Australia: the accumulation nation. We love stuff - and as much as we can get.
The other day here in Melbourne I was sitting at an intersection on the chick-puller (girls clearly dig me on that scooter) when I noticed the guy in the car next to me was changing the music on his in-car entertainment system with his remote control! You wouldn't want to have to lean all the way over (a full ten inches) and twist those knobs or push those buttons manually, would you? Might pull a hamstring or tear a rotator cuff.
In an act of tough-love, I opened his car door, ripped the remote out of his fat, lazy hands, broke it in half, pulled him out of the vehicle by his ears, slapped him on the back of the head, and shared a valuable and timely life lesson with him.
All right, I didn't really, but geez, I wanted to. I momentarily fantasized about it. (You wish I had done it, don't you?) Bad you - you're becoming like me.
When is enough stuff enough?
When will we realise we don't need 1,200 TV channels, that perhaps 600 is enough? One of my friends just put a dish on the roof of his house that's the size of a Hyundai. Apparently it picks up Japanese TV stations. The fact that he only speaks English is irrelevant. He wants it. When I pointed out that he didn't speak Japanese, he looked perplexed. Then I realised it wasn't about actually watching the Japanese stations. It was about being able to tell his mates his TV could get Japan. It is about his ego. “Yes,” I told him. “Of course.”
Sometimes, less is more. What do you think?
Article comments
1 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Sometimes less is more?
Craig, from this article, and from my experience both in America and in Israel, less is always more because less means a sustainable economy: more means war, conquest and more space taken up by the dead war heroes in cemeteries...
Does every Israeli need a car when the bus system will take him almost anywhere in the country? Does every American need two cars? Can't life be arranged so that less IS more?
I think it can.