Why We Want Things We Don’t Need!

The famous French philosopher Denis Diderot lived nearly his entire life in poverty, but that all changed in 1765.

Diderot was 52 years old. Despite his lack of wealth, Diderot’s name was well-known because he was the co-founder and writer of Encyclopedia, one of the most comprehensive encyclopedias of the time.
When Empress of Russia, heard of Diderot’s financial troubles she offered to buy his library from him $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 reactive 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.

We all have fallen victim to the Diderot Effect. If we buy a new car, we end up purchasing all sorts of additional things to go inside it. Like a car charger for my cell phone, a first aid kit, a flashlight, emergency blankets, and even a seatbelt cutting tool.

You might have a previous car but after getting a shiny new car, we find ourselves 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 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. We don’t naturally look to simplify and minimize. Our natural inclination is to pile up, be better than others, and buy shiny things that we “assume” makes us happier.

In the words of Sociology professor, Juliet Schor, “the pressure to upgrade our stock of stuff is relentlessly unidirectional, always ascending.”

                                                                      By Vajiha Nazir

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