People buy a lot of stuff. This stuff is substantiated in reality: it is made out of material. To create the stuff materials have to be obtained and then shaped - this takes energy (read: pollution - noise, visual, air, water, ...).
Most of the stuff we buy is garbage, and goes into the garbage quickly. Like junk food, junk stuff is not fulfilling - yet is amazingly popular and the quick hit of pleasure one seems to gain from junk fuels a cycle of more.
As we have seen with the latest economic downturn we don't know how to deal with creating what is valuable - we are urged to buy, to prop up industries, to get stuff. Our lives are predicated on making and buying and churning stuff. To save the environment we are urged to scape cars and buy new, slightly more fuel efficient ones. In everything we do we get stuff. Stuff, stuff, everywhere stuff. Anti-depressants are prescribed like candy - perhaps because people live their lives making useless stuff and buying junk, all at huge environmental and opportunity costs [1].
Why not less stuff?
There are a few observations on stuff that can help you reduce it:
(1) Quality, not quantity, matters (for most things). 20 pairs of crappy shoes, or a few good pairs?
(2) Verb not noun. You want to buy verbs, not nouns. The closer something is to an inert object (noun) the less you want it. Tools - that you use often (see (1)), and trips - that give you memories, are two examples of things where money is well spent. These things are very "verby". The closer something is to a verb the more useful, and thus worthwhile, it is. If the verbiness of a item is dominated in the buying process you are wasting time, money, life [2].
The gains you will get by focusing on verby stuff are legion: simplified and dejunked life, focus on significance and action, alignment with human nature, self respect, opportunity savings, financial savings.
Notes:
[1] The energy, time, material, and other resources that goes into making junk diverts the resources from other ends. You are in cog industry X. Your efforts could have gone into art, useful industry Y, or hitchhiking to Alaska. The money that you wasted on yet another overpriced latte doesn't sit too well as some process in the back of your brain is saying "bottom billion - dollar a day". You are diverting your life's focus into irrelevant junk, all while others who would love to eat and have 1/80th of your opportunity in order to create are dying. You don't need a pill, you need to change your behavior.
[2] You are also likely not realizing that the verbiness of the buying process is what is pleasant, not the buying itself. Humans gain pleasure from action, yet we don't seem to realize this and are fearful of performing actions - this may be behind many peoples "shopoholic" tendencies, a need to feel action and an unwillingness to take the "risk" of putting your ability on the line. But shopping to gain this pleasure is like crack to gain pleasure - it is empty and emptying in the long run.
