I conversed this morning with Beaker, a father of three sons my age, who worked in the automotive business for his career. When his kids left the house, he and his wife sold 98% of their belongings. “It was as if we were dying,” he said. They downsized dramatically. “All of the stuff we accumulate,” he said, “is just to make ourselves feel more successful.”
We love to compare
I agree we absolutely accumulate stuff to increase our self-esteem, but for a slightly different reason: so we can then have more stuff (or nicer/newer stuff) than other people. It’s because we constantly evaluate people materially and circumstantially and situate our own self-image based on how we stack up in this evaluation. Among our friends who ski, how do our skis match up? Among those we see, do we like our body as well as theirs? As people go on vacation, how do our vacations compare? When others go out to eat, what sort of restaurant do they afford?
When we upgrade – say, get a new pair of skis, or lose weight, or go on a cool vacation – it gives us a boost. Relative to others, perhaps we feel situated more securely. Is this so bad? Who is being harmed?
This pattern is more blatantly harmful when, rather than upgrading ourselves, we secretly cheer for other’s small failures because that bumps us up the line. It’s like playing foursquare: when someone ahead of you gets knocked out, you move up. Imagine you are on a basketball team and your better opponent’s star gets injured before the match. Maybe you feel a bit sorry, but might there also be a creepy tinge of delight in facing an easier opponent? Or imagine someone who got promoted over you gets chewed out by your boss. Why do we feel a little happy as a result? The other person’s situation has no direct impact on our life, after all. This is simply the dark side of comparison.
Vanity cars
Beaker told me there are 3 million pickup trucks sold in the US every year. This market has no comparison with any other nation. “We buy pickups because we can afford them,” Beaker said of Americans. He said that 1/3 of pick up trucks are just for looks and status, not to be driven. I don’t know where he got this statistic from, but he’s in the automotive industry, so I’ll go with it. Beaker saw through his career in the automotive industry that people buy cars not for utility but for status. Then, he realized this was also the case for the accumulated stuff in his life. The stuff or the pickup signaled success. Breaker realized this is not a good reason to have stuff.
Not that having things or having nice things is wrong. It’s still valuable to think about whether our decisions are driven by comparison or driven by what we actually want in life. For the typical American, so much credit card debt depends on this line of critical thinking.
No compare on trail
Many people on this trail are thinking about this, thinking about what actually matters to them and why. What matters because of its goodness or its utility, not because of how I compare to others as a result of possessing it? Even so, comparison comes naturally on the trail. The most obvious example is speed on the trail. What date did you start? Wow, you’ve already made it here! There is a sense of hierarchy, of who’s fast and who’s not. Even though I explicitly want to avoid this, I wonder myself how many people are ahead ort going faster than me. “Hike your own hike” is a common refrain rejecting such comparisons.
Over these next four days, I’m slowing down quite a lot due to weather, a desire to reset after three weeks, and to enjoy the town of Hot Springs. I think this will be healthy for me, more mentally than physically. Not pushing it feels unnatural to me. It’s as if part of my identity is propped up by going a certain distance each day. By slowing, I will make clear to myself that this journey’s purpose is entirely independent of speed or comparison of athletic ability but instead, about togetherness, the natural surroundings, the writing.
Even in writing, one of my biggest hesitations was whether I might further cycles of comparison. By publishing about my trip, would this just be a signaling of athletic or academic or adventuring prowess for comparison’s sake? To the reader, it could feel this way. To the writer, this is a pitfall. Comparison is deeply ingrained. This is why I wrote of my intention to share what I’m learning and doing for those interested, not promote myself. Instead, because we are social creatures, I think we can find much encouragement in one another. Much better to find encouragement than self-worth in seeing others’ stuff.
If measured by net worth of assets as opposed to volume of them, I could say your mom and I did something similar to Beaker. But not from a philosophical realization that we had unconsciously accumulated things playing the comparison game. Our downsize was more of a pragmatic decision–two is half of 4 and the housing market had left the atmosphere. Comparison is a tricky issue. I’m convinced it’s human nature and perhaps even necessary for flourishing. We innately like to be making progress. The trick is setting the correct markers for comparison. As noted in your post, setting those around you as the marker is hazardous business. There are two ditches to drive into (seems the appropriate analogy, because Beaker). The ditch on the left falsely devalues you and generates a thirst that can never be satiated. The ditch on the right is equally bad or even worse. This is the one you identified where you secretly cheer others’ setbacks. If we’re not careful, we can live a life that swerves between and inhabits those two ditches. Driving down the middle of the road, I think, is largely a function of setting healthy destinations and then making yourself the measure of comparison–how is the current version of me doing compared to a prior version of me. This is no simple task, though. In identifying good destinations, it can be helpful to find inspiration in others. Choosing that as a destination from the right side ditch, though, is no good. Also, comparing yourself to you can be hazardous as well if your horizons are too short and you don’t afford yourself a robust measure of grace that allows for setbacks. Staying on the road is hard work and requires frequent attention. It’s a narrow road bounded by deep ditches.
On vanity cars and having nice things… Here again there are two ditches to drift into. To the left is the comparison trap where you strive and accumulate because you measure your status and worth relative to the people around you. As you noted, the surest way to identify you’ve drifted into that ditch likely is consumer debt. The right side ditch is a philosophy of forced austerity where having nice things is forbidden. Drifting into that ditch can unnecessarily deprive you of happiness that is reasonable and healthy derived from possessions that make life more comfortable, convenient and enjoyable. And if the possession of them does not come at the cost of others, forced deprivation seems a pointless exercise that itself may be driven largely by comparison–I am morally superior to those around me because unlike them, I am not a slave to consumerism. Again, two deep ditches, and staying out of them is lifetime project.