Discussion Question: Are we too concerned with material possessions?
Questions to Ponder:
1. Do you own a lot of stuff?
2. Is it hard to manage?
3. Does organizing your stuff take a lot of time?
4. Do you like buying stuff?
5. Do you use all the stuff you buy?
6. What do you usually do with stuff after you buy it?
7. Do you keep your stuff where you can see it, do you put it away out of sight?
8. Do you know anyone who collects stuff?
9. Do you know anyone who hoards?
10. Is there a difference between collecting and hoarding
11. Does buying things make you feel good?
12. Does owning a lot of stuff make you feel good?
13. Does owning very few things make you feel good?
14. How does organizing things make you feel? Accomplished, irritated, pressured, satisfied?
15. Is buying a lot of things okay, or is it a problem?
16. Do you think anyone in your family or your house owns too many things?
17. Does it affect you if they do?
18. Is there anything intrinsically wrong with owning a lot of stuff?
19. If we all stopped buying stuff, how would the economy change?
Discussion Question: Are we too concerned with material possessions?
Choose a position:
Team A) ___________________________________.
Team B) No. Our society is wealthy. It’s good that everyone has flush toilets and nice things to buy. The human race is the best off we’ve ever been.
Team C) Yes. All the emphasis we place on having things—the latest things, the newest things, the brand name things—is taking the place of real connections with people. If we had meaningful relationships, we wouldn’t turn into ownership addicts.
Team D) Yes, and our material possessions are destroying the environment and the world as we know it.
Excerpt 1: http://www.theplan.com/clutter1/index.htm
Follow the link for pictures of a very serious case of hoarding.
Excerpt 2: www.thoughtmasters.com
A huge number of people in the US have been misdirected to believe that they can master time, multi-tasking and even defy the laws of physics. Like being in two places at the same time or extending a day into 30 hours.
The result of over-learning is having far too many options in their lives. The primary obstacle of being able to accomplish everything you THINK about is time. You can think about hundreds or thousands of things a day to do. The catch is having the time to do even one of those many things. These thoughts end up being chronic clutter in the mind that always manifest itself in material things that generally end up misplaced. Paper, products, crafts, parts, tools, equipment, books, magazines, clothing, ephemera, even food is abandoned where it was last put to rest in order to move on to the next "project".
The net result is that your mind creates the environment that you live and work in. Projects and stuff everywhere on every horizontal surface and hanging on every door and hook too. If it is not stopped the new stuff ends up on the floor and then on top of previous "things to do" books, news papers and so on.
Excerpt 3: www.thoughtmasters.com
When most folks think about addicts we picture a wino or a drug addict staggering or laying in the street. Addictions cover an enormous range of behavior.
If it is OK to keep last weeks newspapers or a few magazines how high does the pile need to be to become an information junkie? What we rarely see are the million or so Information addicts whose homes are filled to the ceiling with books, magazines and periodicals because these people are addicted to "education or knowledge" or the millions of shopaholics who sit at home watching QVC and HSN who buy stuff just because they can afford to do so and never use what they buy.
If it is ok to put a quarter in a slot machine, why do some people lose their homes trying to beat the system gambling?
It is the way one thinks about what they are doing? Thinking and how you think is the reason.
When and if you understand how you think you become more powerful than big business, organized religions and governments combined. None of these entities can afford to have you learn how to be a free thinker.
On the other hand…
I came home from vacation, opened my [wooden] front door, and it completely fell off the hinges. Termites!! They had completely destroyed the part of the door that the hinges attach to. But, because I keep scrap wood and leftover screws from various projects, I had the exact shape piece of wood and the right screws to repair it. It didn’t cost me a penny, and I didn’t have to run around trying to find the right size screws and pieces of wood. If I had gotten around to throwing out that wood like I meant to a year ago, I wouldn’t have had exactly the right materials for the repair. Am I a candidate for ownership addiction?
