In a horrific and tragic accident, Aeroflot Flight 1492 made a fiery emergency landing last week and forty-one people lost their lives. Some of the press coverage of this event has focused on the shocking footage of survivors fleeing the burning plane with their carry-on luggage. News analyses included interviews with passengers commenting on the delays caused in the evacuation process by folks grabbing their bags before they exited. Making sure they took their stuff with them may have cost lives.
The post-disaster analysis has had a great deal to say about the importance of passenger safety procedures (leave your stuff behind and get off the plane!) and the human tendency to act impulsively or without thinking clearly in an emergency. All of that is important to point out. However, I couldn’t help but think that there’s another important lesson to consider in this sad event. Don’t judge the folks rolling their suitcases across the melting Sheremetyevo tarmac too harshly. The fact is, people have been giving up their lives for their possessions for a long time.
Psychologists have understood the deep connection between our possessions and our identities for decades. In the 1980’s Russell Belk concluded from his classic research that “possessions become extensions of the self.” In some sense, my stuff is not just mine; it is me. It is a fundamental human characteristic (at least in western cultures) that we invest our very identities in our belongings. By the time they’re in preschool, children exhibit the endowment effect – an irrational overvaluing of a possession because it belongs to you. Replicated experiments reveal that four-year-olds strongly prefer to keep a toy that belongs to them, as opposed to trade it in for a similar toy. As we mature, we don’t seem to grow out of this. It’s as though some element of ourselves gets invested in a thing we consider to be our own. The reality is, this human tendency is not just a recent discovery of psychological science. Aristotle wrote about it over two millennia ago.
Interestingly, this characteristic does not seem to be prevalent in less well economically developed cultures. Some hunter-gatherer societies don’t seem to exhibit the endowment effect. It seems that our glorification of wealth, conspicuous consumption, and rampant devotion to the accumulation of material possessions has shaped our identities and behaviors in ways we may not understand. In the USA, we have bought in to a culture that invests so much time, energy, and emotion in getting possessions that we sacrifice our health, time with our families, and spiritual formation. The American Dream is mostly about the accumulation of possessions.
In one of his most subversive and counter-cultural statements (at least for Americans) Jesus said, “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” As usual, he was kicking against societal norms and expectations, along with some deep psychological tendencies.
People commit suicide when they lose their job/investments. The getting is the first many years of our lives and then the “storehouse” needs to be larger and all of that stuff takes work to maintain and to move from place to place for the rest of our years. And don’t forget the finances required to maintain, repair or replace the stuff. So if we lose our ability to do that, we would rather die than give it all up and “start over” with the whole process. I’m ready to opt out and live in a van down by the river myself 😂 As long as I have art supplies, camera, my phone and wifi I’ll be fine.
We are definitely consumed with “our stuff!”
I personally do not want to be known for “my stuff.” Good read, thank you
One of my favorite quotes is “The more things I possess, the more my things possess me”
Dr. James Dobson.