Eccl
2:9–11
9 Then I became great and increased more than all who
preceded me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also stood by me. 10 All that my
eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any
pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my
reward for all my labor. 11 Thus I considered all my activities which my
hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and
striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.
Below is an article by James Clear.
The Diderot Effect:
Why We Want Things We Don’t Need — And What to Do About It
The famous French philosopher Denis Diderot lived nearly his
entire life in poverty, but that all changed in 1765.
Diderot was 52 years old and his daughter was about to be
married, but he could not afford to provide a dowry. Despite his lack of
wealth, Diderot’s name was well-known because he was the co-founder and writer
of Encyclopédie, one of the most comprehensive encyclopedias of the time.
When Catherine the Great, the emperor of Russia, heard of
Diderot’s financial troubles she offered to buy his library from him for £1000
GBP, which is approximately $50,000 USD in 2015 dollars. Suddenly, Diderot had
money to spare.
Shortly after this lucky sale, Diderot acquired a new scarlet
robe. That’s when everything went wrong.
The Diderot Effect
Diderot’s scarlet robe was beautiful. So beautiful, in fact,
that he immediately noticed how out of place it seemed when surrounded by the
rest of his common possessions. In his words, there was “no more coordination,
no more unity, no more beauty” between his robe and the rest of his items. The
philosopher soon felt the urge to buy some new things to match the beauty of
his robe.
He replaced his old rug with a new one from Damascus. He
decorated his home with beautiful sculptures and a better kitchen table. He
bought a new mirror to place above the mantle and his “straw chair was
relegated to the antechamber by a leather chair.”
These reactionary purchases have become known as the Diderot
Effect.
The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often
creates a spiral of consumption which leads you to acquire more new things. As
a result, we end up buying things that our previous selves never needed to feel
happy or fulfilled.
Denis Diderot as depicted by Louis-Michel van Loo in 1767. In
this painting Diderot is wearing a robe similar to the one that prompted his
famous essay on the Diderot Effect.
Why We Want Things We Don’t Need
Like many others, I have fallen victim to the Diderot Effect. I
recently bought a new car and I ended up purchasing all sorts of additional
things to go inside it. I bought a tire pressure gauge, a car charger for
my cell phone, an extra umbrella, a first aid kit, a pocket knife, a
flashlight, emergency blankets, and even a seatbelt cutting tool.
Allow me to point out that I owned my previous car for nearly 10
years and at no point did I feel that any of the previously mentioned items
were worth purchasing. And yet, after getting my shiny new car, I found myself
falling into the same consumption spiral as Diderot.
You can spot similar behaviors in many other areas of life:
- You buy a new dress and now you have to get shoes and earrings to match.
- You buy a CrossFit membership and soon you’re paying for foam rollers, knee sleeves, wrist wraps, and paleo meal plans.
- You buy your kid an American Girl doll and find yourself purchasing more accessories than you ever knew existed for dolls.
- You buy a new couch and suddenly you’re questioning the layout of your entire living room. Those chairs? That coffee table? That rug? They all gotta go.
Life has a natural tendency to become filled with more. We are
rarely looking to downgrade, to simplify, to eliminate, to reduce. Our natural
inclination is always to accumulate, to add, to upgrade, and to build upon.
In the words of sociology professor Juliet Schor, “the pressure
to upgrade our stock of stuff is relentlessly unidirectional, always
ascending.”
Mastering the Diderot Effect
The Diderot Effect tells us that your life is only going to have
more things fighting to get in it, so you need to to understand how to curate,
eliminate, and focus on the things that matter.
Reduce exposure. Nearly every habit is initiated by a trigger or cue. One
of the quickest ways to reduce the power of the Diderot Effect is to avoid
the habit triggers that
cause it in the first place. Unsubscribe from commercial emails. Call the
magazines that send you catalogs and opt out of their mailings. Meet friends at
the park rather than the mall. Block your favorite shopping websites using
tools like Freedom.
Buy items that fit your current system. You don’t have to start from scratch
each time you buy something new. When you purchase new clothes, look for items
that work well with your current wardrobe. When you upgrade to new electronics,
get things that play nicely with your current pieces so you can avoid buying
new chargers, adapters, or cables.
Set self-imposed limits. Live a carefully constrained life by
creating limitations for you to operate within. Juliet Schor provides a great
example with this quote…
“Imagine the following. A community group in your town organizes
parents to sign a pledge agreeing to spend no more than $50 on athletic shoes
for their children. The staff at your child’s day-care center requests a $75
limit on spending for birthday parties. The local school board rallies
community support behind a switch to school uniforms. The PTA gets 8o percent
of parents to agree to limit their children’s television watching to no more
than one hour per day.
Do you wish someone in your community or at your children’s
school would take the lead in these or similar efforts? I think millions of
American parents do. Television, shoes, clothes, birthday parties, athletic
uniforms-these are areas where many parents feel pressured into allowing their
children to consume at a level beyond what they think is best, want to spend,
or can comfortably afford.”
—Juliet Schor, The Overspent American
Buy One, Give One. Each time you make a new purchase, give something an old
item away. Get a new TV? Give your old one away rather than moving it to
another room. The idea is to prevent your number of items from growing. Always
be curating your life to include only the things that bring you joy and
happiness.
Go one month without buying something new. Don’t allow yourself to buy any new
items for one month. Instead of buying a new lawn mower, rent one from a
neighbor. Get your new shirt from the thrift store rather than the department
store. The more we restrict ourselves, the more resourceful we become.
Let go of wanting things. There will never be a level where you will be done wanting
things. There is always something to upgrade to. Get a new Honda? You can
upgrade to a Mercedes. Get a new Mercedes? You can upgrade to a Bentley. Get a
new Bentley? You can upgrade to a Ferrari. Get a new Ferrari? Have you thought
about buying a private plane? Realize that wanting is just an option your mind
provides, not an order you have to follow.
How to Overcome the Consumption Tendency
Our natural tendency is to consume more, not less. Given this
tendency, I believe that taking active steps to reduce the flow of unquestioned
consumption makes our lives better.
Personally, my goal is not to reduce life to the fewest amount
of things, but to fill it with the optimal amount of things. I hope this
article will help you consider how to do the same.
In Diderot’s words, “Let my example teach you a lesson. Poverty
has its freedoms; opulence has its obstacles.”
FOOTNOTES
FOOTNOTES
- In addition to her payment for the library, Catherine the Great asked Diderot to keep the books until she needed them and offered to pay him a yearly salary to act as her librarian. (Source)
- Diderot’s scarlet robe is frequently described as a gift from a friend. However, I could find no original source claiming it was a gift nor any mention of the friend who supplied the robe. If you happen to know any historians specializing in robe acquisitions, feel free to point them my way so we can clarify the mystery of the source of Diderot’s famous scarlet robe.
- The quotes from Denis Diderot in this article come from his essay, “Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown.”
- “The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need” by Juliet Schor. Chapter 6.
- Thanks to my friend Joshua Becker for originally sparking my interest in the Diderot Effect by writing his own article on the topic.
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