Possessions impose a tyranny of care that outweighs their comfort

Evidence

This brought to my mind images of infinite worry, gauche servants, “please Ma’ams,” contretemps, and the habit growing out of our elaborate and uselessly conventional life of magnifying the importance of similar trifles. Then “things” came up, with the tyranny they exercise. I really need nothing more than this log cabin offers. But elsewhere one must have a house and servants, and burdens and worriesnot that one may be hospitable and comfortable, but for the “thick clay” in the shape of ”things” which one has accumulated. My log house takes me about five minutes to “do,” and you could eat off the floor, and it needs no lock, as it contains nothing worth stealing. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 143

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Thoreau/Walden-style anti-consumption arguments and to modern minimalism discourse about the burden of ownership. — connects to: Sacrificing a cherished possession can repair a relationship money cannot. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action , 2136; Personal property is constitutive of the self, so alienating it harms the person — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 307; Comfortable administered life reduces freedom’s use-value — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 230 (+3 more)
• APHORISMS: A bit of life-advice: the more you own, the more owns you — the log cabin needs no lock because it holds nothing worth stealing.

Broader Connections

• Personal property is constitutive of the self, so alienating it harms the person #complicates (0.95) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 307
• Domesticity is an alibi for conflating person with property #expands (0.90) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 124
• Comfortable administered life reduces freedom’s use-value #complicates (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 230
• Welfare that relieves responsibility produces illusion destined to shatter catastrophically #complicates (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 620
• Colonial comforts concealed estrangement from local people and from oneself #complicates (0.80)