[art]by[odo]

“Less is more” ~ “Think Small” ~ “Stop and Smell the Roses”

Forgotten, ignored, disparaged. And yet, you hear these phrases spouted as if they were great truths spoken by the great minds of history.

Yeah, right. We all know, no one believes ’em, not really. Most think these ideas are a bunch of new-age, pinko-commie, weak-minded hokum.

Well, think again.

More has gotten us fatter and sicker. It’s polluted our air and water. It’s plugged our cities with traffic and trash. It’s overloaded our energy and water management systems, just to name a few consequences.

Bigger has gotten us big issues that we aren’t handling well. It’s made a tiny minority super rich and left the majority paying the price. It’s bloated the size of our cars, our living spaces. It’s burdened us with over consumption. It’s predicated on excess and waste. It’s put out of business sole proprietors who used to provide personal service, the kind of service nonexistent in giant mega-stores and malls filled with international chains which only spawn sprawl and underemployment.

Faster has gotten us anxious and stressed. It causes hastiness that results in unnecessary errors, avoidable accidents, costly corrections, repeated repairs, needless delays. Ultimately it costs more time, wastes more energy, exhausts our efforts.

The More, Bigger, Faster mantra does not believe in enough. It fosters impatience and greed. It’s turning modern life into a high intensity workout that tears down faster than it can rebuild. The most insidious part of it is, we’re sorely addicted to it. Turning around these bad habits will be next to impossible without horrendous efforts. The necessary efforts will be denied, avoided, excused. Then, don’t forget, the big bright red cherry on top—psycho/emotional problems that never existed before the industrial revolution, the ones that turn into the personal issues that compel drug addiction and violence.

Yes, we have made great gains. We have incredible technology, immense resources, amazing conveniences. We have power never before imagined. If only we would get our technology under control.

There’s an argument that asserts, if we approached our development with less hubris, with smaller expectations, at a slower more deliberate pace, we could have actually advanced further than we have. Sounds bassackwards. More, Bigger, Faster pushes us to strive, to compete, to work harder. We’d all be lazy loafers without the push-push-push.

Stop, give it a moment’s thought. With cooperative working together, rather than competition; with sharing our knowledge freely, rather than secreting it from others; with careful consideration of the consequences, rather than plunging in recklessly; perhaps, probably, we would be in a better place than we are. We’d inspire one another rather than bite and scratch and claw. Instead of fighting over being the firstest, the mostest, the biggerest, the fasterest, we’d actually have a world with more equality, greater security, and faster more genuine progress.

Okay, I know, I always oversimplify. Here again, the contrarian comes out to challenge the received opinions most people hold. Humans have a distinct habit of complicating things unnecessarily. We see it all around us every day. Look at our legal and tax systems as an example. They exhibit impenetrable piles of complexity, frequently conflicting, always opaque, and in constant flux. I often wonder, who comes up with this stuff? Why won’t they put half the time into creating a streamlined, comprehensible system that is truly equitable, fair and functional? The myriad twists and turns that make the system undecipherable seem intentional. It keeps the masses continually off-balance. The complications, whether intended or not, also create loopholes, backdoors, and gaps that allow for circumventing the law.

Thanks for reading. As an afterthought, I want you to know, if it weren’t already obvious, this was written by a fallible human. Occasionally errors are intentional. If you are also a human with a fully or partially functioning prefrontal cortex, you will figure out which is witch all by yourself. But most of the errors are what they seem to be. I still find mistakes in past posts that I can’t believe, after reading and rereading more times than I’ll admit, and rereading again before and after posting, have slipped by me. Despite this fault, I promise never to use any artificial automated aids to compose, enhance, fix, alter, or “improve” my feeble writing. I use spell check with autocorrect turned off. I also use grammar check, good for catching goofs like, here or hear, which by the way didn’t get highlighted in the second sentence of the first paragraph. So, perhaps I should stop apologizing for my mistakes. It tells you that a real person wrote this. It proves, maybe, that the partially functioning prefrontal cortex behind [art]by[odo] is a living biological entity. I could turn out better and more error-free posts. It’s well known that a writer cannot proofread and edit their own work, not even days later, or weeks. It’s a lame excuse. I could find someone to proofread for me. But I’m going to twist that negligence into an asset to re-demonstrate, “This is not a computer trying to impersonate a friendly human.”

Give it a thought or two. Have a nice day.

After-afterthought : Computer generated text has a long list of tells—awkward attempts at being colloquial, vague wordy language, oddly used adjectives and inappropriate nouns, ridiculous repetitious redundancy, all of which combine to betray a lack of understanding of the subject. There’s more of it being generated everyday. I’ve become leery and perhaps oversensitive to it. I’m finding so many websites containing questionable content that it makes me wonder if there is much left on the internet that can be trusted, including well known famous-name sites. It’s most commonly found in pseudo-information product reviews, the ones that purport to offer guidance and objective opinions when in fact the only thing they offer is a sales pitch parroting the manufacturers’ unsupported claims under the guise of honest help. Clues to these sites, in addition to the earlier noted, are; titles starting with “The best of . . .”; a byline with a name and usually a photo of the “author” to make it appear to be written by a real person; bullet point “takeaways” early on the first page, often after a chatty introductory paragraph or two; nondescript positive comments, completely useless for making any kind of informed decision; and the most annoying, content nearly identical to 3, 4 or more other sites with unique URLs referencing the same suspect source. Be on guard.

And a post from seven years ago with a curious connection : Bye-Bye.