The posts I've been doing lately on Stuff are really about my desparation to regain control of my own
Showing posts with label stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stuff. Show all posts
6.14.2010
Stuff
enough already!
The posts I've been doing lately on Stuff are really about my desparation to regain control of my ownhouse life. I can't do much painting and decorating until I get rid of the stuff. Tons of it. Right now I'm tackling this porch dump, ponderings of which were shared with you here. I suspect most people would look at this and think "horrors!" but I look at it and think "what I couldn't do with this!" Problem is, I've been thinking that for a few twelve years already. It's time.
The posts I've been doing lately on Stuff are really about my desparation to regain control of my own
6.10.2010
Stuff
you've got junkmail
Fact:
More than 183 billion unwanted messages clog computer networks every day.
Fact:
It's all my fault. I hoard. Emails I get, emails I send, emails I have yet to send, and tons of stuff I've filed in my Drafts folder for future use. What a pile of stuff. I'm as guilty as an oil rigger in slick water.
At this point in time I have precisely 604 email drafts and I'm keepin em all. There is, however, another kind of email stuff I don't want - the kinda stuff I'd love to stuff. Spam. Clutters things up, slows things down, and some of it can cause a hella damage. Some of it's cute, but it's all a bucket of bullstuff. Plug your nose...
Most of it is crap advertising. But, to be honest, you and I generate a good deal of it ourselves. So there's a good deal you and I can do about it.
At the very least, we could make an effort to hide or remove personal addresses when emailing. Before re-forwarding, always highlight and delete the headers that contain the addresses. Don't miss the embedded ones (those emails that open one within another within another) every one has a header. Open them all the way to the original message, forward that one, but highlight and delete the personal addresses first. It's that simple.
Whenever you send an email to multiple recipients, hide their addresses by sending blind copies (BCC); otherwise every single address will go to every single recipient, multiple times over, leaving them vulnerable to spammers. Spammers love that stuff. They want it bad.
Or stop forwarding altogether. Especially an email that tells you to send it to everyone you know. Don't. Just don't. That's a honkin bright red flag.
If, however, you can't resist forwarding something - maybe because it sounds really really important - then check it out first. There are a number of reliable and perfectly lovely websites devoted to fact checking this stuff. Most email claims are totally bogus and these sites can prove it. They've already done the work for you, so cut to the chase and use them. Within moments, you can return a highly intelligent, brilliantly informed response before the sender even arises from his computer. Or just Google a few words from the email. There will be an answer. Let it be.
One good fact-checking website is Snopes, the oldest on the Internet. Snopes has become a legend unto themselves and so effective at busting hoaxes, the hoaxsters have tried to hoax Snopes. Read Snopes Under Fire. Funny stuff.
Here are the sites I've saved to my own Favorites for verification or general information. I use them all for cross-checking and for varying points of view.
Snopes
Truth or Fiction
About.com: Urban Legends
Break the Chain
FactCheck.org
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Wikipedia: E-mail Spam
Spam Abuse
BACN - SPAM: The Next Generation
ChoiceMail - 100% of Junk Email Gone
Damn Spam
I could go on and on about this stuff, but I'll save you the ordeal by turning you over to those who know their stuff.
There's one more thing I've learned about email stuff. Forget about sending it if it's political, no matter how accurate, to people of another persuasion. Nothing enters a closed mind. The tiniest crack might crumble their entire world. You can't expect people to give up everything they've ever believed in.
But there's one thing I think we can all agree on - politicians tell whoppers. FactCheck.org is a site that focuses specifically on the claims that politicians make. During campaign time this site is smokin'. This is the site you'll see quoted by the media after televised political debates.
Wikipedia says about it: FactCheck.org is a non-partisan, nonprofit website that describes itself as a "'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation. Most of its content consists of rebuttals to what it considers inaccurate, misleading, or false claims by politicians. FactCheck has also targeted misleading claims from various partisan groups.
On that note, I'll leave you with a recent article from Salon.com that compares Democrat and Republican mud-slinging. Interesting stuff.
Fact:
More than 183 billion unwanted messages clog computer networks every day.
Fact:
It's all my fault. I hoard. Emails I get, emails I send, emails I have yet to send, and tons of stuff I've filed in my Drafts folder for future use. What a pile of stuff. I'm as guilty as an oil rigger in slick water.
At this point in time I have precisely 604 email drafts and I'm keepin em all. There is, however, another kind of email stuff I don't want - the kinda stuff I'd love to stuff. Spam. Clutters things up, slows things down, and some of it can cause a hella damage. Some of it's cute, but it's all a bucket of bullstuff. Plug your nose...
Wikipedia: Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.
In addition to wasting people's time with unwanted e-mail, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth.
Spam can be used to spread computer viruses, trojan horses or other malicious software. The objective may be identity theft, or worse (e.g., advance fee fraud). Some spam attempts to capitalize on human greed whilst other attempts to use the victims' inexperience with computer technology to trick them (e.g., phishing).
The European Union's Internal Market Commission estimated in 2001 that "junk e-mail" cost Internet users €10 billion per year worldwide. The California legislature found that spam cost United States organizations alone more than $13 billion in 2007, including lost productivity and the additional equipment, software, and manpower needed to combat the problem. Spam's direct effects include the consumption of computer and network resources, and the cost in human time and attention of dismissing unwanted messages.
In addition, spam has costs stemming from the kinds of spam messages sent, from the ways spammers send them, and from the arms race between spammers and those who try to stop or control spam. In addition, there are the opportunity costs of those who forgo the use of spam-afflicted systems. There are the direct costs, as well as the indirect costs borne by the victims—both those related to the spamming itself, and to other crimes that usually accompany it, such as financial theft, identity theft, data and intellectual property theft, virus and other malware infection, child pornography, fraud, and deceptive marketing.
Most of it is crap advertising. But, to be honest, you and I generate a good deal of it ourselves. So there's a good deal you and I can do about it.
At the very least, we could make an effort to hide or remove personal addresses when emailing. Before re-forwarding, always highlight and delete the headers that contain the addresses. Don't miss the embedded ones (those emails that open one within another within another) every one has a header. Open them all the way to the original message, forward that one, but highlight and delete the personal addresses first. It's that simple.
Whenever you send an email to multiple recipients, hide their addresses by sending blind copies (BCC); otherwise every single address will go to every single recipient, multiple times over, leaving them vulnerable to spammers. Spammers love that stuff. They want it bad.
Or stop forwarding altogether. Especially an email that tells you to send it to everyone you know. Don't. Just don't. That's a honkin bright red flag.
If, however, you can't resist forwarding something - maybe because it sounds really really important - then check it out first. There are a number of reliable and perfectly lovely websites devoted to fact checking this stuff. Most email claims are totally bogus and these sites can prove it. They've already done the work for you, so cut to the chase and use them. Within moments, you can return a highly intelligent, brilliantly informed response before the sender even arises from his computer. Or just Google a few words from the email. There will be an answer. Let it be.
One good fact-checking website is Snopes, the oldest on the Internet. Snopes has become a legend unto themselves and so effective at busting hoaxes, the hoaxsters have tried to hoax Snopes. Read Snopes Under Fire. Funny stuff.
Here are the sites I've saved to my own Favorites for verification or general information. I use them all for cross-checking and for varying points of view.
Snopes
Truth or Fiction
About.com: Urban Legends
Break the Chain
FactCheck.org
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Wikipedia: E-mail Spam
Spam Abuse
BACN - SPAM: The Next Generation
ChoiceMail - 100% of Junk Email Gone
Damn Spam
I could go on and on about this stuff, but I'll save you the ordeal by turning you over to those who know their stuff.
How to Deal with an Email Hoax or Urban Legend
By dcole at eHow
I love my friends and I appreciate that they want to pass on information that might keep me safe. But oh how I dislike those mass forwarded emails of internet hoaxes that masquerade as important information. You get them too, I'm sure. Do you forward them on? Please don't! Here's the responsible thing to do when you get one of these hoax emails that seem to be information.
1. Learn to recongize the signs of a hoax.
Does the email seem urgent?
Is some expert quoted?
Is your health or safety (or your family's or your computer's) threatened?
Is a seemingly helpful solution to a problem (one you didn't even think of) suggested?
Are you encouraged to send it to everyone you know?
Red flag alert! One of the reasons these hoaxes are perpetuated is because they sound so likely. There is often a grain of truth in the story, or if not, it sounds like it could be true. That's no reason to believe it, nor is your trust in your friend a good reason to believe it. If your friend jumped off a cliff would you follow him? (Do I sound like your mother? well she was right about this!)
2. Check it out. Never, and I mean NEVER forward an email of this type without checking out the information yourself. Even if it has a quote from Snopes in it, don't believe it. Go to Snopes.com or Google a few words from the email and see if it has been reported as a hoax or urban legend.
It is amazing how few people take the responsibility of checking on the information that they so eagerly pass on to their friends. This is how rumors, gossip, and viruses spread. These emails are an information virus and you don't want to be one of the perpetuators who spread it around. There's no excuse for this, honestly.
3. Reply all. Now that you've discovered that the forwarded email is a hoax, don't just ignore it. Think of all those gullible, well-meaning and (yes) lazy people who your friend sent this to who are now passing it forward. This must be stopped. Go to the email, and choose Reply All (not just reply to your friend). Write a friendly (really try not to be hostile, superior, accusatory or spiteful now) little note about the falsity of the information and include a link to Snopes.com, preferably the link to the page debunking this particular false claim.
"Hi hon, Thank you for the email but it raised some red flags with me so I checked it out at Snopes.com [place URL here] and found that it's a hoax. You might want to spread the word back to the person who sent this to you so that hoaxes like these can be stopped. Your friend,"
4. Feel good. You've done a good deed today, debunking falsity and promoting responsibility. Yay you!
5. Once in a while you may get one of these and not find it on Snopes (highly unlikely but let's say it's possible). Consider carefully before forwarding it. Does it help your friends to know this if it IS true? If it is false, will it hurt your friends to believe it's true? What about that coughing for a heart attack thing? Would it save a life or could it make things worse? Check it out, then use some common sense. If you've received this as a forwarded email, chances are so has Snopes and there's a report.
6. And what if it's TRUE? What about not using cruise control in the rain? (this one is true). Check it out, and if it turns out to be true, go ahead and share it. You can even mention that you've checked it out with Snopes and give the link for your not-so-lazy friends. If you exercise this kind of responsible action, your friends will learn to trust the information you pass on, which will be good for all of us.
Understanding E-Mail Hoaxes
The University of California: Educational Computing
In general it is considered very bad form to forward a message on to a large number of people. Many Internet Service Providers will go so far as to remove your account if you do this, even if you believe it is for a good cause. If just one person responds to you they will respond to the entire list! We have seen this create thousands of angry e-mail messages in a matter of hours.
Any e-mail that is from an organization trying to effect a change should refer to a specific URL where you can go to sign a petition or to make your voice heard. The problem with the Internet is that even if the request is legitimate the message is likely to circulate for months, if not years, after the messages intended date has passed.
Symantec's Anti-Virus Research Center Virus Hoax Page
A Big List of Hoax Sites from Yahoo
US-CERT Vulnerability Notes Database
About.com's Urban Legends and Virus Hoax Pages
How to Confirm an Email's Authenticity
By Paul Gil, About.com Guide
There are four common kinds of email hoaxes:
Fake Photos (Hands of God, sharks eating helicopters, monster cats)
Chain Letters (threats, requests, promises of money)
Mythical Stories, (public warnings, shocking narratives, outlandish claims)
Outright Scams ("phishing" and phone schemes attempting to access your finances)
In all cases, your response should routinely be:
Be skeptical.
Resist the urge to click the link or forward the message.
Do your homework and confirm the message.
For email stories, photos, and chain letters: do not forward the email. Even if the nature of the email story makes it seem urgent and time-sensitive, resist the urge to forward it. As compelling as that mermaid photo or that Microsoft promise of $400 can be, take 10 minutes and confirm it first. You will save yourself embarassment in front of your savvy friends, and you will help stop the spread of damaging email rumors.
For emails that ask you to confirm your bank or ebay identify: never respond or click the link. A legitimate bank would never ask for your identity via an email link. Instead: immediately close all browser windows, and then use either a newly-launched browser, or pick up the telephone, and check your bank personally to confirm the identity request. This kind of cautious response is very important to thwart these clever email scammers. Whenever you receive a "phishing" email (fake email attempting to lure you into giving your eBay or bank account and PIN), NEVER click on the link. These scammers are trying to lure you into typing your account number and password! Read more about phishing scams here.
Free resources for researching/confirming an email's authenticity:
Phishing and Email Scams (banking, eBay, Paypal)
The Top Reported Email Hoaxes and Viruses This Month
The Top 25 Urban Legends This Month
Current "Netlore" Hoaxes and Myths
The Top Fake Photos This Month
Snopes: Scam and Phishing Schemes Report
The Straight Dope: Search The Myth Archives
DOE - Computer Incident Advisory Capability
"Google" the Email Subject
There's one more thing I've learned about email stuff. Forget about sending it if it's political, no matter how accurate, to people of another persuasion. Nothing enters a closed mind. The tiniest crack might crumble their entire world. You can't expect people to give up everything they've ever believed in.
But there's one thing I think we can all agree on - politicians tell whoppers. FactCheck.org is a site that focuses specifically on the claims that politicians make. During campaign time this site is smokin'. This is the site you'll see quoted by the media after televised political debates.
Wikipedia says about it: FactCheck.org is a non-partisan, nonprofit website that describes itself as a "'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation. Most of its content consists of rebuttals to what it considers inaccurate, misleading, or false claims by politicians. FactCheck has also targeted misleading claims from various partisan groups.
On that note, I'll leave you with a recent article from Salon.com that compares Democrat and Republican mud-slinging. Interesting stuff.
The Party of No ... Credibility
A look at Snopes.com shows rumors about Obama to be more numerous and vicious than the ones about Bush were.
This post originally appeared on J.L. Bell's blog Oz and Ends.
Salon.com Apr 23, 2010
American right-wing leaders are responding to complaints about their adherents’ insults, threats, and acts of violence by claiming that such problems occur on the left as well. Of course, they don’t dare to compare and quantify such behavior. That would mean acknowledging that, for example, Congressional historians find no precedent for Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouting at the president during a joint session of Congress. Or that there was a disturbing spike in death threats to the president in the months after President Barack Obama took office.
To keep on top of urban myths of all kinds, I subscribe to the Snopes.com update list, and I noticed a pattern there that I thought deserved to be examined more arithmetically. It struck me I was seeing a lot more rumors about President Obama, and a lot more false rumors, than I remembered from earlier years. So I ran the numbers, as of this week.
After eight years in the White House (with Snopes.com around all that time), George W. Bush has been the subject of 47 internet rumors. After less than two years in office, Barack Obama has been the subject of 87, or nearly twice as many.
Even more telling is the relative accuracy of those stories. For Bush, 20 rumors, or 43%, are true. Only 17, or 36%, are false. The remainder are of mixed veracity (4), undetermined (4), or unclassifiable (2).
In contrast, for Obama only 8 of the 87 rumors, or 9%, are true, and a whopping 59, or 68%, are whoppers. There are 17 of mixed veracity and 3 undetermined.
I delved down to the stories that the site designates as a mixture of truth and falsehood. For Obama, in many cases the truth is innocuous while the lie reflects poorly on the President, particularly photographs that are misrepresented or show behavior that produced no complaints when his predecessors did the same. In contrast, in this mixture of truth and falsehood about George W. Bush praying with an injured soldier, the lie reflected well on that President from the perspective of the religious person spreading it.
I looked on Snopes’s Politics page for another pair of politicians in parallel situations, and found the losing candidates of the last two presidential elections. Snopes’s page on Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., lists 22 rumors, and only 3 are true (14%). Its page for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., lists only 11 rumors, and 4 are true (36%). There are far more rumors about the Democratic candidate, and fewer true ones.
This evidence accumulated over ten years shows a shameful but undeniable fact of American politics: Our right wing now contains a lot more liars, and a lot more folks who spread lies out of gullibility or wishfulness, than our left wing.
5.31.2010
Stuff
glutting and gutting our oceans
Oil spills aren't the only things killing sea life and leaving dead zones in the ocean. It's just that one very big oil spill happens to be in the news today. Ironically, oil, or petroleum, produces something else that kills oceans with an even greater problem: plastic.
A swirling sea of plastic bags, bottles and other debris is growing in the North Pacific, and now another one has been found in the Atlantic. But how did they get there? And is there anything we can do to clean them up?
Think Beyond Plastic
Greenpeace: The Trash Vortex
How Stuff Works: Why is the world's biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean?
Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Huge Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic Too
The World's Largest Dump
The Plastiki Sets Sail
Oil spills aren't the only things killing sea life and leaving dead zones in the ocean. It's just that one very big oil spill happens to be in the news today. Ironically, oil, or petroleum, produces something else that kills oceans with an even greater problem: plastic.
All that throw-a-way stuff - do we really need it in the first place?
What killed the albatross? My toothbrush, your bottle cap.
A swirling sea of plastic bags, bottles and other debris is growing in the North Pacific, and now another one has been found in the Atlantic. But how did they get there? And is there anything we can do to clean them up?
Think Beyond Plastic
Greenpeace: The Trash Vortex
How Stuff Works: Why is the world's biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean?
Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Huge Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic Too
The World's Largest Dump
The Plastiki Sets Sail
5.29.2010
Stuff
like you won't believe
Phillippe Cousteau Jr., grandson of French explorer and ecologist Jacques-Yves Cousteau: "I could cut my leg off, I could cut my arm off, I could gouge my eye out, I'd still probably survive, but not very well. And that's what we're doing to our oceans."
Watch: Cousteau diving beneath the oil spill: "This is a nightmare!"
Watch: Cousteau talking about the oil spill with Bill Maher
Watch: BP could be leaking 100,000 barrels of oil a day
But we are perhaps more to blame for this disaster than anyone, because of our utterly irresponsible demand for oil - our gas guzzling cars, our extravagant energy inefficient houses, our endless manufacture of plastics, our throw-away lifestyles. If we refuse to change our ways, we can only point the finger at ourselves. BP creates the supply because we create the demand. We are the market, we are the consequence, we are the fault.
Myths about the Gulf Oil Spill
It's Not Just BP's Oil in the Gulf That Threatens World's Oceans
Phillippe Cousteau Jr., grandson of French explorer and ecologist Jacques-Yves Cousteau: "I could cut my leg off, I could cut my arm off, I could gouge my eye out, I'd still probably survive, but not very well. And that's what we're doing to our oceans."
Watch: Cousteau diving beneath the oil spill: "This is a nightmare!"
Watch: Cousteau talking about the oil spill with Bill Maher
Watch: BP could be leaking 100,000 barrels of oil a day
But we are perhaps more to blame for this disaster than anyone, because of our utterly irresponsible demand for oil - our gas guzzling cars, our extravagant energy inefficient houses, our endless manufacture of plastics, our throw-away lifestyles. If we refuse to change our ways, we can only point the finger at ourselves. BP creates the supply because we create the demand. We are the market, we are the consequence, we are the fault.
Myths about the Gulf Oil Spill
It's Not Just BP's Oil in the Gulf That Threatens World's Oceans
5.26.2010
Stuff
the more you have, the more you have to lose
Stuff
By Paul Graham
July 2007
I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars.
It wasn't always this way. Stuff used to be rare and valuable. You can still see evidence of that if you look for it. For example, in my house in Cambridge, which was built in 1876, the bedrooms don't have closets. In those days people's stuff fit in a chest of drawers. Even as recently as a few decades ago there was a lot less stuff. When I look back at photos from the 1970s, I'm surprised how empty houses look. As a kid I had what I thought was a huge fleet of toy cars, but they'd be dwarfed by the number of toys my nephews have. All together my Matchboxes and Corgis took up about a third of the surface of my bed. In my nephews' rooms the bed is the only clear space.
Stuff has gotten a lot cheaper, but our attitudes toward it haven't changed correspondingly. We overvalue stuff.
That was a big problem for me when I had no money. I felt poor, and stuff seemed valuable, so almost instinctively I accumulated it. Friends would leave something behind when they moved, or I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night (beware of anything you find yourself describing as "perfectly good"), or I'd find something in almost new condition for a tenth its retail price at a garage sale. And pow, more stuff.
In fact these free or nearly free things weren't bargains, because they were worth even less than they cost. Most of the stuff I accumulated was worthless, because I didn't need it.
What I didn't understand was that the value of some new acquisition wasn't the difference between its retail price and what I paid for it. It was the value I derived from it. Stuff is an extremely illiquid asset. Unless you have some plan for selling that valuable thing you got so cheaply, what difference does it make what it's "worth?" The only way you're ever going to extract any value from it is to use it. And if you don't have any immediate use for it, you probably never will.
Companies that sell stuff have spent huge sums training us to think stuff is still valuable. But it would be closer to the truth to treat stuff as worthless.
In fact, worse than worthless, because once you've accumulated a certain amount of stuff, it starts to own you rather than the other way around. I know of one couple who couldn't retire to the town they preferred because they couldn't afford a place there big enough for all their stuff. Their house isn't theirs; it's their stuff's.
And unless you're extremely organized, a house full of stuff can be very depressing. A cluttered room saps one's spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there's more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.
(This could explain why clutter doesn't seem to bother kids as much as adults. Kids are less perceptive. They build a coarser model of their surroundings, and this consumes less energy.)
I first realized the worthlessness of stuff when I lived in Italy for a year. All I took with me was one large backpack of stuff. The rest of my stuff I left in my landlady's attic back in the US. And you know what? All I missed were some of the books. By the end of the year I couldn't even remember what else I had stored in that attic.
And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it. Throw away a perfectly good rotary telephone? I might need that one day.
The really painful thing to recall is not just that I accumulated all this useless stuff, but that I often spent money I desperately needed on stuff that I didn't.
Why would I do that? Because the people whose job is to sell you stuff are really, really good at it. The average 25 year old is no match for companies that have spent years figuring out how to get you to spend money on stuff. They make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that "shopping" becomes a leisure activity.
How do you protect yourself from these people? It can't be easy. I'm a fairly skeptical person, and their tricks worked on me well into my thirties. But one thing that might work is to ask yourself, before buying something, "is this going to make my life noticeably better?"
A friend of mine cured herself of a clothes buying habit by asking herself before she bought anything "Am I going to wear this all the time?" If she couldn't convince herself that something she was thinking of buying would become one of those few things she wore all the time, she wouldn't buy it. I think that would work for any kind of purchase. Before you buy anything, ask yourself: will this be something I use constantly? Or is it just something nice? Or worse still, a mere bargain?
The worst stuff in this respect may be stuff you don't use much because it's too good. Nothing owns you like fragile stuff. For example, the "good china" so many households have, and whose defining quality is not so much that it's fun to use, but that one must be especially careful not to break it.
Another way to resist acquiring stuff is to think of the overall cost of owning it. The purchase price is just the beginning. You're going to have to think about that thing for years—perhaps for the rest of your life. Every thing you own takes energy away from you. Some give more than they take. Those are the only things worth having.
I've now stopped accumulating stuff. Except books—but books are different. Books are more like a fluid than individual objects. It's not especially inconvenient to own several thousand books, whereas if you owned several thousand random possessions you'd be a local celebrity. But except for books, I now actively avoid stuff. If I want to spend money on some kind of treat, I'll take services over goods any day.
I'm not claiming this is because I've achieved some kind of zenlike detachment from material things. I'm talking about something more mundane. A historical change has taken place, and I've now realized it. Stuff used to be valuable, and now it's not.
In industrialized countries the same thing happened with food in the middle of the twentieth century. As food got cheaper (or we got richer; they're indistinguishable), eating too much started to be a bigger danger than eating too little. We've now reached that point with stuff. For most people, rich or poor, stuff has become a burden.
The good news is, if you're carrying a burden without knowing it, your life could be better than you realize. Imagine walking around for years with five pound ankle weights, then suddenly having them removed.
Firefighters Forced To Cut Through Roof
Buried Alive Under Their Own Stuff
The Cathedral of Junk in Austin, Texas
Stuff
By Paul Graham
July 2007
I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars.
It wasn't always this way. Stuff used to be rare and valuable. You can still see evidence of that if you look for it. For example, in my house in Cambridge, which was built in 1876, the bedrooms don't have closets. In those days people's stuff fit in a chest of drawers. Even as recently as a few decades ago there was a lot less stuff. When I look back at photos from the 1970s, I'm surprised how empty houses look. As a kid I had what I thought was a huge fleet of toy cars, but they'd be dwarfed by the number of toys my nephews have. All together my Matchboxes and Corgis took up about a third of the surface of my bed. In my nephews' rooms the bed is the only clear space.
Stuff has gotten a lot cheaper, but our attitudes toward it haven't changed correspondingly. We overvalue stuff.
That was a big problem for me when I had no money. I felt poor, and stuff seemed valuable, so almost instinctively I accumulated it. Friends would leave something behind when they moved, or I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night (beware of anything you find yourself describing as "perfectly good"), or I'd find something in almost new condition for a tenth its retail price at a garage sale. And pow, more stuff.
In fact these free or nearly free things weren't bargains, because they were worth even less than they cost. Most of the stuff I accumulated was worthless, because I didn't need it.
What I didn't understand was that the value of some new acquisition wasn't the difference between its retail price and what I paid for it. It was the value I derived from it. Stuff is an extremely illiquid asset. Unless you have some plan for selling that valuable thing you got so cheaply, what difference does it make what it's "worth?" The only way you're ever going to extract any value from it is to use it. And if you don't have any immediate use for it, you probably never will.
Companies that sell stuff have spent huge sums training us to think stuff is still valuable. But it would be closer to the truth to treat stuff as worthless.
In fact, worse than worthless, because once you've accumulated a certain amount of stuff, it starts to own you rather than the other way around. I know of one couple who couldn't retire to the town they preferred because they couldn't afford a place there big enough for all their stuff. Their house isn't theirs; it's their stuff's.
And unless you're extremely organized, a house full of stuff can be very depressing. A cluttered room saps one's spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there's more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.
(This could explain why clutter doesn't seem to bother kids as much as adults. Kids are less perceptive. They build a coarser model of their surroundings, and this consumes less energy.)
I first realized the worthlessness of stuff when I lived in Italy for a year. All I took with me was one large backpack of stuff. The rest of my stuff I left in my landlady's attic back in the US. And you know what? All I missed were some of the books. By the end of the year I couldn't even remember what else I had stored in that attic.
And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it. Throw away a perfectly good rotary telephone? I might need that one day.
The really painful thing to recall is not just that I accumulated all this useless stuff, but that I often spent money I desperately needed on stuff that I didn't.
Why would I do that? Because the people whose job is to sell you stuff are really, really good at it. The average 25 year old is no match for companies that have spent years figuring out how to get you to spend money on stuff. They make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that "shopping" becomes a leisure activity.
How do you protect yourself from these people? It can't be easy. I'm a fairly skeptical person, and their tricks worked on me well into my thirties. But one thing that might work is to ask yourself, before buying something, "is this going to make my life noticeably better?"
A friend of mine cured herself of a clothes buying habit by asking herself before she bought anything "Am I going to wear this all the time?" If she couldn't convince herself that something she was thinking of buying would become one of those few things she wore all the time, she wouldn't buy it. I think that would work for any kind of purchase. Before you buy anything, ask yourself: will this be something I use constantly? Or is it just something nice? Or worse still, a mere bargain?
The worst stuff in this respect may be stuff you don't use much because it's too good. Nothing owns you like fragile stuff. For example, the "good china" so many households have, and whose defining quality is not so much that it's fun to use, but that one must be especially careful not to break it.
Another way to resist acquiring stuff is to think of the overall cost of owning it. The purchase price is just the beginning. You're going to have to think about that thing for years—perhaps for the rest of your life. Every thing you own takes energy away from you. Some give more than they take. Those are the only things worth having.
I've now stopped accumulating stuff. Except books—but books are different. Books are more like a fluid than individual objects. It's not especially inconvenient to own several thousand books, whereas if you owned several thousand random possessions you'd be a local celebrity. But except for books, I now actively avoid stuff. If I want to spend money on some kind of treat, I'll take services over goods any day.
I'm not claiming this is because I've achieved some kind of zenlike detachment from material things. I'm talking about something more mundane. A historical change has taken place, and I've now realized it. Stuff used to be valuable, and now it's not.
In industrialized countries the same thing happened with food in the middle of the twentieth century. As food got cheaper (or we got richer; they're indistinguishable), eating too much started to be a bigger danger than eating too little. We've now reached that point with stuff. For most people, rich or poor, stuff has become a burden.
The good news is, if you're carrying a burden without knowing it, your life could be better than you realize. Imagine walking around for years with five pound ankle weights, then suddenly having them removed.
Firefighters Forced To Cut Through Roof
Buried Alive Under Their Own Stuff
The Cathedral of Junk in Austin, Texas
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
