Owning Stuff

Been hanging out with my parents for the last couple days catching up on all the family gossip and making plans for the future. Last night my mom and I were out on a walk and had a bit of conflict about mine and Jenni’s wedding. (Not sure exactly when said wedding is taking place yet, but we’re starting to discuss details.)

Both Jenni and I are wanting to take the good wedding bits and keep them, but not be bound by tradition to do anything that we don’t particularly like. It’s a tricky row to hoe since weddings have quite a few interested parties and many of them have a pretty clear picture of how things should go down.

Last night I was discussing with my mom the procedure for getting gifts. The way a wedding is supposed to work is Jenni and I pick out a whole bunch of stuff that we want to have then people show that they care by buying stuff for us.

The one problem is that Jenni and I are currently living apart and running two entirely separate households. We have enough stuff already for the two of us apart, we are almost certainly going to have lots of extra stuff when we merge houses. I have an emotional aversion to the thought of getting even more stuff and I have been trying to figure out why.

Part of it is what Paul Graham says in his essay Stuff:

Stuff used to be rare and valuable… Stuff has gotten a lot cheaper, but our attitudes toward it haven’t changed correspondingly… Most of the stuff I accumulated was worthless, because I didn’t need it.

Unlike Paul Graham however, I have a pile of severed book bindings and a sheetfeed scanner grinding away beside me right now because while I’ll agree information is invaluable, stacks of paper are a pain in the ass to carry around.

It’s not just what Graham is saying though because his argument is essentially one of pragmatism. My issue is deeper because it isn’t just about owning stuff, it’s about the effects of owning stuff. The Duhks came out with a new album today and NPR was playing songs off it. A line from Fast-Paced World struck me:

We’ve forgotten what is sacred in this fast-paced world. We take and keep taking without thinking what we’re giving.

I understand how it is fun to have and beyond that the security of owning. There’s just this lingering sense that I’m signing a contract and I don’t really understand what I’m signing away. That it’ll be gone and I only ever had the slimmest awareness that it was there in the first place. I don’t have some huge moral condemnation against the acquisition of stuff because right now I don’t really understand what the cost is. It might be something trivial, but it doesn’t feel that way.

I think maybe Thoreau can help me figure it out, my reading from Walden today was:

Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? …

It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man’s belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging them — dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. No wonder man has lost his elasticity. How often he is at a dead set! “Sir, if I may be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?” If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his kitchen furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will not burn, and he will appear to be harnessed to it and making what headway he can. I think that the man is at a dead set who has got through a knot-hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannot follow him. …

If I have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. But perchance it would be wisest never to put one’s paw into it.