Having fewer things means enjoying what you have more and actually getting to use it, thereby raising its intrinsic value. The less clutter that one has in their surroundings, the fewer distractions there are from the essentials such as family, friends, food, nature and study. With less clutter, one needs a smaller space in which to live comfortably and thus needs to work less to pay rent to store things. If you haven't used something in the last year, how much likelihood is there that you ever will use it?
"The most important assets are brands.
Buildings age and become dilapidated.
Machines wear out.
Cars rust.
People die.
But what lives on are the brands."
Hector Liang
Chairman, United Biscuits
"Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind."
-Walter Landor
Industrial Designer
"When people have lost their authentic personal taste, they lose their personality and become instruments of other people's wills."
Robert Graves
Can brands survive ecosystem collapse or the fall of our government?
Making do with less allows one to distance themself from the tendency of the victims of advertising to self-define according to the material objects possessed or not possessed, driven, drunk, worn, used, seen with or abused.
You usually see people thus affected in public places, lurking around a piece of machinery, such as a car or a boat. They bask in its radiance, act respectful and imply knowledge about its quality and providence. They act as they feel that they should act, making sure that others see them acting this way in the presence of the thing. They can only communicate with each other through the medium of the object, the cold piece of metal, in the presence of which they feel that they can speak to each other and actually show some emotion and interact.
The thing, the product, becomes a longed for goal, a means of justifying their existence, a way of envisioning themself in a different world with possession of the thing being the key tenet. Particular speech patterns often develop around things to the exclusion of the personal qualities of the speaker, as in
"I used to have a....."/"Yeah, friend of mine, he's got a "57.....", "last night I drank two....and a six pack of....","she was wearing..."," we did two....then a ....have you seen the new...""...how about those Forty-Niners?..." "Look what I got...""what do you think about American Idol?"
Empty, hollow words, bespeaking a personal void filled by the pursuit of things. Getting away from need for things is at least a start in allowing people to communicate and then once communicating, beginning to solve real problems in their home, community, nation and the world.
