(Paul Graham)
vo: Stuff
July 2007
I have too much stuff. Most people in America too. In fact, most people are poor, they seem to have more stuff. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can not pile up old cars outside his home.
It was not always been like that. There was a time when things were rare and precious. One can still see evidence if it is sought. For example, in my house in Cambridge, which was built in 1876, the rooms have no closets. In those days, the stuff people kept in a dresser drawer. Even as recently as a few decades ago, there was a lot less stuff. When I see pictures of the 1970s, I am amazed how the houses seem empty. Child, I had what I thought was a huge fleet of small cars, but they are dwarfed by the number of toys What my nephews. All together, my Matchbox Corgi and I took about a third of the surface of my bed. In the rooms of my nephews, the bed is the only empty space.
The stuff has become much cheaper, but our attitudes towards them have not changed accordingly. We overvalue the stuff.
was a big problem for me when I had no money. I felt poor, and stuff seemed valuable, so almost instinctively I accumulated. My friends left something behind when they moved, or something I saw when I walked down the street one night bins (be careful what we agree to describe as "In perfect condition"), or I found something in near mint to a tenth of its price on sale in a garage. And blam, even more stuff.
In fact, these things free or nearly free business not because they were worth even less than what they cost. Most of the stuff I accumulated was worthless, because I did not need it.
What I did not understand was that the value of some new acquisition was not the difference between its selling price and what I paid for it. It was the value that I pulled. The stuff is extremely illiquid asset. At least we had any plan to sell this precious thing we had for so little, what difference does it make, what it 'worth'? The only way we will derive the value is to use it. And if we do not use it now, it likely never will.
companies that sell stuff have spent huge sums to train ourselves to think that stuff is still valuable. But it would be nearer the truth to treat stuff as worthless.
In fact, worse than without value, because once you have accumulated a certain amount of stuff, they start you own rather than the reverse. I heard about a couple who could not retire in the town they preferred because they could not afford a home big enough for all their stuff. Their house is not theirs and is their stuff.
And unless you are very organized, a house full of stuff can be very depressing. A cluttered room saps the spirit. One reason, obviously, there is less room for people in a room full of stuff. But it's not just that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what surrounds them. And the more the scene is hard to analyze, there is less energy for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.
(This may explain why the bulk does not seem to interfere with kids and adults alike. Children are less perceptive. They built a cruder model of their environment, and it consumes less energy.)
I am first realized the value zero stuff when I lived in Italy for one year. All that I took with me was a large backpack of stuff. The rest of my stuff, I left behind me in the cellar of my owner in the United States. And you know what? Anything that I missed were a few books. The end of the year came, I could not even remember what else I had stored in the cellar.
And yet, when I got home, I did not even separate from the equivalent of a box. Take a rotary phone in perfect condition? I might need it someday.
What makes me really bad in retrospect, is not only that I had accumulated all this useless stuff, but I had often spent money I desperately needed in things that I did not need.
Why would I do that? Because people whose job is to sell you stuff is really, really good at it. The base type 25 is a boon for companies that have spent years researching how to spend money for stuff. They make the experience of buying stuff so nice that the "shopping" becomes a hobby.
How to protect against these people? It can not be easy. I am a skeptical person, and their tricks on me walked up to the thirty well advanced. But one thing that might work is to ask yourself before buying something: "Is it going to make my life noticeably better?"
A friend of mine has recovered from a habit of buying Clothing wondering before buying anything: "Is what I'll wear it all the time?" If she could not quite believe that something she thought would buy one of those rare things she wore all the time, she did not buy. I think it would work for any type of purchase. Before buying something, ask: Is it'll be something I use constantly? Or just something cool? Or worse yet, a simple case?
The worst stuff on this side are the stuff that does not use much because it's too good. Nothing like the stuff you have fragile. For example, the "good china" held by many households, and whose dominant quality is not as it is fun to use, but we must be especially careful not to break.
Another way to resist acquiring stuff is to think of the overall cost of their detention. The purchase price is only the beginning. We'll have to think this thing for years - perhaps for the rest of a lifetime. Anything that holds it deprives you of energy. Some give more than they do. Those are the only things they are worthy to have.
I now stopped accumulating stuff. Apart from books - but books are different. The books are more like a fluid than individual objects. This is not particularly embarrassing to hold several thousand pounds, whereas if you owned several thousand random possessions, it would be a local celebrity. But apart from the books, now I avoid the stuff actively. If I want to spend money to make me happy, I will take a thousand times of services rather than goods.
I'm not trying to argue this because I accomplished something so Zen detachment from material things. I'm talking about something more mundane. A historic change is in place, and I am now aware. The tips were once valuable and now they are no longer.
In industrialized countries, the same thing happened with food in the middle of the twentieth century. When food was less expensive (or as we become richer, it is indistinguishable), eating too has started to become a much greater danger than eating too little. We have now reached that point with stuff. For most people, rich or poor, things have become a burden.
The good news is that if one carries a burden without knowing it, you can have a better life than we think. Imagine, you walk for years with five pounds of weight on the ankle, and then suddenly you remove them.
0 comments:
Post a Comment