Less Is More
By Park Nahm-sheik
Less is more is often attributed to Chilon of Sparta, one of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece. This phrase comes up even oftener in the same breath as such High Renaissance polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Be that as it may, the expression sure does have an intriguing ring to it. Does it not?
Less is more puts moderation front and center in all things we do. It has forever been drilled into our collective memory that “Measure is treasure” and “Measure is medicine.” Parenthetically, I love the way either phrasing here sounds, thanks to the nice-sounding rhyme of the former and the resonant alliteration of the latter.
Significantly enough, things of great value tend to come in moderate packages. Among cases in point are the diamond, the ruby, and the sapphire. We may remind ourselves at this point that a similar case is made by a couple of other pithy sayings like “A little body often harbors a great soul,” “Small is beautiful,” and “Little fish are sweet.”
By the way, less is more casts a shaft of light on some beloved refrains of literary significance. “Brevity is the soul of wit” is one of those oft-quoted phrases due originally to the Bard, a.k.a. William Shakespeare the Playwright. Shakespeare’s recommendation here is for us to deliver our words not by number but by weight.
If we are to do as he tells us to, we must make sure that our speech and writing always stay lean and mean to the utmost. To faithfully abide by this dictum, we must incessantly ward off any extra linguistic fat. Whether prose or verse, good language ought not to leave any room for verbosity. Otherwise, whatever we say or write would not amount to anything quite as good as we wish it to be.
Brevity is the soul of prayer as well. “A short prayer penetrates heaven” is a saying common among practicing Christians. “The fewer the words, the better the prayer” is a more symmetric version of this religious quote, which is just as popular as the first one. The underlying rationale here may be that a shorter prayer has a sharper focus and consequently a greater power of delivery.
It is interesting that brevity is apparently the soul of art as well. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and other prominent Renaissance men demonstrated that simplicity was the ultimate sophistication. Displaying their scintillating genius to heavenly dimensions, those High Renaissance polymaths created an entire galaxy of the most sublime art. Their glitter literally shocked and awed not just Rome but also the rest of Europe and the remainder of the world.
Representing the high-water marks of their respective realms, these beautiful minds of the Renaissance era were genuinely the brightest of stars of all time in the firmament of human civilization. They all pursued and attained the pinnacles of their spheres via ultimate simplicity. Parenthetically, it may also be no accident that glimpses of this simplicity flicker from Vincent van Gogh’s and Pablo Picasso’s paintings. It may be an indication that they too may have been in pursuit of ultimate simplicity in their art.
It may be noted in passing here that brevity was also at the core of minimalism, an abstract art form that briefly flourished in the 1960s in the United States. It featured a pattern of simple geometric shapes like squares and rectangles, making for a direct, straightforward, and forceful artistic communion and/or communication.
It is interesting that less is more also is instrumental in accounting for very much of our behavior as food consumers. Shall we begin our discussion here by attending to gluttony as a matter of direct and urgent concern to everyone everywhere? “Much meat, much malady” fires the first warning shot. Parenthetically, ‘meat’ here refers simply to food in general, not necessarily beef, pork, venison, poultry, or fish.
“Greedy eaters dig their graves with their teeth” sets off a far more serious alarm. There is really no turning a blind eye to this kind of red alert, is there? We may be overstating it a bit here. Not really that much, though, I hope. At any rate, “If in excess, even nectar is poison” says it all. We would do well to always keep it in mind that those that eat the least eat the most. Indeed, we should all eat to live and not live to eat.
Running rampant everywhere, greedy eating is threatening to run us into the ground at any moment. While we are at it, we may as well call attention to the challenges posed by fast food in the hustle and bustle of the contemporary world. Don’t you be too surprised if I say that fast food is the highway to obesity, which in turn is a shortcut to a premature exit from Planet Earth. None of us would love to leave this beautiful world of ours behind, would we?
By the way, a slow lifestyle as a whole is much to be preferred to a fast one. Too much food, especially too much fast food, runs the risk of making Jack a dull boy. Furthermore, it might usher him into the country of dimwits and weaklings to boot. And even of zombies. The dietary avarice prevalent in the world today is more than enough to rain tears of concern and sorrow on the faces of all thinking beings.
Truth to tell, too much of aught is good for naught. Rapacity is the root of all evil, indeed. Whoever grasps all loses all. We can always have such a thing as too much of a good thing. That said, we must never ever allow ourselves to get caught in the trap of catching at the shadow and losing the substance. Let’s be crystal clear here that enough is always as good as a feast and that more than enough is too much.
When taking in food, we must also constantly remember to stay away from any man-made harm masquerading as science. We should make it a practice to think twice before allowing artificially tainted stuff down the hatch, much less into the alimentary canal. Chemically and/or biologically manipulated stuff is normally not exactly either fit or good for human consumption. Which is why GMOs, food supplements/additives or the like are generally not favorably received in most knowledgeable circles.
A word or two about the relevance of less is more to environmental conservation does seem to be in order at this point. We all know that major rainforests such as the Amazon Rainforest are the lungs of Spaceship Earth that can make or break all planetary living beings, humans not excluded. Daredevil behavior like illegitimate logging, such as that allowed and even promoted under Bolsonaro’s watch in Brazil, was nothing less than a crime against nature and consequently against humanity. His irresponsible Amazonia management amounted to an attempt on a premeditated genocidal massacre of nature. He deserves to stand before the international tribunal of criminal justice. In one way or another, he needs to be called to account and be done justice to in the public square of the global community.
Before ending our tale of less is more, let me briefly touch on Korea’s time-honored tradition of 좀도리. Solidly grounded in the agrarian roots of Korea, it consists in rural housewives setting aside a little portion of rice, barley, and/or wheat prior to cooking for each and every meal so as to share it with their neighbors in need. AKA 십시일반 (“ten spoonfuls reserved can make a square meal”), 좀도리 is an eloquent demonstration of what true community spirit is all about.
As it were, 좀도리 is ‘sharing is caring’ writ large. It is Korea’s very own ancestral way of less is more in action. In a way, it is also aligned with the Biblical teaching that it is more blessed to give than to receive. By the way, the term 좀도리 is suspected to originate in the regional variety of the Korean language specific to the 전라 provinces, which may be one more reason that the current writer feels sentimentally attached to this particular trait of Korean culture.
The Author
Park Nahm-sheik has a BA in English from Chonnam National University, an MA in linguistics from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, U.S.A., and a PhD in applied linguistics from Georgetown University. He is now a Professor Emeritus after a long and illustrious career at Seoul National University as well as President Emeritus of the International Graduate School of English.
(Photo: David Gavi on Unsplash)