It's not just stuff
Things and identity
Fire, I imagine, is the most devastating disaster there can be when it comes to people’s homes. In a tornado or a flood, there may be salvageable items left when the storm is over. I don’t have direct experience, but my sense from the photos of the Los Angeles area is that for many, there is nothing left. This overwhelms my capacity to fathom the depth of the losses people there are experiencing.
It’s common after a disaster to say things like “what matters is that [my/your loved ones] are okay” and “it’s just stuff.” And in a sense, those things are true. They express the value that what’s ultimately important is life and relationships, not material things.
But if that were all there is to it, the disaster wouldn’t be so hard. Yes, there would be the enormous and stressful load of work it takes to find temporary housing, file insurance claims, rebuild or relocate, etc. But there’s a layer of trauma and grief to the loss that isn’t captured by that very real and very heavy set of burdens. And that’s because it’s not just stuff.
In a recent Substack post about home and the fires,
writes:When I see or hear people state, “It’s just stuff. All of it can be replaced,” I cringe. Yes, your home holds your stuff, but that stuff may be everything you have. Books. Instruments. Old letters. Journals. Grainy photos. Antiques. Baby books. Christmas decorations. All of it tells a story, your story, your family’s story.
There’s the objective value of our stuff: what it costs, how it functions. It holds that kind of value for just about anyone. And yes, that value is replaceable. But for many of our things, there’s another layer, a layer of personal value that is tied up in our reasons for choosing those particular things, the meanings they have for us, and how all of that plays a role in our ongoing project of unfolding our lives. Some of our stuff is just stuff. But a lot of it is a little more meaningful than that. One crock pot is as good as another as far as I’m concerned—unless my grandma gave me that crock pot when I moved into my first apartment, in which case it’s not “just” a crock pot.1 Maybe it’s not a huge deal, but that crock pot is a little less replaceable than one My Dear Spouse brought to the household, purchased to do the things we do with crock pots.
Personal value is a real thing, even if it’s not objective. Say hello, for example, to my raggedy old rabbit Pete.
I’m going to venture that you wouldn’t pay a nickel for him at a garage sale. But if I were rescuing possessions in the face of pending disaster, he’s pretty high on my list (even though all he does these days is sit in a cabinet in my home office). Like the Velveteen Rabbit, I made him special by playing with him, taking him everywhere, imagining that he was keeping watch over my room at night and fighting off the “coucas” (a breed of imaginary monsters). Not only that, the fact that he has significant sentimental value to me requires something of you: you don’t get to treat him as trash because of his value to me. To the extent that you respect or care about me, you need take my valuing this ugly old thing into account. Personal value is prescriptive.2
And I get to be upset when Pete gets incinerated in a fire. My valuing him beyond his objective value is what makes sense of this. But how could it ever make sense to value things beyond their objective value?
It turns out that personal value is actually central to the way we structure our lives and build and maintain our sense of ourselves. As Sam Gosling demonstrates in his “snooping” research, we are reflected in our stuff. What we care about is manifested not only in what we possess,3 but in the way we arrange it in our living and work spaces. When chosen well, our possessions form extensions of ourselves and help us maintain our sense of who we are, both for ourselves privately and for others publicly. The psychology here is fascinating.
But psychology only describes what’s going on. It explains why our stuff is important to us: it’s connected to who we are. That’s one way of making sense of this phenomenon. We can now see what’s going on. There’s another way to understand “making sense,” though: is it appropriate? Does it fit the situation? That’s the philosopher’s question. So: Does its connection to our identities not only explain but also justify our valuing our stuff beyond its objective value?4
My answer is yes. In a very compact nutshell, that’s because having an identity—being somebody—is, in my view, the core of why we matter morally. And part of what it means to be somebody is to value: to care about people, projects, and yes, things. We’re embodied creatures who live in a physical world. Of course that world is going to take on significance for beings who use emotions to help us navigate the import of our surroundings, and who traffic in symbolic meaning. Our things help us be ourselves. And if we matter, then they matter too, beyond their objective value.
So it’s not just stuff. Its monetary and functional value can be replaced, but its personal value can’t. And to the extent that personal value is tied to who we are, when we lose that stuff we’re losing a significant part of how we make sense of ourselves. We can recover, for sure. But the loss is real.
We’re used to thinking that what really matters is life and people. That’s what’s behind “it’s just stuff”: seeking a silver lining that in a hierarchy of values, the things at the top still endure. I get it, and I don’t really disagree. But at the same time, I think this sentiment is a manifestation of the deep cultural narrative that separates mind and body, elevates mind over body, and puts “who we are” in the mind. It overlooks the extent to which we are also bodies, material beings existing in a material world. And I would argue that we need to recognize that oversight and treat it with caution.5
I still have it, and use it to make oatmeal, though we have a more modern one and we use that too for stews and soups. It’s her ancient one from decades ago. But it’s still working. And it holds meaning for me. What physically and spiritually nourishing meals did she make for my dad and his siblings in that warm brown appliance?
Toni Rønnow-Rassmussen provides an account in Personal Value.
And also in the causes we dedicate ourselves to, the roles we take on, and the ways we spend our time, but we’re focusing on stuff for now.
One of the most important philosophical distinctions, in my book, is the distinction between explanatory and justifying reasons. Often, these are the same: if you’re angry because someone took advantage of you, that both explains and justifies your anger. But these classes of reasons can come apart. If you’re angry because you think someone took advantage of you when they actually didn’t, that explains why you’re angry without justifying your anger.
Along these lines, think about major, life-changing injuries. On the one hand, we do say “thank goodness I’m/you’re still alive” and we’re not wrong to do so. But that also tends to underappreciate the extent to which re-understanding yourself in light of your changed body is a major and difficult project.
Actually, in this case I disagree. Well--I agree that very often, the possessions with the most personal value are also tied to memories attached to them. But I don't think that's the whole explanation for the value.
I wrote a paper on clutter more than ten years ago, and in doing the research behind that, I came across a lot of philosophical and psychological work (including some by Csikszentmihalyi, the guy who's famous for the concept of "flow") that convinced me that our "stuff issues" have to do with how we use them to create, express, and revise a sense of extended self. This is the territory of phenomenologists, which is not my philosophical territory, but I find it fascinating. At this point I've forgotten the details of the literature I read, unfortunately, so it's hard for me to say a lot about why I'm convinced of this. Part of it has to do with the fact that not all personal value has to do with memories. There are other kinds of meaning. It has to do not just with our stuff, but the way we arrange it, and the way we understand ourselves in light of it is a way of building a life. Like, I don't have a sentimental attachment to the computer I'm writing this on, but it's important to me to have it because of what I do. And I've decorated it with a particular laptop skin because the aesthetics of my space matter to me.
This is maybe not super different from the point you're making about memories (or other kinds of meaning), but I do think it's subtly different. The main claim of my paper was that accumulating stuff to the point that it becomes problematic clutter can be understood as a misplaced response to the value it has to you. I suggested that understanding this value clearly can open up meaningful ways of dealing with it that don't necessarily involve keeping it. But it's important to do that because it's a way of honoring the stuff's connection to who you are (or understand yourself to be). I hope this is making sense. :)
Thinking about it now, this strikes me as extra interesting when we live with others as well: our stuff gets intermingled, and to the extent that stuff constitutes an extended self, those "selves" are intertwining. Which is related to what I think it means to care about/love others. That's interesting.
I think I get it. I guess, my point was that the stuff that is truly meaningful and irreplaceable, and, hence, painful to lose, would be the one that brings back some pleasant memories. If your laptop happens to die, it is unpleasant and costly to replace it, but you won't necessarily miss your old laptop. In fact, you might be secretly happy to have a reason to get yourself a new and shiny one instead! Does this laptop define you as a person in some sense? Maybe to a small extent it does. I think you are right. Our stuff does define in some ways who we are: if I drive an old car and wear simple clothes despite the fact that I could
easily afford a BMW or Versace shoes, it certainly does say something about me as a person and I sure express myself with the help of the stuff that I buy. In fact, since our daily interaction with hundreds of people is limited to them seeing us in passing, how we look and what we drive are the only two signals they get about who we are. Would I be sad if I happened to lose my clothes in fire or get my old car totaled? Maybe a little, but i can replace those things easily and my self expression is not going to suffer much from that loss. The only stuff that is truly irreplaceable seems to have some sentimental value, at least to me. But maybe it's just me. Since I bought my car 8 years ago I haven't taken it to a car wash once - I let the rain take care of that for me. My wife is like me in that sense. I also see many people getting their cars washed and waxed weekly. Clearly, some people put much more value into their cars as being extension of themselves and modes of self expression. But perhaps I do too as by driving an old and dirty car I am clearly signaling to the others my disinterest in materialism in a way... Now I am rambling a bit... In any case, I can totally see your point. Looking forward to your next essay, always such a pleasure to read and always thought provoking. My wife is now a reader, too :)