The Value of Stuff

The Human Fire 2.14 - September 8, 2024

Beyond a consumerist view of what we receive and make.

When I was a poor graduate student - is there any other kind of graduate student? - I lived in a neighborhood of Boston delightfully called "the student ghetto." Every September 1st, the apartment leases changed over, and thousands of students, new and old, shuffled around the city to better or worse digs. The sight of hundreds of sweat-and-stuff-filled U-hauls stuck on narrow Boston streets is truly a wonder of modern efficiency.

For the curious bargain hunter or thrift store shopper, this was a great time to pick up new stuff, left out on the curb by frenzied movers who underestimated the size of their truck or how much time they had to vacate. The streets became paved not with gold but mold-filled mattresses, sketchy microwaves, and strange shelving contraptions. All for free to the discerning street raider.

Ah, so much stuff! Every time I moved I promised myself I'd have less stuff the next time. Eventually I got a house and stopped moving.

There is, without doubt, far too much stuff in the world, and likely most of it is junk. But not all of it. I suspect that we'd have much less of the junk if we truly understood the value of what nature provides, and what we make from what we receive.

Oxygen

"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."

~ Frédéric Chopin, pianist and composer

I became a cat owner late in life and came to understand what millions of other pet lovers, and parents too, already knew: all those fancy, whizz-bang toys you bought for them are completely uninteresting. An old cardboard box, a simple red laser dot scampering across the floor - this is the stuff that delights.

Fuel

Our world contains two primary streams of stuff - the stuff nature gives us, and the stuff we make from that stuff. Architect and Cradle to Cradle author Bill McDonough calls these the biological and technical streams, both of which are made up of nutrients. You could also think of these nutrient flows in the chemical sense - organic or synthetic. The point is that each flow can be reused and remade endlessly within that flow.

Just don't cross the streams. (Ghostbusters, anyone?!)

Crossing the streams produces what McDonough aptly calls monstrous hybrids. This is the stuff you can never get rid of. And boy is there a lot of it.

T-shirts made with cotton and synthetic fibers. Weird combo packaging of cardboard and plastic. Basically plastic with anything that comes from nature. It's a junky mess; just look at our oceans and beaches.

What that stuff does is twist the value of the streams into something less valuable and unusable. If stuff has a point, it's to be used, and useful, for human tasks without detriment.

If only all our stuff were that valuable.

I'm not much of a collector. I saved some old Star Wars toys from childhood for which my son has displayed only passing interest. I led a somewhat monkish, sparse existence before I became a husband and father. I valued simplicity - and still do. If the whole Marie Kondo "spark joy" phenomenon had occurred twenty years ago, I might have said, "Yeah...don't buy stuff that doesn't add to your life - especially stuff you don't need."

But, truth be told, what I did collect was books. I worked at a bookstore after college and built my library with a paycheck and 30% discount. Almost all my moving accessories were book boxes.

I would tell you there's a good reason for having this particular type of stuff. The book, after all, is arguably the most successful piece of technology humans have ever created. It's durable. It's portable. And it packs power in its words. Value upon value.

But I also just delight in books. Stories and wisdom and imagination. Knowledge and beauty and hope. You can never have too much of those, which for me means you can never have too many books. (Just make sure you have bookshelves!)

Heat

Minimalism - a sort of secular gospel of less accumulation - has had a run of popularity in recent years, especially with the pandemic forcing us to consider what we need when we can't get it. (Toilet paper, I'm looking at you!) Has it captured your imagination? How different is it from, say, Thoreau's attempt to live deliberately or the 1960's counter-culture movement captured by John Lennon's "imagine no possessions"?

What do you really need from your stuff, and how much stuff do you really need? And what of that stuff is truly valuable? Leo Tolstoy, in his haunting short story How Much Land Does a Man Need? had an answer: all the land a man needs is a plot six feet long and six feet under.

Next week I'll continue this series on value with a look at the value of stories. If there are particular narratives - or particular possessions - you hold dear, hit reply and tell me about them.

Until next week, I'll see you down the path.

Chad

HumanWealth Partners

P.O. Box 1486, Newburyport MA 01950
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