Our necessities never equal our wants

said Benjamin Franklin, apparently. It speaks to me at the moment, as does Oscar Romero's admonition to us to "aspire not to have more, but to be more".




I think lots of people might argue this is a feature of modern, capitalist, aspirational society and part of how we got our economy into such a state. I don't necessarily disagree - and I don't want to lose the moral challenge to an assumption that consuming more will make me/things 'better'. I used to have the postcard above on my bedroom door as a teenager, it's now framed and shortly to go on the wall of my grown-up house.

But I do also think that wanting more than we have (and more than we think we can get) has been a powerful force for change, and often for making things better, easier, fairer.