More is less, less is still less, and sometimes less is more, and more is more.

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Usually more has always been better, more money, more stuff, more food, more items for cheaper, more buildings on campus for more students getting more educated, more cars and roads for them cars to be going more places, and more houses for those cars and more lights for those houses, and more power-plants and water plants for it all, and more mines and wells for those raw resources and energy. But what does it really mean to have more, in one very real way it means someone, something, or somewhere has less. Its business as usual isnt it? Yes, business as we know it, and fair is it? You, we, them and they all pay for these things dont we? Well of course we do! A fair price though? Thats becoming harder to actually know, a fair price for the labor, the other resources used, transportation, processing, marketing, developing, all bundled up into “the product” and very often the price excludes a very serious value, a very serious deficit, an error of the economics.

The price of the health care costs these products incur is one that can be monetarily measured, but only to a degree, what about the trauma, grief and angst from watching loved ones and strangers alike succumb to cancers and illnesses the like of which we didnt know about only a century ago, or atleast ones which weren't on the forefront of the battles of staying healthy.

The price of pollution. Pollution, its not just chemical, but light, noise, aesthetic, and to some spiritual. None of us have to be astronomers to adore and wonder about the stars on a dark nite. None of us audiophiles to appreciate the clear crisp sounds of nature, or meditating monks to seek the silence. Nor landscape photographers, backpacker extraordinar's, or wilderness survivalists to revel in amazement at vast expanses of untamed and untouched lands. You do not have to be a transcendentalist or a vision-questing sojourner to feel something unknowable and immense flowing in the forests, circulating in canyons, whispering in the winds, and ongoing in the oceans. You just have to be a living being, a human with eyes and ears open. Pollution is the fundamental cause of every illness in some way shape or form, biological or chemical, its all chemistry in the end. How exactly would one measure the price of pollution? And how would you allocate the alimony out to those affected? You can pay a land owner for the materials in his land, but when you disperse pollutants to the winds and waters how do you pay those affected, persons living feet to fortnights away from the point source polluter, for the unwanted collateral chemicals, for the view now gone, the wildlife now absent, the sacredness that has been scarred? We live with a constitution of 'correlation is not causation' and its no concern for the companies if your conscience concludes that chemical contaminates from these corporations and conglomerates cause you harm, you simply cannot charge them for their carcinogens and cohorts of compounds that conspire to corrupt your cells. Aesthetic and intrinsic vales are not measurable in any definitive way, they do not work with the equations, this pollution cannot be compensated. So here you have more and you also have more, more of what you want and more of what you dont want, more of what makes you feel happier or better, and more of what can cause you grievous physical and emotional harm. Whats advancing technology worth is it comes at the cost of causing more sicknesses? Will technology really be able to leapfrog over its self to fix its past and present downfalls without creating more for the future? So here you see you have more of the things you want and things you dont want, as well as having less of some things you may want, of things you may appreciate, like forests, and open coastlines, and wild salmon, and clean air, and clean water, and escapes from society. I cannot speak for everybody, I cant imagine that everybody consciously wants these things, but I also cannot imagine that not everybody does not appreciate these things on some fundamental level. Even the polluters after having damaged and degraded one environment secure sanctuaries in others more pristine, they buy ranches one could spend days traveling across, or alpine cabins in remote undeveloped areas. Why? To get away from the pollution, the light and noise and dirty cities, to get away from phones and persons to have some time alone in wonderment of the world. Thought they may never admit it in that way.

When we take more now it leaves us less for later. The short term gains of clear cutting a forest means more money now, and less forest now, the long term effects mean more erosion and less life supporting land here, but rather dumped into the sea somewhere, it means less water retention for year round water supplies, and less of the natural filter that makes our water clean, it means less habitat for life of all sorts, it means a less liveable landscape for the future, and more money being spent to find remedies for these problems and soon you find all your capital from the clear cutting gone to attempting to amend its downfalls, so fewer forests means less money, and more man made fixes that aren't as aesthetic as a forest, and operating at a cost unbelievably unsustainable.

"G"

So I entertain that less is more. Less impact lives that take fewer resources mean more of the life supporting functions of the world stay naturally in the more than capable means and ways of the world, not the meddling hands of half million year old humans and our hubris towards having it all figured out.

So what now with more? More water, clean air, healthy landscapes and habitats in more places with access for more people. More resources for everybody means more people have their fundamental needs met in safer cleaner ways so that more people can have more fulfilling and healthier lives.

So I invite you to ask yourself whats worth having more of?
And what is worth having less of? They are infallibly intertwined, so make you decisions carefully, make them informed, make them conscious of all other lives, those that are, and those yet to come.

 Waldo.