A lot more could have been done with the term "affluenza", coined by the Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Unfortunately the word become caught up in moral judgments, rather than treasured for its medical aspects.
Even thought Freud may have waned in influence since the height of the psychoanalytic movement, the idea of "neurosis" hasn't gone away. People didn't stop being neurotic all of a sudden. Many of us suffer from affluenza.
What are the symptoms? One is hoarding and accumulating, room after room full of unnecessary and unused objects. If this were a rat, the nest would be stuffed with gee-gaws and what-have-yous.
This is a side effect of shopping for pleasure, finding outlet and reward, not so much in studying or self improvement, but in stocking up on various provisions, in order to fill ones basement and/or garage.
Given we're talking "group illness", the treatments tend to be societal. We see the counter push in my neighborhood: lots of 2nd hand stores, mainly for recycling clothing, but also for recycling things. The Village Merchant does a brisk business.
But is this really addressing root causes?
And isn't there a place for curating and collecting?
Isn't it natural to acquire and pass on, or pass around?
We also see a lot of free piles. Items just put out on the sidewalk for the taking, often with the sign "free" in case there's any doubt.
In one of my scenarios, as a Village of Tomorrow guy, I was proposing folks could offload worldly goods to such places, where inventory would be shared with new arrivals wanting to furnish a unit to their own sense of taste.
Although the unit would be futuristic and factory made, the inventory would feel more vintage, and it's a combination of the new and old that makes for an interesting, and livable, aesthetic.
I called it Hand Me Down City on reddit, in one of the SolarPunk groups. My suggestion was widely ridiculed as I recall and eventually removed.
