In Fight
Club, Tyler Durden made the bold claim: “The things
you own, end up owning you.” Although I think that’s true, I’m not going to be
a zealot here and try to convince you to throw away all of your possessions and
go live on a mountain or something
Identity
investment is what Fight Club ribs at when
it makes fun of the need to own a bunch of nice stuff—people tend to become emotionally attached to
their possessions and see their possessions as a part of themselves. This is
particularly true in more materialistic cultures where people are encouraged to
express their identities through consumerism.
People become attached to the companies that make their car or truck, their
computers, their clothing, their appliances, etc. They spent months saving up
for an item, spent a lot of mental energy choosing which item “represents” them
best, therefore they begin identifying themselves as a “Ford guy,” or a “Mac
user,” or whatever.
This becomes part of your identity—no matter how small—that you
portray to others in your life.
The
second factor, loss aversion, is a sad fact of life. Psychology has shown that
humans perceive the pain of losing something to be much greater than the
pleasure of having it.1 This is true for everything—relationships, possessions,
competition—and it’s hard-wired into us. All of us.
