I have never forgotten a story I heard over 50 years ago. A guy I worked with had an epiphany (perhaps inspired by something he read, perhaps by psychedelics) and decided to divest himself immediately of all his material belongings, which he did in the days following his revelation: car, bike, books, record albums, artwork — everything but the clothes on his back.
But then he glanced down at his beautiful brass belt buckle in the shape of a turtle (perhaps a Carl Tasha creation) and just couldn’t give it up. Couldn’t do it. He could not in fact free himself from all material possessions. A year later, he said, he had reacquired everything he had given up — and then some.
Such, it seems, is human nature, at least since the dawn of agriculture roughly 12,000 years ago, when people first had the opportunity to pile up belongings. Hunter-gatherers had to be continually on the move, and as you know if you have been through it, “move” is the original four-letter word. When you move you are confronted with all your things.
Or as George Carlin calls it: stuff. In his brilliant four-minute riff “A Place for My Stuff,” Carlin describes the meaning of life as “trying to find a place to keep your stuff.” He defines a house as “a pile of stuff with a cover on it.”
Carlin may or may not have been directly influenced by Walden, in which Thoreau asks us to consider “how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary,” admiring the simple dwellings of Native Americans and even suggesting, perhaps only half-facetiously, that a man should just have a big crate to crawl into at night rather than bust his butt to build and maintain a house in which he spends so little time. (Of course, Thoreau was a bachelor.) A man thinks he owns his house, he said, but it is the house that owns him.
So here we are. How many of us have more than one house? How many have houses so big there are rooms that are rarely or never used? How many have more than one car when with a little coordination one would do? How about two refrigerators? How many have so much food in your enormous refrigerator that a good portion is thrown away? (At least 30 percent of food, from farm to table, is wasted.)
How many of us have so many clothes that we can’t even account for them all? How many have books overflowing their shelves, electronic gear that is replicated by more electronic gear (how many get the newest iPhone just because it is the newest iPhone), extra kayaks and surfboards and fishing rods and pickleball paddles and bicycles? How many have so much stuff that we must rent a storage unit to contain it all? Storage units are a massive growth industry. And there are now self-help gurus for “decluttering” — because it involves a task beyond many people’s natural abilities: to throw stuff away.
And it is not just things. How many of us drive around just to relax? How many fly all over the world? The effect of air travel on global emissions has doubled in the last 20 years, and cars and trucks (including those Amazon Prime carriers bringing stuff to your door) are huge contributors to climate change as well.
Our planet is in crisis for two basic reasons related to human behavior: overpopulation and overconsumption. In this country, we are not guilty of the first; in fact, our birth rates have been steadily declining for years. But we are the world champions of overconsumption. The average American consumes 20 or 30 times more than a Bangladeshi. (Although the rest of the world is intent on catching up to us.) At its core, consumption is deeply connected to materialism, the need to acquire things, which makes us feel more … whole.
What do we do about it? Materialism is part of our nature. The best we can do is acknowledge this and try to keep it in perspective. Having things is like tending a fire: kept in control, it can be beneficial (like a really good pair of socks) and even lifesaving. But if it is out of control, we end up ruled by our belongings.
As Thoreau told us 170 years ago in Walden: “Simplify.”
