In a microeconomics course I took as an undergraduate student, my professor (Dr. Eugene Silberberg) frequently tossed around the idea that "variety is the spice of life." From an economics standpoint I think he was trying to insinuate that it is really difficult to measure people's preferences on a national scale because we have so many choices in every facet of a typical day. For an economist, it must be a dangerous proposition to create research models based on stereotypes.
Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink, Tipping Point, What the Dog Saw and Outliers takes this train-of-thought one step further by articulating how variety creates satisfaction. In a speech he gave for TED.com in February of 2004, he relates happiness to the horizontal segmentation of pizza sauce, mustard and coffee. See video here (It's quite comical):
http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html
His presentation concludes with the statement: "By embracing the diversity of human beings, we will find a sure way to true happiness."
The bigger message here is that we should keep creating, inventing, re-inventing, sharing and learning about our world. Too many options can cause problems, but options also espouse diversity. And, according to Dr. Silberberg and Mr. Gladwell, this is a good thing.
--Schmidty
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ReplyDeleteI was once told "The joy of doing a job well is the spice of life". I guess it depends on whether you are making Mexican food or Mediterranean.
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