We want to be the owner of everything

If maximizing self-interest is our instinct, if it is our biological imperative to replicate our genes at the unavoidable cost of others' sacrifice, and if life itself is one continuous competition, then why does altruism exist? Why is the world overflowing with generous people and acts of kindness? How can charitable organizations exist? What motivates a kind person? To answer such questions, let us turn to biology. p.148



If, instead of dismissing Brexit supporters as an ignorant, hostility-filled group, their voices had been listened to, there would not have been such a powerful eruption of resentment. Even in the ultimatum game, when the receiver of an offer can express anger toward the proposer, there is a tendency to accept the offer even if the proposed amount is small. p.38 Even when frustration and anger are not delivered to the proposer but simply spread to an unspecified majority, the receiver often accepts even a paltry offer, satisfied with the premise that everyone now knows they are not a pushover. p.39 People often settle for raising their dissatisfaction even when there is no real benefit to themselves, because doing so allows them to recover the illusion of control and a sense of ownership over "my opinion." In this way, what matters for resolving conflict is not retaliation but communication.

Molly Crockett, in the article cited above, strongly warned that one should not predict human behavior on the basis of economics, and that the sense of injustice felt by people is one cause of the populism currently rising in Europe and the United States. "If you want to understand these voters, you need to understand the human desire to have someone who listens to one's words." Crockett's article, p.163



According to Trentmann, what fueled consumer culture over the past 500 years was not so much the Industrial Revolution as the increase in transaction volume. The opening of new trade routes and the growth of imperialism gave consumers more chances to buy more things. ...
What the Industrial Revolution did was to feed an already firmly established, insatiable desire for possession. There was no need to persuade the general public that they should strive to have more, even when they did not need it - because this already seemed like a basic human desire.
The wealthy already possessed considerable purchasing power, but through the Industrial Revolution a new class of consumers was born, one that wanted to own as much as possible. p.179



We are very easily moved. We make judgments based on superficial evidence, and at times luxury boosts our confidence and elevates our sense of happiness. Wearing clothes from a famous designer makes us feel better about ourselves, which in turn reinforces our confidence. Wearing luxury clothing makes one feel special, and behavior changes accordingly. Luxury goods activate the brain's pleasure centers. Just thinking that you are drinking an expensive wine not only makes the very same wine taste better than it did before, but also activates the brain's value-evaluation system associated with the experience of pleasure to a greater degree! What matters here is not whether the luxury is real, but our perception of it. ...
Luxury goods symbolize wealth, but ironically, only the wealthy - who have no need to impress - can afford to look cheap. When making a special effort to signal that one need not pay special attention, the opposite signal arises. In Silicon Valley, wearing jeans and sneakers instead of expensive clothes or suits is treated almost like a badge of honor, which is itself a signal of focusing more on technology than on status. p.189



It looks like a brief grumble about the grueling daily routine of commuting to and from work. In reality, we justify daily fatigue with the financial reward we receive in exchange and the belief that this will make us happier. We think that with more money we can buy more luxury goods and therefore become happier. But the luxury we truly need is time itself. p.194



It looks like a brief grumble about the grueling daily routine of commuting to and from work. In reality, we justify daily fatigue with the financial reward we receive in exchange and the belief that this will make us happier. We think that with more money we can buy more luxury goods and therefore become happier. But the luxury we truly need is time itself. Even as it grows, we do not become happier. Whether we buy goods or buy experiences, we still keep looking for something that shows we are different from others. We are still trying to signal our status and reveal our identity. p.220



Why can't we throw things away? Why do we need a storage unit full of personal belongings that are nearly useless to us? Why are we so emotionally dependent on our possessions?

The reason is that what we own is, in fact, our very being. In 1890, the father of American psychology, William James, wrote the following about how the self is defined through the ownership we claim. It is the sum of all that one can call "mine" - not only his body and mental powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and work, his land, his yacht and bank account, all included here. All of these provide him with the same emotion. When they grow and prosper, he feels triumphant. When they shrink and die, he feels disheartened. Not all of them necessarily to the same degree, but in almost the same way. (3)

What James is describing here is what psychologists today call "self-construal," one's view of one's own identity, and the emotional effect of loss that reveals a special relationship with possessions. It is not particularly surprising that we think of our body and mind as part of the self - after all, who else but us could claim ownership of these? However, the material things included in the list above are not uniquely ours and could be owned by others. A house, land, a yacht, and so on are property we have acquired. And yet it is rather astonishing that losing such things can affect us so deeply on a personal level. p.227


Aristotle, the disciple who was always in debate with his teacher Plato, was more pragmatic and emphasized the importance of investigating the material world. He believed that private property promoted thrift and a sense of responsibility, but he also pointed out that we tend to envy and be jealous of others because of property. Two thousand years later, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued that the only reason we have a desire to possess is to enhance our sense of self, and that the only way we can know who we are is to observe what we have. This is almost like arguing that we have to dress ourselves up through our possessions. Possessions are visible markers of success. As studies of American wealth show, after annual income reaches 75,000 dollars we may not become especially happier, but looking at our possessions, our conviction that we are successful only grows stronger. We not only signal ourselves to others through our possessions, but our possessions, in turn, tell us who we are.

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre realized just how far human beings are defined through possession. "The totality of my possessions reflects the totality of my being. (...) I am what I have. What is mine is myself." He suggested several ways in which this happens. First, we exercise exclusive control over something and claim, "This is mine." This is something already observed in infancy. Second, similar to John Locke's view, when we make something from scratch, it becomes ours. Finally, Sartre believed that possessions arouse passion.

One way of expressing passion for possessions is to accumulate things. In 1769, another French philosopher, Denis Diderot, wrote about how possessions can dictate behavior. p.229




he said it became established and increasingly lost its sense of reality

One of the first studies to test James's claim about self-construal was carried out in 1959 by Yale psychoanalyst Ernst Prelinger! He asked adults to classify 160 objects on a scale ranging from non-self to self, and found that body and mind played a more important role in the sense of self than personal belongings. However, belongings were also classified as more important to the self than other people. (But, as we will see shortly, this is a very Western perspective.) When children were asked to rank the same objects, almost the same pattern as adults emerged. Only - the older the children, the more emphasis they placed on possessions that reflected relationships with others, which is understandable enough given the fact that we grow into adults who live together with others.

The Canadian marketing expert Russell Belk also wrote about the relationship between the self and what we own in several influential papers. At the center of his work is the concept of the "extended self." Building on the studies of James and Sartre, Belk divided the development of the extended self into four stages. First, the infant distinguishes itself from its environment. Second, the child distinguishes itself from other people. Third, possessions help adolescents and adults manage their identities. Lastly, possessions help the elderly attain a sense of continuity and prepare for death. p.232