To affirm or imply that “more is less” has distinct Orwellian connotations. I wonder if anyone can seriously argue that more is less, or that less is more, in any area of life. Even pre-school children can figure out that more ice cream is preferable to less ice cream, and more cookies preferable to fewer cookies.
In philosophy, some modern gurus try to get away with anti-mathematical statements, but their arguments are normally met with intense scepticism. For the average person, it is obvious that more is more and less is less, and no amount of verbal mystification will make them think otherwise.
In the West, Taoism is sometimes presented as the doctrine that maintains that less is more. I can only assume that such a distorted characterization aims at making Taoists look foolish.
Did Lao-Tzu actually say that less is more? No, not in those exact terms, but he viewed the non-action principle as a crucial element of his philosophy. The non-action principle does not say that less is more, but that a narrow focus leads to far better results.
In terms of my prior example, Lao-Tzu did not say that less ice cream is better than more ice cream, but that we can make more ice cream with less effort if we stop doing other things at the same time.
Dead weight
When it comes to attaining happiness, the Taoist non-action principle plays a decisive role. It prompts us to define priorities clearly, drop secondary issues, and focus our efforts on the key steps.
Yang-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu used the non-action principle in many of their stories to illustrate the need of letting go of dead weight; they never said that less is more, but that we should let go of unpromising projects and do only what works.
https://johnvespasian.com/happiness-and-the-taoist-non-action-principle/
