The Epidemic of Extraneous Want

Imagine visiting someone whose home has slowly disappeared beneath their possessions. What began as a few things they might someday need has grown into closets that no longer close, tables that can no longer be used, and rooms that have become little more than places to store everything they have collected. Some of these objects were once useful, others were purchased because they seemed interesting, and many have remained untouched for years. Still, the collection continues to grow.

When you suggest getting rid of something, the person has an explanation for why it needs to stay. An old appliance might be repaired someday, a box of forgotten belongings could contain something valuable, and an object they haven't touched in a decade might suddenly become useful tomorrow. Each explanation sounds reasonable enough on its own, yet together they justify keeping virtually everything. What began as an attempt to preserve useful things has become an inability to recognize when something no longer serves a purpose.

Perhaps you offer to help organize the house, suggesting that they donate some of the things they no longer use. Rather than feeling relieved, they become anxious or defensive. These objects may have little practical value, but losing them feels deeply uncomfortable, almost as though something important is being taken away. Their attachment is no longer determined by what the objects contribute to their life, because even things that contribute nothing have become difficult to surrender.

Meanwhile, the collection begins taking away the very things a home was supposed to provide. There is less space to relax, fewer opportunities to welcome visitors, and increasing difficulty performing ordinary activities. Relationships may suffer as loved ones become frustrated by the situation, yet the person continues protecting possessions that are interfering with those relationships. Even when acquiring something new offers a moment of excitement or reassurance, the feeling passes, and there is always something else to obtain or preserve.

At what point would this person finally have enough? If everything they already possess has failed to satisfy the desire to acquire or protect more, why would the next possession be any different? The collection has become an end in itself, consuming resources and opportunities that could otherwise improve their life.

This is what makes severe hoarding psychologically troubling. The problem isn't simply the number of possessions, but the person's attachment to them, the distress associated with letting them go, and the consequences of continuing a behavior that no longer serves their well-being. Their possessions have become more important than many of the experiences those possessions were originally intended to support. Rather than providing freedom and security, accumulation has gradually restricted both. These are central features used to distinguish clinical hoarding from ordinary collecting. [1]

Now imagine someone who has accumulated a billion dollars.

Their fortune could provide extraordinary comfort, freedom, and security for generations, yet they may remain consumed by the pursuit of additional wealth. Another hundred million dollars offers virtually nothing they couldn't already afford, but the prospect of acquiring it remains enormously important. They may spend their lives protecting and expanding their fortune, resist parting with even a small portion of it, and make decisions that prioritize their own financial gains over the well-being of people whose lives could be substantially improved by those resources.

Consider someone who refuses to meaningfully improve the compensation of employees whose labor contributes to their prosperity, even while receiving an annual personal financial gain greater than those employees could collectively earn in many lifetimes. They may insist that every additional dollar must be protected, reinvested, or accumulated, although they already possess far more than they could reasonably need. Like the person surrounded by unused possessions, they can find a justification for retaining nearly everything, while the amount they believe would finally be enough continually increases as they acquire more.

The consequences become considerably more troubling when we examine how far each person's attachment extends. The hoarder may gradually render their home unlivable, sacrificing comfort, relationships, and the well-being of those who share their space because they cannot bear to part with possessions they no longer need. Now imagine that same attachment in someone whose wealth gives them influence over enormous companies, entire industries, and even political institutions. Their determination to accumulate and retain more can influence how much workers earn, how businesses treat their customers, how resources are distributed, and which policies receive financial support. What was once a psychological pattern confined largely to a household now has the potential to shape the functioning of entire countries, with consequences extending across the planet. The person filling their home with unnecessary possessions may compromise the lives of those closest to them, while someone accumulating extraordinary wealth at the expense of others can compromise the well-being of millions who have no say in their decisions. The underlying attachment may be remarkably similar, but the scale of its consequences is not.

And yet our response is often entirely different. We recognize excessive attachment to ordinary possessions as potentially unhealthy, but when someone accumulates extraordinary wealth and refuses to part with it, we may regard that same attachment as admirable. We celebrate their determination, study their habits, and encourage others to follow their example, frequently without asking whether they are compassionate, honest, generous, or concerned with anyone's welfare beyond their own. Their financial success becomes sufficient reason to admire them, as though the ability to acquire resources also establishes the quality of the person acquiring them.

What makes this particularly strange is that we are not merely admiring abundance. We may be admiring an extreme devotion to one's own accumulation, even when that devotion comes at the expense of others. The same behavior that appears troubling when someone hoards objects can become a symbol of success when the objects being accumulated are dollars.

Somewhere along the way, we began treating the quantity of resources a person can accumulate as more important than the character they demonstrate in acquiring, protecting, and using them. We have become so captivated by what people possess that we may overlook what their relationship with those possessions reveals about them. How did we arrive at a point where an inability to experience enough could become one of our most celebrated definitions of success?

Watch a group of sports fans as their team wins a championship. They shout, embrace, and announce that "we won," though none of them scored a point. Their enjoyment is genuine because the team's success has become tied to their own sense of belonging. In 1976, psychologist Robert Cialdini and colleagues found that people were more likely to publicly associate themselves with a winning football team, a phenomenon they called basking in reflected glory. [17] We can experience pride through achievements that belong to someone with whom we identify.

Our brains can even respond to another person's success in ways that resemble experiencing success ourselves. In 2015, researchers analyzing 25 brain-imaging studies found overlapping activity in regions involved in processing rewards, whether people received those rewards personally or witnessed others receiving them. This phenomenon, called vicarious reward, helps explain why someone else's achievements can feel rewarding even when we have accomplished nothing ourselves. [18]

Now consider someone who regularly watches videos of billionaires touring mansions and stepping onto private aircraft. The viewer may picture themselves in that setting and briefly feel what they imagine wealth would provide: safety, respect, freedom, or power. This is a psychological shortcut, because watching another person enjoy a symbol of freedom can provide a moment of excitement without creating the freedom itself. When someone has learned that money is the answer to an uncomfortable feeling, the admired billionaire becomes not just an entertainer, but a living representation of the relief they hope to experience. The stronger that emotional identification becomes, the more another person's wealth can feel connected to one's own future.

Consider what happens when the viewer then hears that the billionaire should pay employees more or contribute more in taxes. They may hear a criticism of business practices as though someone were attacking the possibility of their own future success. This is not a logical requirement of admiring ambition; it is what can happen when we become attached to a person as a symbol of who we hope to become. Defending the billionaire also preserves the belief that acquiring extraordinary wealth will one day resolve the viewer's own fears or feelings of inadequacy.

There is a quieter consequence when the symbol becomes more important than the person. Someone may know little about an admired billionaire's honesty, generosity, treatment of employees, or relationships, yet assume the fortune itself proves exceptional character. We mistake the ability to accumulate wealth for evidence of good character, admiring people for their financial success without first considering whether their actions deserve that admiration. By borrowing a stranger's success to reassure ourselves about the life we want, we can end up defending the very values that keep us dissatisfied with our own.

Think about what you have learned to admire throughout your life. Someone who works eighty hours a week might be praised for their dedication, while someone who prioritizes their family and personal well-being may be regarded as less ambitious. A person who accumulates extraordinary wealth becomes an example of success, while someone who devotes their life to caring for others may receive little recognition or financial security. We are told that kindness, generosity, and compassion are important, yet we repeatedly observe that wealth, power, and personal achievement are what society rewards most visibly. Without anyone explicitly telling us which values matter more, we begin learning what kind of people we are expected to become.

These lessons begin long before we can recognize them. In a famous series of experiments beginning in 1961, psychologist Albert Bandura had children observe an adult behaving aggressively toward a doll. Children who witnessed the behavior were more likely to imitate it, demonstrating how people can learn through observation rather than direct instruction. [19] The principle extends beyond childhood because we continue observing and adapting to the behavior of others throughout our lives. We notice what earns admiration, what brings rejection, and which qualities seem necessary to belong or succeed, gradually incorporating those expectations into how we understand ourselves.

This conditioning also shapes our sense of personal worth. In a study following 565 children and their parents, researchers found that parental overvaluation, treating children as more special and entitled than others, predicted increases in narcissistic traits, while parental warmth predicted healthier self-esteem. [20] The distinction is important because learning that we are worthy of love is fundamentally different from learning that we must be exceptional to deserve it. When our value becomes dependent on outperforming others, someone else's success can begin to feel like our own failure, and achievement becomes a way of continually proving that we are enough.

We also learn which parts of ourselves are acceptable to express. Boys may be taught that vulnerability is weakness, girls that anger makes them undesirable, and both that uncomfortable feelings should be hidden rather than understood. Over time, these expectations can become so familiar that we mistake them for our personalities. Someone who has learned that expressing fear invites judgment or rejection may come to regard themselves as simply logical and rational, never recognizing that their fear of appearing weak, losing control, or being vulnerable is influencing the very decisions they consider rational. They may avoid emotional intimacy, dismiss other people's feelings, or refuse opportunities that require vulnerability without recognizing the fear underlying those choices. Research has associated habitual emotional avoidance with greater psychological difficulties, suggesting that learning to conceal our discomfort is not equivalent to learning how to resolve it. [21]

These lessons continue to shape us as adults, particularly when our livelihoods and social acceptance depend on conforming to them. We may learn to ignore our exhaustion because productivity is rewarded, suppress our objections because compliance protects our careers, or prioritize personal advancement because doing otherwise appears to threaten our security. Each compromise can seem reasonable in isolation, yet together they gradually shape how we behave, what we value, and which parts of ourselves we are willing to neglect.

Eventually, we may find ourselves defending expectations we never consciously chose because they have become inseparable from our understanding of how life works.

Perhaps the most troubling consequence is how easily these learned behaviors influence our treatment of others. When we have repeatedly observed that competition earns rewards and vulnerability invites judgment, we may become less willing to show compassion when doing so requires personal sacrifice. We can sincerely believe that caring matters while organizing our lives around practices that continually place it second. The contradiction does not necessarily feel dishonest because we have learned to regard these arrangements as normal.

By the time we begin questioning what society values, many of those values have already become part of how we think, feel, and make decisions. We are not merely surrounded by a culture that celebrates accumulation, superiority, and emotional avoidance; we have spent our lives adapting to it, often without recognizing how deeply its expectations have shaped us. When these patterns remain unrecognized, they inevitably influence how we interpret other people's behavior, what we consider acceptable, and which qualities we reward or condemn. Their influence is even greater when we remain unaware of them, because what we might otherwise question as learned conditioning becomes something we simply accept as truth. As we become parents, teachers, employers, and leaders, we reproduce these standards in the lives of others, often believing we are merely teaching them how the world works, without recognizing that we are perpetuating the very patterns that shaped us.

We live in a society where millions of people struggle to afford food, housing, and healthcare, while enormous amounts of time, money, and attention are devoted to acquiring more possessions, taking better vacations, and making our already comfortable lives even more comfortable. We know suffering exists, yet most of us rarely think about it unless it directly affects us. Our attention remains on our own lives, our own desires, and what we want next. The problem is not always that we consciously approve of injustice. Often, we are simply unaware of its extent, or we do not care enough to do anything about it.

Consider how easily we can become excited about purchasing something new while remaining indifferent to the people who cannot afford basic necessities. We may spend hours researching a luxury purchase but almost no time understanding the conditions under which others live. We celebrate people who accumulate extraordinary wealth while giving little attention to those who devote their lives to improving the well-being of others. Our priorities reveal a troubling contradiction: we have learned to value the improvement of our personal circumstances more than the improvement of human life itself.

This is how consumerism contributes to dehumanization. People become less important than products, profits, and personal convenience. Workers become expenses to minimize, struggling families become statistics, and suffering becomes something we can ignore because it occurs outside our immediate experience. We may consider ourselves compassionate people, but compassion that never influences our behavior does little for those who need it.

Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck examined the nature of evil in his 1983 book People of the Lie, connecting it to two fundamental problems: an inability to tolerate discomfort and laziness. The first involves avoiding truths that threaten our comfort or understanding of ourselves. The second involves refusing the effort necessary to confront and change what is wrong. A person can work tirelessly to improve their own life while remaining unwilling to expend even a small amount of effort improving the lives of others. Peck's argument helps explain how suffering can persist without everyone actively wishing to cause it. Sometimes people simply find it easier not to look, not to care, or not to act. [29]

Psychologist Albert Bandura described moral disengagement, the process through which people justify harmful behavior or distance themselves from responsibility for its consequences. [38] We tell ourselves that poverty is inevitable, that someone else will address injustice, or that our individual actions would make no difference. These explanations allow us to continue enjoying our comforts without questioning the human costs of the society that provides them.

The consequences extend into our civic lives. We complain about inadequate wages, corporate exploitation, political corruption, and unaffordable necessities, yet often invest little effort in understanding these problems or participating in the decisions that shape them. We find time to pursue entertainment, consumption, and personal advancement while treating participation in our shared future as an inconvenience. When enough people withdraw into their own lives, the decisions affecting everyone are increasingly left to those most motivated to exercise power.

This is how the epidemic of extraneous want perpetuates itself. We teach our children to pursue financial success, admire those who possess the most, and measure progress through increasing material comfort. Meanwhile, the suffering of people outside our immediate circle receives comparatively little attention. The values we practice become the values our children inherit, the behaviors businesses reward, and the priorities our institutions reflect. A society that continually places individual acquisition above human well-being eventually organizes itself around acquiring more rather than caring for one another.

The evil we permit is therefore not limited to deliberate cruelty. It also exists in the indifference that allows preventable suffering to continue while we devote ourselves to acquiring things we do not need. Our lack of awareness allows us to overlook the problem, our lack of care allows us to accept it, and our unwillingness to endure discomfort or make an effort allows it to persist. We cannot expect society to prioritize human well-being while we continually demonstrate, through the way we live, that our next possession, vacation, or personal comfort matters more than the people around us.

Imagine finally earning enough to buy the house, car, and vacations you once dreamed about, only to discover that the people you love rarely see you and that much of your time is spent working to afford the life you have built. There is nothing wrong with enjoying comfort. But when acquiring the means to live takes priority over living itself, it is worth asking what all that effort was meant to provide.

The things that make life valuable are often the very things we sacrifice in pursuit of more. In a 2002 study, psychologists Ed Diener and Martin Seligman found that close relationships distinguished people reporting unusually high happiness. [30] Other research identifies three basic psychological needs: autonomy, the freedom to make meaningful choices; competence, the ability to grow and use our skills; and relatedness, a sense of connection with others. [31] None is purchased simply by owning more. Money can make these experiences easier to access, but accumulating it is not the same as experiencing them.

Research also shows that spending money to help others can improve happiness, while paying to free up time can bring greater satisfaction than buying another possession. [32][33] In a study following young adults, reaching goals centered on relationships, growth, and community was associated with better psychological health; attaining goals centered on wealth, fame, and appearance did not produce comparable benefits. [8] We can spend a lifetime chasing the symbols of a good life while overlooking the experiences that make it good.

And a good life does not end at the boundaries of our own household. There is a difference between enjoying a comfortable existence and living among people whose basic needs are protected, whose dignity is respected, and whose opportunities are not determined entirely by their income. We depend upon others for the food we eat, the homes we inhabit, the services we use, and the communities that make our freedom possible. Their well-being is part of the world in which our own lives unfold.

If the measure of a successful life becomes how much we can accumulate for ourselves, then the measure of a successful society becomes how much it can produce and sell. But if the purpose of those resources is to improve human life, success must also include the quality of our relationships, the freedom to pursue meaningful work, and whether the people around us have a fair chance to live well. That is the difference between a society that has more and a society that is better.