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Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration - and Why It's a Good Thing
A powerful and counterintuitive argument that we should welcome the current slowdown—of population growth, economies, and technological innovation
The end of our high-growth world was underway well before COVID-19 arrived. In this powerful and timely argument, Danny Dorling demonstrates the benefits of a larger, ongoing societal slowdown
Drawing from an incredibly rich trove of global data, this groundbreaking book reveals that human progress has been slowing down since the early 1970s. Danny Dorling uses compelling visualizations to illustrate how fertility rates, growth in GDP per person, and even the frequency of new social movements have all steadily declined over the last few generations.
Perhaps most surprising of all is the fact that even as new technologies frequently reshape our everyday lives and are widely believed to be propelling our civilization into new and uncharted waters, the rate of technological progress is also rapidly dropping. Rather than lament this turn of events, Dorling embraces it as a moment of promise and a move toward stability, and he notes that many of the older great strides in progress that have defined recent history also brought with them widespread warfare, divided societies, and massive inequality.
The end of our high-growth world was underway well before COVID-19 arrived. In this powerful and timely argument, Danny Dorling demonstrates the benefits of a larger, ongoing societal slowdown
Drawing from an incredibly rich trove of global data, this groundbreaking book reveals that human progress has been slowing down since the early 1970s. Danny Dorling uses compelling visualizations to illustrate how fertility rates, growth in GDP per person, and even the frequency of new social movements have all steadily declined over the last few generations.
Perhaps most surprising of all is the fact that even as new technologies frequently reshape our everyday lives and are widely believed to be propelling our civilization into new and uncharted waters, the rate of technological progress is also rapidly dropping. Rather than lament this turn of events, Dorling embraces it as a moment of promise and a move toward stability, and he notes that many of the older great strides in progress that have defined recent history also brought with them widespread warfare, divided societies, and massive inequality.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
61 people are currently reading
764 people want to read
About the author
Danny Dorling
66 books97 followersDanny Dorling is a British social geographer researching inequality and human geography. He is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography of the School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford.
Danny Dorling has lived all his life in England. To try to counter his myopic world view, in 2006, Danny started working with a group of researchers on a project to remap the world (www.worldmapper.org).
He has published with many colleagues more than a dozen books on issues related to social inequalities in Britain and several hundred journal papers. Much of this work is available open access and will be added to this website soon.
His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education and poverty. Danny was employed as a play-worker in children’s summer play-schemes. He learnt the ethos of pre-school education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget this. He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers and a patron of Roadpeace, the national charity for road crash victims.
Danny Dorling has lived all his life in England. To try to counter his myopic world view, in 2006, Danny started working with a group of researchers on a project to remap the world (www.worldmapper.org).
He has published with many colleagues more than a dozen books on issues related to social inequalities in Britain and several hundred journal papers. Much of this work is available open access and will be added to this website soon.
His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education and poverty. Danny was employed as a play-worker in children’s summer play-schemes. He learnt the ethos of pre-school education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget this. He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers and a patron of Roadpeace, the national charity for road crash victims.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
June 7, 2020
My book of the year. Hell. This might be the book of the decade. Post-disciplinary in intent and focus, this well written, edgy, provocative and seriously disturbing book explains how our cycles of change are slowing down, but so is our awareness of change.
Probing the social experience of change, Dorling states, "you begin to realize just how much of what you always believed to be right was so very wrong.” He predicted Covid. He predicted the lockdown. He predicted the #blacklivesmatter protests.
Not only did Dorling explain how this context emerged, but why. He describes, "Agnosia is the inability to recognize certain things, despite not having any specific hearing, visual, or memory loss. One variant, social-emotional agnosia, is the inability to interpret facial expressions, body language, and voice intonation.” Our culture is suffering from Agnosia. The inability to connect evidence with interpretation, information with outcomes, remains the weeping wound of our times
If you have an interest in climate change, sustainability, employment, under-employment, the weird history of our universities and families, sexual politics, racial politics or speed - then this is your book. But further, if you want to read an argument that shows the very short, very unstable and transitory history of capitalism, particularly finance capitalism, then this book will change your life.
I am working on a lot of research projects at the moment - in very diverse areas. This book will shape and retexture the arguments in all of them.
This book is a bloody ripper. Read it. Change how you think about the world. Change how you think about your life in the world.
Probing the social experience of change, Dorling states, "you begin to realize just how much of what you always believed to be right was so very wrong.” He predicted Covid. He predicted the lockdown. He predicted the #blacklivesmatter protests.
Not only did Dorling explain how this context emerged, but why. He describes, "Agnosia is the inability to recognize certain things, despite not having any specific hearing, visual, or memory loss. One variant, social-emotional agnosia, is the inability to interpret facial expressions, body language, and voice intonation.” Our culture is suffering from Agnosia. The inability to connect evidence with interpretation, information with outcomes, remains the weeping wound of our times
If you have an interest in climate change, sustainability, employment, under-employment, the weird history of our universities and families, sexual politics, racial politics or speed - then this is your book. But further, if you want to read an argument that shows the very short, very unstable and transitory history of capitalism, particularly finance capitalism, then this book will change your life.
I am working on a lot of research projects at the moment - in very diverse areas. This book will shape and retexture the arguments in all of them.
This book is a bloody ripper. Read it. Change how you think about the world. Change how you think about your life in the world.
October 6, 2021
The main points raised in this book are that we are so used to living through the great acceleration, driven by population growth, that we have failed to see its stagnation. The only thing keeping it alive is our mistaken belief in its perpetual continuation.
The author provides lots and lots of statistics to illustrate his point and sometimes manages to make some interesting arguments, such as how our institutional arrangements and economy is still hinged on this belief. Rising levels of consumer debt are one example of this.
There are other areas the author only touches upon but without actually properly engaging with. An example is rising levels of complexity manifested as bureaucracy which makes things more expensive than they have to be. Consider this in relation to the profit motive, and you are moving towards the more engaging type of terrain Graeber explores in The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy.
Another area is climate change and justice. From an author who has written extensively on global inequality, I expected more on this; “the pollution problem was never a population problem” he states, but what, then, is the structural and political causal drivers behind the climate breakdown? And how can the refusal for slowdown help us understand this?
My main issue with this book, and perhaps one reason for the lack of analytical depth, is that it does not engage with other debates and theories. The Ecological Economics concept ‘steady-state economy is mentioned, but only in passing, and degrowth is not mentioned at all, although the connection (to me, at least) is crystal clear. Due to this weakness, the book lacks a critical edge which could have been a natural component of the concept of Slowdown Dorling seeks to communicate.
The solution Dorling offers is a vague call for us to ‘embrace the slowdown’, without showing us how we would concretely go about doing so. As with other books packed with stats (e.g., Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization), it lacks a vision and, therefore, applicability.
The author provides lots and lots of statistics to illustrate his point and sometimes manages to make some interesting arguments, such as how our institutional arrangements and economy is still hinged on this belief. Rising levels of consumer debt are one example of this.
There are other areas the author only touches upon but without actually properly engaging with. An example is rising levels of complexity manifested as bureaucracy which makes things more expensive than they have to be. Consider this in relation to the profit motive, and you are moving towards the more engaging type of terrain Graeber explores in The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy.
Another area is climate change and justice. From an author who has written extensively on global inequality, I expected more on this; “the pollution problem was never a population problem” he states, but what, then, is the structural and political causal drivers behind the climate breakdown? And how can the refusal for slowdown help us understand this?
My main issue with this book, and perhaps one reason for the lack of analytical depth, is that it does not engage with other debates and theories. The Ecological Economics concept ‘steady-state economy is mentioned, but only in passing, and degrowth is not mentioned at all, although the connection (to me, at least) is crystal clear. Due to this weakness, the book lacks a critical edge which could have been a natural component of the concept of Slowdown Dorling seeks to communicate.
The solution Dorling offers is a vague call for us to ‘embrace the slowdown’, without showing us how we would concretely go about doing so. As with other books packed with stats (e.g., Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization), it lacks a vision and, therefore, applicability.
Read
June 2, 2023DNF. Bunch of graphs, some of them about nonexistent countries, that didn’t clarify much for me. It seems weird to write on this general topic of how overpopulation is not really out of control and how to look at it graphically without mentioning Gapminder.
Alternatives to consider: Factfulness.
Alternatives to consider: Factfulness.
December 11, 2020
The graph
On the wall
Tells the story
Of it all
As 2020 comes to its close, this was a sobering, refreshing read -- a much needed zooming-out from the current clutter of global pandemic and populist politicians.
Danny Dorling convincingly presents a new and less linear perspective on the social and environmental "tsunami of transformation", that we know as the 20th Century +20. This exceptional era, characterized by breakneck speed of growth, is proven to actually be an anomaly. The thesis is that "everything" is now slowing down to a more normal pace, after the "Great Acceleration".
Dorling elegantly uses solid statistics in the form of functional graphs called phase portraits. They plot the elapsing of time on the "curve" itself, and not on the x-axis as done in more traditional two-dimensional graphs. Instead, the x-axis is freed up to show pendulum-swings, from negative to positive and vice-versa, of the year-over-year rate of change of a certain phenomenon of study. The absolute change of the same phenomenon is on the y-axis. This way, the evolution of the phenomenon can be simultaneously shown in three dimensions in the graph. It's a pretty clever way of highlighting the rate of change, which is the key concept that carries Dorling's argumentation for a general tendency toward slowdown.
I haven't seen such a graphically user-friendly way of presenting statistical data since Hans Rosling and Gapminder's animated stats. Slowdown is actually sort of an "alternative Factfulness", only less prone to please the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates, I suppose. By alternative I mean more politically pronounced, overtly countercurrent to market ideology, specifically the dogma of perpetual growth as the only way forward. Dorling's "bold" message is that capitalism was a transition, not the desirable state of normalcy.
Compared to Slavoj Zizek's nebulous vision of a post-capitalist world order (Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism), the blueprint for Dorling's future steady state seems a lot more concrete. He puts forward wisdom from the sustainable lifestyles of past generations into his predictions and his constructive plans for humanity to move ahead more slowly. But the greedy billionaires-bashing unites the two authors, in my mind at least, and separates them from the late, great Rosling.
The chapters are a bit uneven, some definitely had me more engaged than others. "Demographics" and "Fertility" could be excerpted into a stand-alone paperback, but the promising title "Geopolitics" turned out to be a disappointingly repetitive and unfocused catch-all chapter. Funny that this book was published in 2020, but obviously written just before the coronavirus outbreak. Pandemics would make another interesting chapter, once the covid-19 stats are harvested. But as I recall, there are already several mentions of the mind-boggling devastation caused by the 1918 "Spanish Flu", right on top of the first World War.
At timely occasions, what saves the book from serious academic tedium is Dorling's ever present humour, glimpsing through in unmistakably British phrases. "It is, of course, always ”too early to say” until you know, and then it is obvious." Ponder that.
So yes, Slowdown is a surprisingly light and enlightening reading experience, albeit chock-a-block with heavy inconvenient stats, such as those on our emissions of carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change -- the latest menace for the "Great Slowdown" to materialize. However, Danny Dorling's down-to-earth, sensible optimism is contagious. It sticks in my head like catchy pop lyrics.
What a beautiful world this could be
What a glorious time to be free
On the wall
Tells the story
Of it all
As 2020 comes to its close, this was a sobering, refreshing read -- a much needed zooming-out from the current clutter of global pandemic and populist politicians.
Danny Dorling convincingly presents a new and less linear perspective on the social and environmental "tsunami of transformation", that we know as the 20th Century +20. This exceptional era, characterized by breakneck speed of growth, is proven to actually be an anomaly. The thesis is that "everything" is now slowing down to a more normal pace, after the "Great Acceleration".
Dorling elegantly uses solid statistics in the form of functional graphs called phase portraits. They plot the elapsing of time on the "curve" itself, and not on the x-axis as done in more traditional two-dimensional graphs. Instead, the x-axis is freed up to show pendulum-swings, from negative to positive and vice-versa, of the year-over-year rate of change of a certain phenomenon of study. The absolute change of the same phenomenon is on the y-axis. This way, the evolution of the phenomenon can be simultaneously shown in three dimensions in the graph. It's a pretty clever way of highlighting the rate of change, which is the key concept that carries Dorling's argumentation for a general tendency toward slowdown.
I haven't seen such a graphically user-friendly way of presenting statistical data since Hans Rosling and Gapminder's animated stats. Slowdown is actually sort of an "alternative Factfulness", only less prone to please the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates, I suppose. By alternative I mean more politically pronounced, overtly countercurrent to market ideology, specifically the dogma of perpetual growth as the only way forward. Dorling's "bold" message is that capitalism was a transition, not the desirable state of normalcy.
Compared to Slavoj Zizek's nebulous vision of a post-capitalist world order (Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism), the blueprint for Dorling's future steady state seems a lot more concrete. He puts forward wisdom from the sustainable lifestyles of past generations into his predictions and his constructive plans for humanity to move ahead more slowly. But the greedy billionaires-bashing unites the two authors, in my mind at least, and separates them from the late, great Rosling.
The chapters are a bit uneven, some definitely had me more engaged than others. "Demographics" and "Fertility" could be excerpted into a stand-alone paperback, but the promising title "Geopolitics" turned out to be a disappointingly repetitive and unfocused catch-all chapter. Funny that this book was published in 2020, but obviously written just before the coronavirus outbreak. Pandemics would make another interesting chapter, once the covid-19 stats are harvested. But as I recall, there are already several mentions of the mind-boggling devastation caused by the 1918 "Spanish Flu", right on top of the first World War.
At timely occasions, what saves the book from serious academic tedium is Dorling's ever present humour, glimpsing through in unmistakably British phrases. "It is, of course, always ”too early to say” until you know, and then it is obvious." Ponder that.
So yes, Slowdown is a surprisingly light and enlightening reading experience, albeit chock-a-block with heavy inconvenient stats, such as those on our emissions of carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change -- the latest menace for the "Great Slowdown" to materialize. However, Danny Dorling's down-to-earth, sensible optimism is contagious. It sticks in my head like catchy pop lyrics.
What a beautiful world this could be
What a glorious time to be free
April 15, 2022
This book is crap scholarship.
The main problem is not the knee-jerk reaction against capitalism, but the fact that it is just really bad scholarship.
Dorling sets up this thesis: everything is slowing down; that will not be such a bad thing, though initially people will think of it as a bad thing. Fine. But then the book never defines what it means by slowdown, nor does it give any metrics for that, with the exception of one: demography. Population growth is slowing down, which it demonstrates.
But then it does a poor job of saying what else slows down. There are other slowdowns he gestures towards. The book says that knowledge (knowledge creation or the knowledge that the average person consumes, the text is ambiguous) is slowing down. But it never gives any metrics on this, at least not as far as I read (14% of the book). But what is the metric for that? How does one even measure knowledge. It is the kind of self-evident point that a journalist can say, but it is impossible to prove.
Other notions of slowdown are even woolier, with the text frequently telling about how everything is slowing down but not showing what is actually slowing down.
The knee jerk reactions against capitalism are less problematic, though still poorly done. Certainly, a better-written work can cogently argue against capitalism, though this is not a well written work. Instead, the book seems to wallow in arguments that are juvenile in their lack of sophistication.
Overall, the book has an interesting idea that was poorly executed.
The main problem is not the knee-jerk reaction against capitalism, but the fact that it is just really bad scholarship.
Dorling sets up this thesis: everything is slowing down; that will not be such a bad thing, though initially people will think of it as a bad thing. Fine. But then the book never defines what it means by slowdown, nor does it give any metrics for that, with the exception of one: demography. Population growth is slowing down, which it demonstrates.
But then it does a poor job of saying what else slows down. There are other slowdowns he gestures towards. The book says that knowledge (knowledge creation or the knowledge that the average person consumes, the text is ambiguous) is slowing down. But it never gives any metrics on this, at least not as far as I read (14% of the book). But what is the metric for that? How does one even measure knowledge. It is the kind of self-evident point that a journalist can say, but it is impossible to prove.
Other notions of slowdown are even woolier, with the text frequently telling about how everything is slowing down but not showing what is actually slowing down.
The knee jerk reactions against capitalism are less problematic, though still poorly done. Certainly, a better-written work can cogently argue against capitalism, though this is not a well written work. Instead, the book seems to wallow in arguments that are juvenile in their lack of sophistication.
Overall, the book has an interesting idea that was poorly executed.
August 29, 2020
The premise of the book is this: the rate of change of many things is going to slowdown. The economic, scientific research, population, social, and educational change will all slow down. So rather than faster and faster change, our children’s life will look more or less like ours. Everything, except climate change because that effect is based on the cumulative and exponential effect of increased CO2 in the atmosphere.
Dorling posited, like Gordon, that all the Low hanging fruits of the economy had been reached. We can’t always grow taller and taller and have more and more years of school. He also said that fertility is crashing and immigration will further exacerbate the trend as migrants have fewer children as compatriots back home. So our population will peak some time this century and then start to contract. Soon with fewer people the economy will at best remain steady with no growth. Like in the Middle Ages.
I find the book way too Long and some of the points repeated as nauseam. It could have been a more concise book. I also cannot agree with some of his points, that economic growth will stop. Well maybe that is because 20 years ago when I wanted to go to a trip to Europe, I first needed to go to the Travel agency to book my trip. Then I go the bookshop or library to get the latest Lonely Planet. I prayed then that our hotels would be nice, and the recommended restaurants were actually good. I tried to look for taxis on the street. I needed to plan everything way in advance. Not to mention getting lost all the time with the map provided by the hotel.
Now, I book the tickets and hotels on my phone, and I stopped bringing any maps or guide books. I just use my phone to see how to get from one place to another, and to decide where I should go. I use Uber to get around, which is sometimes cheaper than public transport if you have more than 2 people. I know exactly how many people like the hotels and restaurants that I’m going to visit. Oh, and I share my travels with my friends. Sure, GDP had dropped because I used far fewer foods and services; however I am in much better control of my trip. And yes I am actually old enough to have used library index cards- now just Google anything. On the surface everything seems the same but the experience is totally different. Not to mention more environmentally friendly and time saving.
So we may not have flying cars - but who needs that anyway when the whole experience is so enriching now?
Dorling posited, like Gordon, that all the Low hanging fruits of the economy had been reached. We can’t always grow taller and taller and have more and more years of school. He also said that fertility is crashing and immigration will further exacerbate the trend as migrants have fewer children as compatriots back home. So our population will peak some time this century and then start to contract. Soon with fewer people the economy will at best remain steady with no growth. Like in the Middle Ages.
I find the book way too Long and some of the points repeated as nauseam. It could have been a more concise book. I also cannot agree with some of his points, that economic growth will stop. Well maybe that is because 20 years ago when I wanted to go to a trip to Europe, I first needed to go to the Travel agency to book my trip. Then I go the bookshop or library to get the latest Lonely Planet. I prayed then that our hotels would be nice, and the recommended restaurants were actually good. I tried to look for taxis on the street. I needed to plan everything way in advance. Not to mention getting lost all the time with the map provided by the hotel.
Now, I book the tickets and hotels on my phone, and I stopped bringing any maps or guide books. I just use my phone to see how to get from one place to another, and to decide where I should go. I use Uber to get around, which is sometimes cheaper than public transport if you have more than 2 people. I know exactly how many people like the hotels and restaurants that I’m going to visit. Oh, and I share my travels with my friends. Sure, GDP had dropped because I used far fewer foods and services; however I am in much better control of my trip. And yes I am actually old enough to have used library index cards- now just Google anything. On the surface everything seems the same but the experience is totally different. Not to mention more environmentally friendly and time saving.
So we may not have flying cars - but who needs that anyway when the whole experience is so enriching now?
April 23, 2023
Dorling works much harder in communicating that the period of fast growth for human society is ending than in explain why, or how, that is good. He uses a sophisticated graphing style that shows the change not just in the absolute value of a number, such as the fertility rate, but in how quickly that number is changing. This allows the reader to see that many of the metrics that still show fast growth are actually slowing down in how quickly they grow, year over year. He does this with metric after metric and really cements the case for a coming slowdown. However, the book doesn’t make the explanation of why, or how, this is a good thing with anywhere close to the same depth of analysis. The explanations seemed stuck in, “you didn’t think this could go on forever, did you?”. This lack really brought down the value of the book to a simple “heads up” that things are going to slow down.
November 4, 2020
In “Slowdown”, Oxford professor of geography Danny Dorling challenges the reader to reconsider, and turn on its head the current consensus view that we are living in an era of accelerating social, technological and economic change. That, rather, we are gradually converging towards a more stable post-capitalism steady-state of little change where sequential generations will again live similar lives and agree on many ideas in the same way that they did before the 1800s and especially before Columbus ‘joined up the world’ in 1492. The book is the anti-thesis of James Gleick’s “Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything”.
Three hundred and thirty pages later, I am not completely convinced by the evidence presented - but found the exercise of questioning the consensus interesting and well worth the effort!
Dorling uses a particular form of data chart - Bézier curves drawn on phase portraits - to emphasise how numerous elements of our lives have experienced gradually decelerating rates of change during the past century. These include population in the world and in most individual countries; various components of (US) debt markets; articles posted on Wikipedia; fertility rates; life expectancy; real GDP/capita; (real) house prices; the NASDAQ; average human height; urbanisation. The three big exceptions are CO2 emissions, land & ocean temperatures, and total passenger flights.
The thesis appears to rely heavily on the combination of the rapid decline in the fertility after the 1960s and the related decline in the global population growth rate - with Japan seen as the forerunner of where we are all heading for. The consequent ageing of humanity can, of course, be used to support many of the other changes related to Dorling’s anti-consumerism theme and being ‘more satisfied with what we have’, ‘waste less’ and ‘being wily enough to repel the many advertising tricks used to buy more of what we don’t really need’.
In fact, at many points through the book it is not possible to decide if Dorling’s thesis, rather than being the logical conclusion from an analysis of a compressive set of evidence, is not instead the expression of the wish - of a man who is himself reaching middle age and ageing - for a simpler and slower world after the exhausting efforts of trying to keep up with it during the first 20-25 years of adult life.
More problematic for this reader, the book is marred by having both a quasi-fanatical “anti-rich” Momentum-style agenda combined with an intellectual’s hidden guilt for promoting that same agenda. Neither sit well with a persuasive laying out of the evidence.
This agenda pops up so regularly that it has the effect of leaving the reader confused as to whether the book is a scientific analysis of Slowdown as a natural endogenous process OR a description of a desirable and explicit policy goal that we should be managing towards (especially in order to avoid the next extinction in the context of his climate change analysis) OR some hotchpotch mix of both.
For a book that takes such a broad and inclusive view of the human species, it’s agenda is often expressed in ways that will put off many readers that might otherwise have been more open to helping steer the Slowdown to an optimal terminus. [Along the way, Dorling appears to have conveniently conflated equity investment with debt lending, allowing the conclusion that all wealth of the few must have been built on the misery of the many debtors - the opposite of which would require a world where paradoxically no one saved and everyone spends / barters everything they received, which is the opposite of the anti-consumerism Dorling desires - possibly rightly].
The book too readily uses the thesis of Slowdown as a Trojan Horse for promulgating a more egalitarian future rather than limiting itself to more neutral explanation of how the Slowdown can help bring about such a change that so many of us know must come. Having last year re-read William Morris’ News From Nowhere, I frequently found myself wondering if Dorling’s real thesis is that we should be constructing that same Utopia.
Three hundred and thirty pages later, I am not completely convinced by the evidence presented - but found the exercise of questioning the consensus interesting and well worth the effort!
Dorling uses a particular form of data chart - Bézier curves drawn on phase portraits - to emphasise how numerous elements of our lives have experienced gradually decelerating rates of change during the past century. These include population in the world and in most individual countries; various components of (US) debt markets; articles posted on Wikipedia; fertility rates; life expectancy; real GDP/capita; (real) house prices; the NASDAQ; average human height; urbanisation. The three big exceptions are CO2 emissions, land & ocean temperatures, and total passenger flights.
The thesis appears to rely heavily on the combination of the rapid decline in the fertility after the 1960s and the related decline in the global population growth rate - with Japan seen as the forerunner of where we are all heading for. The consequent ageing of humanity can, of course, be used to support many of the other changes related to Dorling’s anti-consumerism theme and being ‘more satisfied with what we have’, ‘waste less’ and ‘being wily enough to repel the many advertising tricks used to buy more of what we don’t really need’.
In fact, at many points through the book it is not possible to decide if Dorling’s thesis, rather than being the logical conclusion from an analysis of a compressive set of evidence, is not instead the expression of the wish - of a man who is himself reaching middle age and ageing - for a simpler and slower world after the exhausting efforts of trying to keep up with it during the first 20-25 years of adult life.
More problematic for this reader, the book is marred by having both a quasi-fanatical “anti-rich” Momentum-style agenda combined with an intellectual’s hidden guilt for promoting that same agenda. Neither sit well with a persuasive laying out of the evidence.
This agenda pops up so regularly that it has the effect of leaving the reader confused as to whether the book is a scientific analysis of Slowdown as a natural endogenous process OR a description of a desirable and explicit policy goal that we should be managing towards (especially in order to avoid the next extinction in the context of his climate change analysis) OR some hotchpotch mix of both.
For a book that takes such a broad and inclusive view of the human species, it’s agenda is often expressed in ways that will put off many readers that might otherwise have been more open to helping steer the Slowdown to an optimal terminus. [Along the way, Dorling appears to have conveniently conflated equity investment with debt lending, allowing the conclusion that all wealth of the few must have been built on the misery of the many debtors - the opposite of which would require a world where paradoxically no one saved and everyone spends / barters everything they received, which is the opposite of the anti-consumerism Dorling desires - possibly rightly].
The book too readily uses the thesis of Slowdown as a Trojan Horse for promulgating a more egalitarian future rather than limiting itself to more neutral explanation of how the Slowdown can help bring about such a change that so many of us know must come. Having last year re-read William Morris’ News From Nowhere, I frequently found myself wondering if Dorling’s real thesis is that we should be constructing that same Utopia.
July 11, 2020
I tried... I just could not make it through this book. He takes a very simple concept and tries to make it complicated for no reason.
August 22, 2021
Everything is slowing down. To be more accurate, populaton growth is slowing and because of this, human activities are slowing, or as the book is at pains to point out, the rate of increase is slowing, because actually some things are still increasing. Er, ok then.
The author covers broad themes (finance, data, agriculture, fertility) but the main arguments focus on the economics as we are, of course, all obsessed with money, as most of us just don't seem to have enough of it.
Throughout, there are plenty of distinctive charts (whose style the author has apparently plucked from obscurity) showing the see-saw of increase to decrease and back again, all of which clearly shows the overall reduction trend in whatever topic is being discussed at the time. After 2 to 3 of these, the entire book becomes somewhat predictable.
Which leads me to discuss the huge amounts of irrelevant material that was added in order to make each chapter a reasonable length. One such example is the descriptions of printing through history leading to the slowdown of new entries being added to wikepedia (only proving that every dog has its day). This is cheap stuff, mostly well known and already well documented elsewhere and I found myself skim reading at an alarming rate in order to end the tedium.
This book is a small idea, presented as a big idea. The 46 pages of footnotes (i'm not kidding) are either an effort to convince you of its seriousness or a justification for this monetization of a thesis. On a positive note, I do think it would have made an excellent article in the FT weekend magazine.
The author covers broad themes (finance, data, agriculture, fertility) but the main arguments focus on the economics as we are, of course, all obsessed with money, as most of us just don't seem to have enough of it.
Throughout, there are plenty of distinctive charts (whose style the author has apparently plucked from obscurity) showing the see-saw of increase to decrease and back again, all of which clearly shows the overall reduction trend in whatever topic is being discussed at the time. After 2 to 3 of these, the entire book becomes somewhat predictable.
Which leads me to discuss the huge amounts of irrelevant material that was added in order to make each chapter a reasonable length. One such example is the descriptions of printing through history leading to the slowdown of new entries being added to wikepedia (only proving that every dog has its day). This is cheap stuff, mostly well known and already well documented elsewhere and I found myself skim reading at an alarming rate in order to end the tedium.
This book is a small idea, presented as a big idea. The 46 pages of footnotes (i'm not kidding) are either an effort to convince you of its seriousness or a justification for this monetization of a thesis. On a positive note, I do think it would have made an excellent article in the FT weekend magazine.
June 20, 2021
Lots and lots of data all backing up a theory that the world is slowing down - population, birth rates, economies everything but temperature. Reassuring and daunting all at once but fascinating all the same. Heavy going though, quite a lot of tangents and no opportunity missed to kick favourite protagonists (church stories etc). I don’t disagree but it didn’t add to the book.
October 9, 2022
Would love to read more about the social change and how it relates to the Slowdown of everything else.
July 6, 2023
Halo, Kerabat !
Buku ini akan mengajak pembaca untuk mempertimbangkan perlunya perlambatan dalam berbagai aspek kehidupan, menantang pandangan bahwa pertumbuhan dan percepatan yang terus-menerus adalah kunci kemajuan dan kebahagiaanm serta bagaimana pertumbuhan ekonomi yang cepat telah mengakibatkan dampak negatif terhadap lingkungan, kesenjangan sosial, dan kesejahteraan individu.
Dalam mengadopsi kehidupan yang lebih lambat dan pendekatan yang lebih berkelanjutan, kita dapat menciptakan masa depan yang lebih baik bagi planet ini dan kehidupan kita.
Penekanan akan pentingnya mengurangi tekanan pada planet ini, mengurangi kesenjangan sosial, dan meningkatkan kesejahteraan individu melalui perlambatan dapat menyoroti perlindungan lingkungan dan keberlanjutan, serta mengajak untuk menghargai hubungan sosial, waktu luang, dan kegiatan yang memberikan kepuasan intrinsik sebagai faktor penting dalam mencapai kehidupan yang bermakna.
Intinya, buku ini merefleksikan kembali nilai-nilai kehidupan yang penting dan mengeksplorasi cara-cara di mana perlambatan dapat membawa dampak positif bagi makhluk hidup di planet ini.
Hatur nuhun.
Buku ini akan mengajak pembaca untuk mempertimbangkan perlunya perlambatan dalam berbagai aspek kehidupan, menantang pandangan bahwa pertumbuhan dan percepatan yang terus-menerus adalah kunci kemajuan dan kebahagiaanm serta bagaimana pertumbuhan ekonomi yang cepat telah mengakibatkan dampak negatif terhadap lingkungan, kesenjangan sosial, dan kesejahteraan individu.
Dalam mengadopsi kehidupan yang lebih lambat dan pendekatan yang lebih berkelanjutan, kita dapat menciptakan masa depan yang lebih baik bagi planet ini dan kehidupan kita.
Penekanan akan pentingnya mengurangi tekanan pada planet ini, mengurangi kesenjangan sosial, dan meningkatkan kesejahteraan individu melalui perlambatan dapat menyoroti perlindungan lingkungan dan keberlanjutan, serta mengajak untuk menghargai hubungan sosial, waktu luang, dan kegiatan yang memberikan kepuasan intrinsik sebagai faktor penting dalam mencapai kehidupan yang bermakna.
Intinya, buku ini merefleksikan kembali nilai-nilai kehidupan yang penting dan mengeksplorasi cara-cara di mana perlambatan dapat membawa dampak positif bagi makhluk hidup di planet ini.
Hatur nuhun.
April 18, 2025
In Japan, where I live, the population has been decreasing, and the low fertility rate has been a moot point that governments have struggled to address for years. Moreover, we can observe a decline in the number of innovative inventions compared to when we were children. This book supports these assumptions with detailed data and visualized graphs, allowing us to see that living conditions have been, and continue to be, slowing down in various aspects. What I hoped for from this book, however, was not only a presentation of factual data but also suggestions on how people should respond to these phenomena. Such insights would have made the content more thought-provoking and meaningful for reconsidering our lifestyles.
March 3, 2023
This is such an intellectual book but so interesting. Dorling uses hundreds of graphs and much data and history to show why everything is slowing down from population to inflation (except climate change) around the world. I got the ARC for this book right before a pandemic changed things quite dramatically (which he eerily called, though he wrote it in 2019 before any of us knew what was about to come). In all that came, this book got lost in my kindle until this week.
It’s so heavy on data that I skimmed through parts but found it extremely educational, convincing, and ultimately quite hopeful.
I read a digital copy of this book via NetGalley.
It’s so heavy on data that I skimmed through parts but found it extremely educational, convincing, and ultimately quite hopeful.
I read a digital copy of this book via NetGalley.
January 7, 2024
Thought provoking.
Dorling argues that the rate of change only appears rapid, and has really been slowing down for awhile. Part of the illusion is the marketing capitalism needs to make you buy more stuff. The other part is that recent generations have lived through such rapidly changing times that we can't countenance slowing down.
I wish I had been reading it with someone irl to discuss each point as it came up; it's a complicated book with lots of abstractions and the whole idea of slowing down is so contrary to the popular message of the day. Even if he is wrong, it's an interesting concept to think about.
Dorling argues that the rate of change only appears rapid, and has really been slowing down for awhile. Part of the illusion is the marketing capitalism needs to make you buy more stuff. The other part is that recent generations have lived through such rapidly changing times that we can't countenance slowing down.
I wish I had been reading it with someone irl to discuss each point as it came up; it's a complicated book with lots of abstractions and the whole idea of slowing down is so contrary to the popular message of the day. Even if he is wrong, it's an interesting concept to think about.
September 13, 2020
Everything is slowing, including population growth, economic growth, and innovation, Dorling writes with assistance of 67 beautiful graphs (they are all available at his website). The natural result will be more egalitarian societies, he argues, without really grappling with the counterarguments. The book connects the dots between secular stagnation, late-stage capitalism, and the future of progress.
June 1, 2021
Good premise/main point, but it’s repetitive and oddly structured. Most concerning is the idea that slowdown automatically means the end of capitalism, since that seems to absolve the need for struggle. Dorling writes with a seriously unchecked white, Western male perspective (“female emancipation?” Capitalism is no longer deadly? Has he ever spoken to a woman?). I would recommend Sylvia Federici for a better analysis of the future of capital and women’s lib.
August 22, 2020
Some interesting ideas and fascinating time sequences. Not all the data seems to match all of his conclusions (which come from a specific ideological perspective) but many of them feel right and echo my own sense that much contemporary "innovation" seems barely incremental. Uplifting and positive.
April 20, 2020
The monstrosity of small minds. After all, the Holocaust was good for the poor in German society as they got furnished homes for free and the German War effort meant fewer mouths to feed with about the same resources.
October 10, 2020
Timeline conundrums
A thoughtful and original perspective on change and progress using innovative timeline analysis. We have known that continuous indefinite exponential growth is impossible but this demonstrates it.
A thoughtful and original perspective on change and progress using innovative timeline analysis. We have known that continuous indefinite exponential growth is impossible but this demonstrates it.
March 5, 2023
Honestly it is not comfortable to listen to this audiobook while walking, as it often refers to figures. And actually, though I admit the author’s points somehow, I rather prefer making something better as a scientist. Slowly, but steadily, I’d like to have some improvement in our future.
May 28, 2020
Fascinating book, valid arguments and data, illustrating the inevitably of slowdown in economic growth after industrialisation and globalisation
October 11, 2020
Clear, well written, informative and uplifiting.
October 23, 2020
Interesting graphing technique, good premise, a bit polemic at the end.
December 11, 2021
academic
February 11, 2024
Essential reading which has gotten even more important in the years since publishing
April 22, 2024
A decent book showing many worldwide trends, most of which are portraying a slowdown in growth.
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