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I am a big fan of Leo Barbauta; for those of you that don’t know who Leo is, he is the very successful author of Zen Habits and mnmlist. I don’t always agree with Leo, but I often enjoy his writing and value his opinions; his blogs are worth subscribing to.

Today he brought a problem to me. The price of convenience is IMHO misguided. It promotes the wrong reasons to do the right things; which is right…

…and wrong!

Sometimes people you love seem to do the right things for the wrong reasons. How do you go about telling them?

In the case of Leo, my choice is simple and “minimalist”. I am listing my thoughts and sharing “my truth” next to his, to create points of reference. I included some links that are pointing to further research should you wish to.

(Leo’s article snippets are in quotes, followed by my thoughts and comments.)

If there is one direction modern society has been moving in during the last century, it is convenience…

I don’t think so… If it is true that convenience is a trend, society has been marching at the drums of growth, cancerous growth.

We’re a society of conveniences, more than anything else. But at what price?

Yes, only the first world is; and the question is at what COST! The price itself is irrelevant.

The global warming crisis, for example, has been entirely caused by conveniences (…)

Ahem — says who? Whose arrogance lends so much power to man? Should we declare bad weather …illegal?

I think we’re going to need to rethink our love of conveniences.

Yes we are, we will be forced to – Humanity is going to have to learn to think, indeed.

The obesity epidemic has also been caused by conveniences.

Is obesity an epidemic? Ignoring the 963,000,000 hungry & self-pity are indeed convenient.

(…) The cost of that convenience, of course, is our health and our environment — small prices to pay, perhaps.

Leo confuses cost and price. There is a flaw in our accounting that conveniently ignores costs. (you could google “cosmic cost accounting” and Buckminster Fuller to find out more).

(…) Sometimes that cost is to the Third World, or to the environment, or to our own future, but hey, that’s Somebody Else’s Problem.

On spaceship earth, there is no “else”, no “elsewhere” & no “away”…

(…) It’s inconvenient to hang dry clothes, but it’s also pleasant and sustainable.

Sustainable? Yikes, that word again! Bending to the fad? Hanging clothes to dry is regenerative, eternally regenerative in an “Eternally Regenerative Universe”, not sustainable.

(…) yet it’s worth the price of inconvenience. (…) it’s much more enjoyable (…)

Introducing Value to Price & Cost adds to the confusion; I respect Leo’s opinion, and may even agree with him; however, turning Luddite is not the path of least resistance.

What inconveniences can we incorporate into our daily lives …?

Great question!

Learning to think for ourselves.

Hummm… How about learning to think for ourselves? doing the right things for the right reasons? Researching the proper distinctions between price, cost and value? Verifying the definitions of the words we use that shape our thoughts?

What has this got to do with karate? For me it has everything to do with a search for the truth, “veritas”. This is what my karate journey is about after all.

Leo, thank you for your otherwise enlightening articles, I wish that down the road, my journey brings us close and we get a chance to share a cup of coffee and have a conversation.

Osu!

Post Scriptum: I want to put forth that karate Journey is a very young blog & it is true that confronting Leo’s arguments will draw traffic; however, the matters addressed are too high in my heart to stay idle; I hope you will forgive me.