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May 22, 2012

"Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction." --Albert Einstein

Is Our Hunger For Scale Starving Real Growth?

"For years, I've wrestled with living the 'less-is-more' life in a world that seems to be busting at its seams -- in every way -- financially, physically, psychologically. There's a need, it seems, to acquire and expand. And it's not just in our personal and material lives. Startups want to scale -- that's the most critical stage for them. Nonprofits need to collect data for 'impact' reports, illustrating how their ideas are not only innovative, but scalable. Can we turn away? Can we build a new scale -- a smaller, more humble, dustier scale in touch with the roughness of the earth, with the struggles of our neighbors, within the limits of the tilled earth? Can we have dreams that look inward, deepening ourselves and our ties with each other, rather than scaling outward? Perhaps that means we need to rethink growth."