More
More.
I’m beginning to think that ‘more’ might be the most insidious word in the English language.
More beautiful. 50% more! Do more. Earn more. Buy more. Be more. More than ever before! More minutes, more texts. More speed. More channels. More bandwidth. More downloads. More time. More money. Get more. Get more. Get more.
What’s wrong with ‘enough’? Why do we have to be accelerating, accumulating? Why can’t we stand still, or even stop? Why can’t we enjoy and savour, rather than consume?
1
I've been told that our whole wonderful economy would collapse if it weren't for more. More more, if you wish
by ssp @ 31/08/2006 4:08 pm • Permalink •
2
'Enough!' would never make it as a lifestyle magazine title.
To use an economic analogy: 0% inflation is very bad for a country's economy. 1% inflation means everything is 'more expensive', but 0% inflation is bad.
You don't have a problem with the word 'more'. You have a problem with excess, and that's reasonable. But the word 'enough' is just as bad.
We are told there has been enough debate on ID cards, there was enough evidence of Iraq's WMD, 640k should be enough memory. Enough is the enemy of progress.
Are you really saying you don't want more time?
by Michael Houghton @ 31/08/2006 5:08 pm • Permalink •
3
May we please have more of your thoughts please....
by Jonathan Briggs @ 31/08/2006 5:09 pm • Permalink •
4
Sympathetic as I am to this idea, it is worth considering that ancestors of ours saying 'enough' would have left us with a forty-year long life of agricultural toil.
by Milan @ 31/08/2006 5:09 pm • Permalink •
5
Greed sucks. So does stagnation.
by Aaron Blohowiak @ 31/08/2006 6:08 pm • Permalink •
6
I'm reminded of an Ani Difranco lyric::
I don't think the word 'more' is inherently insidious, but it's an enabler.
by Dan Ridley @ 01/09/2006 12:09 am • Permalink •
7
Sorry. I intended for there to be a couple line breaks in that there blockquote.
by Dan Ridley @ 01/09/2006 12:10 am • Permalink •
8
On the other side of the coin, there's the biological analogy of carrying capacities. Life has evolved to say "more," but in the end, nature always says "enough"... and she can have some rather unpleasant ways of saying it.
I might be inclined to agree with you, but having never lived a forty-year life of agricultural toil, I can't honestly say I wouldn't be happier.
p.s. On a lighter note...
Starbucks: exponential growth Wikipedia: exponential growth Razor blades: hyperbolic growth?
by Aaron F. @ 01/09/2006 1:09 am • Permalink •
9
What a lot of literalist and pedants you lot are!
I'm with bsag, and with every post I love her more!
by ThoughtBadger @ 01/09/2006 7:09 am • Permalink •
10
Many years ago I "lived" in Paris for 2 or 3 months, hanging out and learning French at the Alliance Francaise. One of my classmates was from Brazil: she didn't speak English, I don't speak Portuguese, so we had to communicate in rather poor French. One day she asked me the meaning of "trop" so I searched my memory for my high school Spanish and said "demasiado" ... oh, she said, we have a word like that in Brazil, but we don't often use it.
by Audrey @ 01/09/2006 1:09 pm • Permalink •
11
But not more Mac developments, Wallace and Gromit etc? I think you also hit a nerve - 10 comments! However, I think your last sentence just sums it up.
by Julian @ 02/09/2006 8:10 am • Permalink •
12
As you probably all guessed, I'd just seen one too many ridiculous adverts, trying to persuade me to consume out of all proportion to my needs, and I just cracked
I think it was that ridiculous advert for Fusion razors that tipped me over the edge (and I wasn't even the target market). It has that faux hi-tech, testosterone-laden setting, as if constructing razors involves glowing liquids and a super-collider. I wanted to run naked into the street, grab the first person I came across and yell at them, "It's just a razor---some sharp bits of metal attached to a plastic handle! That's all!", but everyone would probably think it was a whacky viral marketing campaign and go out and buy one. Plus, it was a bit chilly for running around naked outside.
So, I cut some corners linguistically in the full flow of my rant, but my problem is with excess rather than progress. As regular readers know, I'm hardly a luddite (half of the posts here involve me gushing about the latest shiny piece of technology), and of course I think that there should be progress in medicine, science, technology etc. Indeed, trying to advance science by a few nanometres is my job.
My problem is with excess masquerading as progress, and increase in quantity with a corresponding decrease in quality. Marketeers can't use the word excess ("Excess channels!"), so they use 'more' instead, and that's why it's insidious. In the supermarket, I now have a choice of a dozen or so brands of tomato-based pasta sauce, for example. Do I need that choice? They are more or less all the same (it's all just squished up tomatoes, after all), but I find myself wasting time, standing in front of this array of tomato-based plenty, trying to decide which one to get. Does that improve my life? When I was a kid, we had three TV channels. My Freeview box recently found 90 or so channels, but I still only regularly watch about 4 or 5 of them.
Michael Houghton asked if I was really saying I don't want more time. That's a very interesting question. Of course, like most people, I'd like more time, but the reason I need it is that there's so much more of everything taking up my life, all that time lost in trying to decide which pasta sauce to buy. It's a Red Queen situation: by consuming more, I have less time, and companies try to offer me time (or things that supposedly save time), or offer me 'indulgence' to try to take my mind off the loss of time.
by bsag @ 02/09/2006 1:09 pm • Permalink •
13
The author and her partner went for a year buying only "essentials" -- no processed food, no books, no movies etc. They found they had a lot more time (despite cooking all meals from scratch) -- much of the time saved was from not spending hours searching online for the best deal on printers or other gadgets.
They did have an argument over whether wine is an essential (her partner is Italian) -- he decided to make his own.
by Audrey @ 02/09/2006 11:10 pm • Permalink •
14
I like the sentiment (and I recognize that it's a bit of a short-cut rant). I posted a few ideas along that line, too, at http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/2006/07/growth-and-winds-of-change.html , http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/2006/06/s-curves-growth-and-discerning-your.html and postings referenced by those two. I'd be curious in people's thoughts, for it's not an easy question. I don't think we can make the world stand still -- change does happen -- but we can be mindful about the change we foster. I think ideas such as those referenced at the end of http://www.facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/2006/03/more-on-growth.html can help answer the question about what we should do if we don't want to keep the current growth model and we don't want to stagnate.
by Bill Harris @ 12/09/2006 2:09 pm • Permalink •
15
I think there has been some psychological research (but being lazy, I won't hunt it down) indicating that humans are built to be unsatisfied, i.e. that no matter how well off you are, you're not entirely content with it. Because such impulses for more, apparently, are one of the things that kept our ancestors alive on the African savannah. And so we have space exploration, walk-in closets, and global warming. Simple, really.
by Derek K. Miller @ 18/09/2006 5:09 am • Permalink •
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