I have seen television commercials of household chemical producers stating that their company prides itself on releasing new versions of a product only when the consumer can tell a marked difference in quality. However, when I go to the local shopping emporium, I’m given dozens of laundry soap alternatives, and to be honest I can’t tell the difference between any of them. It may be because even the best is only incrementally superior, or it could be (and more likely is) because I just have never had a deep-seeded love for either laundry or fashion. I.E. I don’t pay attention to differences in things I don’t really care about.

The same holds true for technology. I have a working radio and a pile of CDs that I never listen to, incremental changes in MP3/iTunes/downloading quality don’t mean anything to me. I don’t know what makes a BluRay (sp?) disk better than a DVD, and I doubt I’ll ever feel the need to find out. It’s not that I don’t like music or movies, they just are not the most important things in my life, and second best really is good enough for my needs (or wants).

This is not to say that I’m cheap, or that I live an Amish (luxery-adverse) lifestyle. In the past two weeks I spent $600 on playground equipment for my children to play with in my backyard, and another $400 on fancy tiles so I could decorate a table and chair set for my patio. I’m not interested in a hand-held machine negating my ability to read a hard-copy map or to use my own common sense, but I am interested in creating and maintaining a hospitable environment for myself, and those with lives touching mine. Sometimes choosing second-best in one aspect of life is not settling, but necessary in achieving excellence elsewhere.

PS-I actually intended this comment to appear under “On Choosing the Inferior”, but I wasn’t able to post on that page.