirky road for the world's slowest mammal, from being reviled as an indolent freak of nature and an embodiment of a deadly sin to a hyper-adorable star of viral videos taped by visitors and volunteers at the world-famous Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica. But sloths are much more than furry ecosystems for insects and a breeding ground for algae (which provides a greenish tint that fools predators by letting their leisurely prey fade into the trees). They are also the only animals to have inspired an international organization, the Sloth Club, focused on emulating their qualities: peaceful, environmentally conscious, and...slow.
My own connection to the Slow life is unusual and personal: the sloth helped me accept the abrupt changes I've experienced since I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in my early 20s. Chew on that, like a cecropia leaf, the three-fingered sloth's favorite food! Although sloths have recently exploded into the internet/mass media because of the good work of the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary, I'm no Sloth come-lately. When I was in the hospital recovering from a MS relapse in 2000, I saw a documentary on PBS with this three-fingered tree dweller swimming down a river, which got me thinking. Just as it takes a sloth almost a week to digest a full belly of leaves, it took my mind several years to process this. What a revelation the sloth can be.
After more than ten years of berating myself about my instant transformation from diverse overachiever to fatigued, often fuzzy minded slowpoke dependent on canes and a wheelchair, I had a sloth-piphany: sloths are different and slow, and they're all right. And so am I. That's just how we are--but I'm not equating people with immune disorders to animals who sleep in trees. Odd, I know, but it worked for me. (Like the Sloth Club does, when I'm talking sloth, I mean the calmer, vegetarian three-fingered Bradypus family. The two-fingered Choloepus are distinctly more aggressive but are the animals you'll see in zoos because the Bradypus don't tend to survive out of their native environments in Central or South America, being finicky eaters.) After a sloth-piphany like this, after I discovered the Sloth Club while researching the Bradypus, I yelped, "I'm home!"
The "three active sloths" profiled on the Sloth Club website are cultural anthropologist Keibo Oiwa (author of the canonical "Slow is Beautiful"), musician and environmentalist Anja Light, and Slow Business advocate Ryuichi Nakamura, who formed the distinctively named Club in 1999, after the rescue of a sloth for sale on the roadside. Since the initial members of this Japanese NGO realized saving all sloths would be impossible, they adopted a philosophy of changing overwhelming situations by completing manageable actions. The celebrants of and adherents to the Sloth lifestyle emphasize the Bradypus' gentle disposition and raise three fingers in a "sloth peace sign." The Sloth Club promotes environmentalism, peace, fair trade, and, through Slow connectivity, provides a clearinghouse for like-minded groups.
The Club websites (in Japanese, English and Spanish) includes information about Slow Business; Slow Food (and the Slow Café); Slow Tourism, where the journey toward the destination is just as important; and many other subjects. Although Japan has long been experiencing an economic downturn, the Sloths' motivations focus on priorities that can be described in the acronym LOHAS or "Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability."
Living Slow in a Sloth Club sense encourages slowing down and connecting: to other people, to nature, to the world, and to yourself. The Slow movement rejects unnecessary, mindless speed. Slow, a word once inextricably saddled with powerfully negative connotations, now has more positive meanings than ever. In these recent times of reclaiming and redefining the concept, the Sloth Club is linked with other Slow-minded groups. The international Slow movement (or movements, really, since there is no central group that cobbles together all that is Slow) involves many more Slow applications, such as Slow Cities (or Cittaslow, where cities that have fulfilled all Cittaslow criteria earn the right to display the snail symbol), Slow Thinking (the type of creativity that led the playful Nobel laureates for Physics to discover graphene), Slow Space, and Slow Parenting.
Choosing to follow the Sloth path is anything but extreme. In an interview with Yoshimi Naganmine for The Daily Yomiuri, Japan Perspective, Club secretary general Naoko Baba explained, "It's near impossible for us to assume the sloth lifestyle all at once. It's OK for us to do what we can bit by bit." This philosophy also underlies the Hachidori Project, inspired by an Ecuadorean fable which features a hummingbird who tries to stop a forest fire using a mouthful of water saying only, "I do what I can," amidst the criticism of the other animals. Also, Candle Night, a Sloth project inspired by a blackout in Canada, with the gentle call to "turn off the lights and take it slow," encourages a celebration of slowing down and communing with friends and family, rather than merely saving electricity. According to the Candle Light Committee 2010, "Everyone shows beautiful expressions in the candlelight. In the darkness, away from ordinary settings, we may think and feel differently and show different expressions."
Another Slow effort in Japan that's especially thrived is the Zooni campaign, a play on the Japanese suffix zuni, meaning "without." In Club co-founder Anja Light's blog slowmotheranja, Light delighted in the success of the Zooni campaign, promoting using thermoses [I've seen them sold in the U.S. as 'tumblers'] instead of plastic water bottles or metal juice cans. "I think the Sloth Club and the Slow movement is the 'coolest' trend in town," she wrote." I was blown away by the massive 'thermos' advertisements in Tokyo station and all over the Yamanote line encouraging people to bring along their own drinks, and the fact that so many restaurants now have re-useable chopsticks...maybe the zooni campaign has really made a difference...congratulations Sloths!" In keeping with the Hummingbird philosophy, these small, personal actions combine to decrease accumulation in landfills.
Since I'm unable to travel to Japan and haven't yet learned the language, Yuik Kim was kind enough to share his Slothly experiences with me. Kim, a Seoul native, has lived in Japan for almost a year and refers to himself as a relative newcomer to the Sloth Club. He's attended events such as this fall's Life Speaks Tour and a Lifestyle Forum on living in the countryside and "tries to purchase from the fair trade market for my own benefit (healthier), and support Slow Business." At the events he's enjoyed a "relaxed and peaceful atmosphere" and the "shops, performances, lectures and smiles of family."
This is, however, no ordinary advocacy group. "Actually, I realized the Sloth Club itself is not a hands-on activist group, but rather a loosely tied network and intermediary of such down-to-earth groups established in each local area," said Kim. "By events and communication tools, like the mailing list...those groups participate and share their experiences and information with each other...they also want to change the market system itself...producer-market-consumer...which is very important."
So who are these Sloths? The ones clinging to branches with their claws, I mean. There are two types of sloths, three- and two-fingered, who aren't even in the same animal family, with six species among them, three of which are endangered or threatened. (All sloths have three toes, and any collateral confusion arose from initial translations.) At Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica, co-founders Judy Avey-Arroyo and her husband Luis Arroyo maintain a center for information about sloths as well as their shelter and rehabilitation. In a video introducing the Sanctuary, Judy echoes the philosophy of the Sloth Club: "The sloths have a message: Live life as the sloths live; live life slowly; take life easy; don't bother your neighbor...chew your food slowly, live in peace and harmony and live well on our planet. It's our duty to pass this message on."
The principles of slowing down, connecting and reconsidering often involve lightheartedness and humor. The very name of the Sloth Club refers to a lighthearted approach to confronting crisis situations without the exhaustion that often accompanies efforts toward making positive changes. Creator of The International Institute of Not Doing Much, which assures any applicants that their "identities will remain fictional--as is this institute," Christopher Richards offers How to Get Out of Bed, Resistance is Futile, and American Siesta. Brilliant and conventional US humorist Erma Bombeck also found meaning in the sloth, before the Slow renaissance. In "All I Know about Animal Behavior I Learned in Lohmann's Dressing Room" (1995), she decried the fast pace of postmodern life: "Sometimes it seems like the world in on fast-forward...The more I think about it, the more there is to be said for the sloth. He sleeps [ten to fourteen] hours a day and is known to have taken 48 days to travel four miles. He hangs in trees after he's dead. But he lives longer than the cheetah."
To learn more about the Sloth Club, the Slow movement, and sloths themselves:
The Sloth Club (includes information on Slow Tourism, Slow Business, Café Slow and more); the English language site of the Sloth Club, Slow Food, and the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary.
Pittsburgh resident Jennah Ferrara is a licensed social worker on disability and a part-time writing instructor on wheels who is planning a class on living Slow/Sloth.
