Obsession With Possessions

So the tie “wasn’t Barneys.”

The sweater “was too suburbs.”

The datebook “too last century.”

All of it, shucked of its fancy paper and tossed back into the car trunk, has been booked for a return trip.

“It just wasn’t exactly what I wanted.... “

But, asks author Jane Hammerslough, in her tough but witty new book “Dematerializing: Taming the Power of Possessions” (Perseus Publishing, 2001), just what is it that we want? And can we get it through the physical trappings we seek so persistently?

Hammerslough, a journalist--and a recovering materialist--admits that even after all the deep digging and self-reflection occasioned by her work on the book, she’s backsliding all the time. She says that she’s buffeted, like the rest of us, by all the not-so-hidden messages swirling through the culture. She, too, is susceptible to the call to be the Good Mom, the Sexy Partner, the Savvy Working Woman--each outfitted with top-of-the line, model-of-the moment accessories to project The Image.

The pressure to buy into a slickly packaged identity is ubiquitous and obvious. But knowing what’s at work, and how the gizmos and sleight-of-hand are drawing you in, doesn’t make resisting any easier. “I don’t know if I necessarily buy less. But I think about it more,” Hammerslough says. And she pays a lot more attention to behavior that used to be rote. For instance: This particular evening, just hours away from a soiree, Hammerslough is caught in an all-too-familiar conundrum: “Now, I’m getting ready for a party ... standing in front of my closet and I can’t help thinking: What am I trying to project? How accurate is it?” It’s learned behavior that’s tough to shake.

Chatting from her Westport, Conn., home between holiday parties and travel commitments, she says that her research, talking and writing have kept her focused on the knotty psychology behind our acquisitions.

We think that buying is the problem and vow to shop less. But buying, she says, certainly isn’t a sin unless it is used persistently to mask perceived flaws or fill empty emotional spaces. “I don’t think it’s easy to just stop buying things. It’s human [to acquire things]. But it’s when it starts to overwhelm people” that the problems begin.

In an economic environment that has, in recent years, produced more bankruptcy cases than college graduates and where storage facilities rate as one of the fastest growing businesses (“We’ve gotta find someplace to stick all that stuff!”), Hammerslough attempts to make some sense of our competing desires. What is the shape of our souls undressed, unshod, unlacquered? “There is an awful lot of tension and stress devoted to stuff,” she explains. “We put so much energy in it. And it can really mess up our lives.”

Hammerslough, who has worked as a magazine writer and as columnist for the New York Post and other newspapers, winds her way through our psychological junk drawer, full of all of its hand-me-down debris. Presenting a comprehensive, briskly paced social history of Americans and their spending practices, she fills out facts and figures with examples plucked from history, literature and pop culture--from F. Scott Fitzgerald to “Friends”--illustrating how and why Americans spend and consume, and how our values have been upended and tipped askew.

Of course, there is a machine at work--with all of its behavioral studies, subliminal advertising and marketing research--that keeps the race toward “more” moving forward. “We receive 3,000 marketing messages every day,” Hammerslough says, many of which effectively undermine our attempts to retreat into a simpler life, often with products aimed at helping us acquire a simpler life.

Americans gorge themselves on things that they hope will counteract the onslaught of everything from stress to guilt to nostalgia. Things may not make us better, but they make us feel better, safer, more connected to our pasts. Web sites offer to help you find not just an old book, but “the very book you lost on a bus in your youth.” And “walk-into-the-past stores,” where every object has a story, milk this sentimental snapshot of the past.

Materialism or, as she calls it, “materializing,” Hammerslough explains, has grown from one of the basic devices of myth and miracles: “Manna appeared in the desert to save the starving. Loaves and fishes multiplied to feed the hungry.... We’ve had countless stories of transformation, where something bad turns good and something good gets better,” she writes. “Our fables illustrate fulfillment of especially unlikely possibility--capturing the moment when hope becomes reality. And if magic manifests itself in something tangible, well then, isn’t the object magical too?”

The belongings that clutter up our lives aren’t just props, as Hammerslough suggests, “They’re characters.”

They’re also our ambassadors and emissaries: That bells-and-whistles SUV, we think, can speak volumes as we roll around town. That light-catching wristwatch can project ambition we have yet to articulate. That calfskin and nickel briefcase can be a VIP pass to the future. Oh, and that retro hammock and Adirondack chair? Those could be keys to the past that we somehow want to make better. Possessions come to symbolize dreams, new starts and second chances.

And, Hammerslough suggests, sometimes they replace them. Somehow, in the midst of all of the hunting and gathering that carries us from season to season, year after year, many of us lose track of just what we are really seeking.

Hammerslough had the overwhelming sense that the space between “having” and “being” was swiftly closing. “I was listening to a woman say, ‘I love my lifestyle, but I hate my life.’ I thought, ‘Man! Whoa!’ If you looked [at this woman], you were looking at what we consider the standards: Attractive. Thin. Had great jewelry. A great car.” But no matter what she was projecting in tangibles, Hammerslough reflects, “it was the despair I was hearing. If you stripped away everything, what loneliness! It was so sad to me.

“We have had just incredible wealth over the last 10 years. Unbelievable. And we were lucky,” she says. But a pervasive, constant sense of dissatisfaction despite our material comfort set off all kinds of alarms for her. “The problem is when you can’t see what you have and you keep looking somewhere on the horizon.”

The pursuit of objects imbues them with “the promise of power,” but “dematerializing,” explains Hammerslough, involves stepping and stripping away, recognizing objects for what they are--objects.

What she began to glean in her research was that there is something almost cinematic about the ways we tweak and embroider the narratives of our lives, too often allowing sets to stand in for plot and character. Stripping away all of the soft focus and backlighting, she explains how and why we fall under the spell of advertisements and into lock-step of consumerism--even when we think we’re impervious to it. The “all the management women have this coat” spiel gets under our skin if we hear it often enough. And, “serving the high-fiber cereal will make me a good parent”--even if I don’t spend enough time at home--is a message that works on our guilt. The messages we absorb now suggest not only how we’re supposed to look, but also who we’re supposed to be to fit in. “The promise of belonging,” she says, “is potent.”

But, asks Hammerslough, does the desire belong shape personality and behavior more than the personal ethics and rugged individualism of the past? There are increasing signs that it does, she says. The act of buying what you hope to become, once it reaches an almost religious fervor, is like creative visualization gone awry--it’s wishful thinking. And ultimately, Hammerslough says, it erodes our values and our social and moral standards.

In its habit-forming rush, materialism encroaches on one’s more important values. When objects become answers, they get in the way of growth. “I think when you focus on the short-term--the next purchase--it blocks you from developing a real plan,” Hammerslough says. Coming up with a life plan, a real sense of where you’re going, “takes a lot of time and attention. [Nonstop consuming] is like playing a video game rather than reading a book. You need balance. Sometimes you have to sit down and read the book.”

Of course, against the stormy backdrop of a skittish economy and the brave new world of Homeland Security, Hammerslough, just like the rest of us, has heard the first strains of the a mantra “I want to live a deeper life.”

Just what that means, though, particularly in this moment when the nation and its priorities are in flux, is tough to discern. The messages from our elected officials, the president on down, say, “Buoy the economy! Help America! Shop!” But the message from our hearts and souls has been to ask: “What is all of this for?”

“I think what we’re understanding is that horrible things happened and there is nothing that can protect you,” Hammerslough says. “I don’t want people not to buy things but, rather, to really consider what you want to buy and what you’re bringing to this purchase.” Joy, Hammerslough says, isn’t something you can hunt down. It comes from within. Her suggestions to help readers begin to reorder the chaos, to “dematerialize” might feel like Sunday homilies or mother’s words: Engage in the process. The idea is to snap a “sense picture” of joy, of peace of pure happiness that “exists outside the props of possessions.”

“I get sick of these people who are whining about contemporary culture,” Hammerslough says. “The greatest power is to challenge it. While I might not be able to change the culture,” Hammerslough says, “I can certainly change how I react to it.”