Less is More

Note that the image adove was generated by ChatGPT GPT-4 DALL-E

In this article I will talk a little bit about materialism and why less is more.

We live in a materialistic society whereby great focus is put on material things such as clothing, tech, food, appliances etc. The idea being that these things will bring us something more than we already have. Hundreds of billions of pounds are spent on advertising each year creating a subconscious feeling of lacking with marketing companies selling you on the idea that you need more items to be happy – which just isn’t true, but certainly sells.

From a young age we have been programmed to believe its normal to want to buy new things, which explains why there are so many people who are ‘chasing the money’ as it were, meaning people chase jobs where there is more money to be made rather than chasing what they actually enjoy doing, which leads to more unhappiness in the world because we have millions in jobs they don’t enjoy doing and when they get large sums of money they realize it doesn’t make them happy.

The more items you have in your life the more time you spend maintaining them, this could be the time that you spend having to move them, the time you spend having to clean them. Also the more you have the more likely it is that you will not be using them, hence why less is more because the less material things you have the more likely it is that you will be using them and getting more value out of those items.

As a general rule when buying an item ask yourself will this item bring me value in the long term? If the answer is no, then don’t buy it. You should also realize that it no amount of material possessions can make anyone happy, you can pretend they do, but in the long term you won’t be happy and will be wasting your time and energy buying luxury goods for the small good feeling it brings in buying them.

Another point I would like to make is that items nowadays such as home appliances, are not specifically built to last very long, when you bought an tv 20 years ago you would expect a good few years out of them, but you buy a tv today you would be lucky if it lasts two years (depending on which you buy). The reason being is that its more profitable for companies to manufacture goods that don’t last as long. Therefore, be more mindful of the items you buy and look to buy cheap items that will last longer.

The reason less is more is because the less you have the more value you tend to get out of those few items that you do have.