Our insatiable appetite for more
Posted on 10 June 2009
What is happening to our time? The simple answer is more is happening.
We fill each day to the brim with the many necessities of life. We have more consumables to consume, more relationships to relate, more information to assimilate, more of just about everything – except time.
Our impulse for ‘more’ is not a new phenomenon. It’s a primal motivation, a little like storing acorns for the winter. The more we have, the greater our chances of survival.
Survival, is that what it’s all about? A book that made a great impression on me as a young pup was ‘The City of Joy’ by French journalist Dominque LaPierre. It’s a story set in a plot of land in Mumbai, about the size of two football fields, where some two thousand people live. It’s about the poorest of the poor, fathers who have to sell their blood to feed their family. But it’s also about how these people find fulfillment in the most difficult of circumstances. It taught me that happiness, like survival, is a relative term.
Regardless of our station in life we are all bound by these same rules. This is what French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard is saying when he draws the longest of bows:
The human race is already in the grip of the necessity of having to evacuate the solar system in 4.5 billion years.
(Jean Francois Lyotard – The Inhuman (1988)
We are all driven by our desire to continue. There is no limit to our need for more. This is our fundamental dilemma. We are condemned to death at birth – yet our appetite for more is boundless. In an attempt to solve this conundrum we have sought to tame time – to fit ever more in less time.
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Rohan
Looking forward to meeting you. All the more so after looking at this site. Time and it’s value is the enduring theme to my life. I treasure time way more than money.
Here is the article I mentioned.
http://www.businessday.com.au/business/the-dirty-secrets-of-financial-planners-20090708-dcns.html
Cheers
Dean