This is the place for exploring ideas. In each issue, Alex from Origin Design will open an idea up for discussion.

“The opposite of love is not hate, but efficiency”

At Origin Design, we love ideas. We also know that the best ideas are those that have been shared, challenged, picked apart and shaken up, so we’ve decided to open the start of an idea for discussion in each issue of World Sweet World.

Here’s the beginning of one that I’ve been looking at through my kaleidoscope of influences lately: “The opposite of love is not hate, but efficiency”

I came across this in a book called ‘the answer to how is yes’ by Peter Block, and thought it was worth consideration. It seems to make sense in some instances but not others.

As I scrubbed dishes furiously and efficiently in the sink, my partner tried to read me poetry and got a kick in the groin for his care. In this case, my efficiency didn’t leave much room for love at all. Context determines so much.

Love takes time and care and it is greatly helped along by a pinch of spontaneity. Is efficiency about the removal of the unpredictable, so that each component (of any action or thing) is finely tuned to do whatever it does in as little time as possible? The dictionary defines efficiency as ‘productive without waste’. In that sense, it has to be an opposite of love doesn’t it? Think how extravagantly wasteful love can be.

And another thought: Love is an emotion – but so is hate. Is efficiency more an absence of emotion?

Can you be efficiently creative?

Then I thought about this point made by my all time favourite blogger, Kathy Sierra:

But this takes us back to the idea of opposites.
What is an opposite…?

Any thinking you may have, I’d love to hear – email: alex@origindesign.co.nz, or post your comments right here. Thanks!