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Less is Better – A Recipe for Life On A Small Sensitive Planet
14th May 2015
By Chris Thomson
Guest Writer for Wake Up World
Less is not more, as is often claimed. More is more! That said, less is often better, and that can make all the difference in today’s world, a world that is getting faster, fuller, and more pressing.
Our world is getting faster in terms of the pace of life, the speed of transport, the speed of communications and the speed of change. Although speed can bring benefits, it can also bring stress and cause accidents and mistakes. If we want to live well in a faster world, we need to go more slowly in our own personal world. There are times when less rush would mean better progress.
The world is getting fuller in the sense that there are more things in it than ever before, more things to buy in shops, more technology to use, more movies to watch, more books and magazines to read, more music to listen to, and more content on the internet. As if this were not enough, we have much more knowledge available to us, and many more things to do with our leisure time. Just as important, we have more of us. The human population is growing at the rate of about 228,000 per day. This is almost exactly 7 million more people in the world every month, and the rate is accelerating. One thing is clear to me – if we want to live a happy, healthy life in such a full world, we have to create space in our own personal world.
The world is also getting more pressing. There are more pressures than ever on us to work harder, to consume more, to be constantly active, and to be glued to technology. It is not just this – pressures also come in the form of noise, pollution, anti-social behaviour, aggressive marketing, as well as having to live in a world run by politicians who are often in service to big money. To be able to live well in such a world, we have to try to create the opposite of pressure in our own personal world.
Why is all this happening? Why is the world getting faster, fuller and more pressing? There is no single easy answer to this. There are many factors. However, I suspect that one of the main causes is the widespread belief that “more is better”. It is a belief that influences our lives more than we might imagine. At the national level, it is reflected in the overwhelming importance given to economic growth, the idea that having more money and things is intrinsically desirable. At the business level, it can be seen in the imperative to make as much money as possible, often at the expense of people and the planet. As a consequence, business is often part of the problem, when it should be part of the solution. And at the level of the individual, a lot of people seem to believe that having more money and things will make them happier.
I am not saying that “more is better” is always a bad thing. There are many occasions when more really is better, especially when people do not even have the basics of life. And it is clear that we need more peace, more honesty, more wisdom, and more love in the world. However, I believe that we have too many of the wrong things and not enough of the right things. And it is clear to me that many, if not all, of our big problems can be traced back, one way or another, to the belief that more is better:
- All the planet’s life support systems are in decline, i.e. clean air, clean water, forests, topsoil, aquifers, fisheries, wetlands, and biodiversity. This is because we overuse and abuse them. And we do this because, in a “more is better” world, we want too much, do too much, and use too much.
- The climate is changing dangerously for precisely the same reasons.
- Inequality is high and rising, because a “more is better” society creates a few big winners and a very large number of losers.
- Democracy is under threat because the big winners exert disproportionate influence on politicians and policy.
- Wars are raging on three continents, because a “more is better” culture causes us to compete, often violently, for scarce resources.
- Mental and emotional illnesses are at record highs, because people are under immense pressure to work longer and harder, and to consume more and more, and because they feel, deep down, that there is no real meaning to this.
- Corruption and dishonesty are widespread because many people want even more than they already have, and they try to do this by cutting corners and bending the rules in their favour.
- Crises have become the norm in the world, because the prevalence of the belief that “more is better” has led to major systemic failures in our socio-economic institutions – economics, finance, business, government, health, and education.
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About the author:
- Four Planets – How Loud Does the Wake-Up Call Have To Be?
- Are We Still Evolving? The Future of Human Evolution
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