Smallist

Since the first day some nameless primate stood upright and got a raise, we have known that big has its advantages. From the Pyramids to the Colossus of Rhodes to the Mall of America, Mankind has aspired to create a lasting mark on his environment. This often leads to bankruptcy and decline, and thousands of years later a snotty Romantic poet comes along and makes fun of you. Or worse yet, Mel Gibson.

Big Gulps presaged the decline of the Hellenic age.

But it’s easy to see the whole bigger-they-are-harder-they-fall thing on the macro level. The real problem is that big creeps up on you slowly. You really think the first pyramid was Cheops-size? Nah, it was probably like the size of your living room. Big enough for some myrrh and a few cats. Then one day the funeral home hires a few marketing people. Your funeral is your special day, they say. Why not splurge? They create a deluxe model tomb that’s 20 cubits bigger but only costs an extra 15 grains. You’d be crazy not to buy it! Their competitors respond in kind, a crypt race ensues, and a few generations later anything less than 300 cubits tall may as well be a pine box. Your condo’s Nile view is shot to hell, your first-born drops dead, and it’s raining blood and crickets, or whatever the hell happened in that movie.

All because everybody wanted to outdo everybody else on their special day. And if you don’t think it can happen here, try picking up a copy of Brides Magazine without a spotter.

Point is, big doesn’t strike us suddenly, it creeps in. Because our years in the wild have taught us to climb one extra branch to spear the fatter sloth, lest famine set in next week. We’re financial wizards when it comes to maximizing our popcorn and soda intake per dollar, even if the price is ludicrous to begin with.

And it’s not just food! Operating systems weigh in at ten gigs these days. Families buy SUVs so they can haul entire palettes of toilet paper and cranberry juice home from the Costco. Houses are built to take up as much of their lot as possible, creating what future architects will term “rowhouses of the giants.” An American uses 15 times the energy of a third-worlder, presumably to fuel the giant car and air condition the giant house. And we do all this while going steadily into debt from JUMBO mortgages.

But I hate to sound preachy. There’s plenty of purely selfish and shallow reasons to go small, and my guess is that they’ll stick better in the long run. And that’s the purpose of this blog: To see smallness as a quality worth pursuing in its own right, instead of seeing reduction as an exercise in selflessness or stoicism.

So repeat after me:

• Smaller is cuter.
• Smaller is faster.
• Smaller is cheaper.
• Smaller is easier.
• Smaller is lighter.

No rocket science there, right? Over the life of this blog, I’ll delve into the specifics on these points, providing tips, news, and links on how to live small. It’ll be fun and slightly educational, and with any luck, you might even find yourself a bit happier in the process.

And if not, you can always give up, move to the exurbs, and buy a Hummer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 11:51 am and is filed under Meta, Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.