“How much money is enough?” somebody once asked John D. Rockefeller. John was the first ever American billionaire, and was also the world’s richest man at one point. He is still considered by many to have been the richest man in modern history, because he was a billionaire in the early 1900s.
“Just a little bit more,” was his answer.
More, and then some more!
The size of the average American home was 1000 square feet a few decades ago. It is now almost 2500 square feet. Our garages, basements, and attics are bulging with stuff.
Households in the US owed a total of $11.83 trillion at the end of 2014, up $117 billion as compared to the previous quarter (estimated by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York).
And yet we want more.
Do you need it?
Who care anymore about need!
Necessity used to be the mother of invention. Now, invention is the mother of necessity. How did we ever get along without this gizmo in the past, we ask ourselves in the store, while whipping out our credit cards.
Yet, a report estimated that 85 million phones were lying unused in the UK in 2013.
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
-Marcus Tulius Cicero
I want it!
“It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.”
-Bertrand Russell, 1872
“Contentment comes not so much from great wealth as from few wants.”
-Epictetus, 55 AD
Cost of stuff
We pay for things with money at the store. Then we pay some more. Personal storage revenues in the US are over $24 billion a year. Some of this storage is short term, but a lot of stuff languishes in these “warehouses’ for months, if not years. Stuff we thought we needed enough to shell out money for in the first place.
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
So why do we buy things?
One-upmanship is part of the answer.
“My house is bigger than yours, my car is bigger than yours, my wife is prettier than yours. So I am a better man than you, buddy,” we seem to be shouting, figuratively, from the rooftops.
Sense of power
In ancient times, the chief of the tribe was the man with the most camels, or goats, or oxen, or whatever. His possessions were the symbols of his power. He was the one to establish rules for the tribe to follow. He also, more often than not, had the opportunity to mate with the woman of his choice, and often more than one.
Even today, the rich and powerful (aren’t they the same?) seem to play from a different rulebook.
Envy
This green-eyed monster has more control over our lives than we care to admit. Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the chief reasons for human unhappiness.
The feeling of envy arises when a person sees a quality or possession that somebody else has, and wishes that either he or she acquires it, too, or that the other person loses it.
Many a person has bought a boat, a car, or jewelry, based on envy, and then regretted it.
Aristotle defined envy as “the pain caused by the good fortune of others.”
Envy is often the result of poor self-esteem. The envious person feels empty inside. The Latin term invidia for envy means “non-sight.” Envious people are often blind to their own qualities and covet those in others.
Happiness
People buy stuff, convinced that this will make them happy. They refuse to acknowledge the rather obvious fact that things are transient. Material possessions fade, lose their shine, malfunction, and eventually disintegrate. Where is the happiness in that?
Security
A well rounded person feels secure in himself or herself. People lacking that sense of mooring wander from object to object, wrapping themselves in blankets of possessions, seeking in external objects a value that can only come from within.
Loneliness/emotional response
It is said that when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. The truth is slightly different. Lots of people try to apply the balm of material goods to hide the pain they feel inside: whether it is loneliness, or emotional loss. We all know how that turns out.
Advertisements
We live in a consumer society. Data indicate that we consume twice as many material goods than we did fifty years ago.
The market place is flooded with goods and products churned out by factories all over the world. Media outlets of all kinds have a responsibility to make sure that we buy that stuff, whether we need it or not.
The average person in the US is exposed to at least 5000 ads daily. Businesses pay for ads, because they work. And the consumer society goes on, leaving people, for the most part, no happier than before.
We are selfish and greedy
Not much needs to be said about that. Selfishness is a survival mechanism for the species. Carried to extremes, however, it becomes counter-productive.
So what now?
Shop till you drop is bad for human happiness. It leaves people emotionally drained.
We need to simplify our lives.
For that, we need clarity of thought.
More on that in subsequent posts. Please stay tuned.