It is no easy task to find the middle in everything... but to do this to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy.
ARISTOTLE
You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It's very hard to be medium.
JEFF BEZOS
The title of this post is a variation on the title of E.F. Schumacher's book, Small Is Beautiful. I really like that book and agree with many of its arguments and conclusions. Size does matter, but I find you can be too big but also be too small. No one really praises the virtues of the medium size. It is seen as the compromise. In a culture that loves extremes, medium is the red headed stepchild that gets no love. I love medium.
A great example of medium is beautiful is the United States Marine Corps. The US Army has almost 500,000 active personnel. It is the behemoth of the armed forces. The Air Force and the Navy have similar sizes. The Navy SEALs are approximately a little less than 3000 active personnel and represents less than 1% of the US Navy. Between these extremes is the Marine Corps with a little less than 200,000 active personnel. The Marines would be the medium sized force between the behemoth Army and the tiny SEAL force. Both SEALs and Marines belong to the US Navy, but they are their own things. Their respective sizes are assets for their respective missions.
I am fond of the Marine Corps precisely because they are not as big as the other branches. Consequently, they eschew attrition warfare in favor of maneuver warfare. The Marines punch above their weight class and give opposing forces major headaches. I like that sort of thing. Because they are medium, they are the tip of the spear. They can move rapidly into a combat situation while the Army is still putting on its boots. Unlike the SEALs with their surgical strike missions, the Marines just maul the hell out of the enemy. They have enough size to get the job done.
A similar example of medium is the caliber debate. 9 mm is the small caliber. It is easy to shoot and increases magazine capacity. It is not effective as a bullet as I've watched videos of police officers trying to take out perps with this round, and it didn't go well. The 10mm is the big caliber and will take down a grizzly bear. The problem is that it is so big that the recoil is difficult to manage and the penetration may extend beyond the body to an innocent bystander. You want that penetration for a large animal but not for a human being. The compromise round is the 40 S&W. It gets no love but occupies the sweet spot between small and big. It was popular for a time with the FBI, the US Marshals, and other law enforcement agencies but has lost that popularity. I think this is a real shame. It's not easy being medium.
The real estate market is another area where I see the same thing taking place. At the large end of the spectrum, you have McMansions that are between 3000 and 5000 square feet. On the small end of the spectrum, you have tiny homes that are 100 to 400 square feet. The tiny home movement was a response to the McMansion craze and skyrocketing housing prices. The medium size would be the ranch style homes they built in the 1980s that are between 1000 and 2500 square feet typically. I believe those medium sized homes are awesome. They are not too big and not too small. They are just right. Goldilocks would be happy in a ranch house.
I remember trying to sell the wife on the idea of living in a tiny home, and she impolitely informed me that she was not shitting in a bucket. (Tiny homes generally use a composting toilet design which is a bucket full of sawdust and poop.) Her telling me this put me on the path to medium sized living. She didn't need to live in a palace, but she did insist on living in the first world not the third world.
I go for the medium size on everything now. When I get a drink from Taco Bell, I pick the medium size cup. We own medium sized vehicles not tiny bubble cars or Sherman tank SUVs and trucks. We don't watch movies on large screen TV sets or on the small screen of a smartphone. We have medium sized screens on our portable DVD player, the PC, and our Chromebooks. My portion size for food is enough to cure my hunger but not more than that. I am not into feasting anymore. My wardrobe is neither minimalist nor maximalist.
I am not sure where the extremist impulse comes from. My wife and I both agree that this extremism is a very American phenomenon. I confess to being an extremist on various things at certain points in my life. Now, I strive to be as boring as I can which means going for the medium size in everything. In this way, I am living the Golden Mean of Aristotle and Aquinas. The hardest part of this lifestyle is having to think about it. The luxury of extremism is that you don't have to think about it at all. More is more. Less is more. Medium is something else.
UPDATE: I remember geeking out a bit on the topic of body type. What is the ideal type of body for a man? Is it the skeletal frame of a marathoner or the bulked out wall of meat of a bodybuilder? Plus, I don't see being excessively tall as being an asset anywhere outside of the NBA. Some douchebag corporate types might use height as some kind of intimidation strategy, but that psychology doesn't work on me.
I concluded that the ideal body type for a man is between 5 foot 5 inches to 6 foot tall on the height thing and between 180 to 220 for the weight thing. A guy shouldn't be a midget or a giant. He shouldn't be skinny or fat. He needs to be solid in the muscle department. Guys like Joe Rogan, Mike Tyson, and Jack LaLanne have that ideal body type in my estimation. I was inclined to include rugby players, but they are on the tall side.
What hit me is that these guys are medium. They are in the middle when it comes to height, weight, and muscle composition. There are some things you can't change in life like your height. But you can change your weight and muscle composition to a certain extent. To that extent, I think men should aim to be medium. Medium is beautiful.
