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The Diderot Effect: How to Avoid Overconsumption

If you can’t afford an affluent lifestyle, you can’t afford to have good taste. That’s the warning Denis Diderot left to the world. It’s based on a cautionary tale the 18th-century French philosopher put to paper after a fateful shopping spree. Have you ever bought something new only to find yourself in a neverending cycle of consumption? You’re in good company. This phenomenon has become known as the Diderot Effect, a social phenomenon about human desire and overconsumption. It all started with a glorious red robe.

What Is the Diderot Effect?

The Diderot Effect highlights how obtaining a single new possession can trigger a desire for complementary stuff, creating a seemingly endless consumption cycle. Put differently, we tend to make unnecessary reactive purchases to keep up with our new lifestyle. This leads to increased spending and, if you’re not on the wealthy side, debt. The effect is of course named after the aforementioned French philosopher Denis Diderot. He documented his misadventure in a famous essay entitled Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown.

Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown

Diderot’s piece was meant as a “warning to those who have more taste than fortune”. Rather poor but resourceful, the writer and an art critic co-authored the Encyclopédie, one of the most comprehensive encyclopedias at the time. Things took a turn when he was forced to sell his library to Catherine II of Russia in 1766, granting him more wealth than ever before.

A man of taste and newfound prosperity, Denis soon got his hands on a luxurious new scarlet robe. He was full of excitement. It was a magnificent, fashionable and expensive piece of garment. But as he parted ways with his old dressing gown, he experienced unintended negative consequences in the form of a spiral of consumerism. In his essay, the freshly minted dressing gown enthusiast laments:

I was the absolute master of my old robe. I have become the slave of the new one. […] My old robe was one with the other rags that surrounded me. A straw chair, a wooden table, a rug from Bergamo, a wood plank that held up a few books, a few smoky prints without frames, hung by their corners on that tapestry. Between these prints, three or four suspended plasters formed, along with my old robe, the most harmonious indigence. All is now discordant. No more coordination, no more unity, no more beauty.

Suddenly, Diderot’s old possessions seemed dated and inadequate in comparison to his new belongings. Having gotten the taste for a tasteful lifestyle, the art critic spent his money replacing his cheap-looking old possessions to match the fanciness of his pristine gown. He decorated the mantle of his fireplace with a large mirror. The old wall rug had to go and a new one from Damascus took its place. His straw chair made way to one made out of leather. Unfortunately, his wealth couldn’t keep up with his new lifestyle.

Regrets on Buying a New Pair of $500 Boots

Centuries later, Diderot’s misfortune is still studied in marketing and consumer research. In his book Culture and Consumption, anthropologist Grant McCracken coined the term Diderot Unity. He suggested that consumers actively seek to create a sense of unity or harmony among their possessions. Some products were consumed in groups based on cultural influences, lifestyle or aesthetic choices. If one item deviated from that group, it could spawn the creation of an entirely new Diderot Unity.

It’s a fun exercise to think about your belongings in terms of a curated collection of goods. Until a few years ago, for instance, I had a good minimalist look going. Decent chino pants, a quality polo shirt and a pair of reasonably-priced shoes were my standard look. Then a friend of mine bought himself a pair of R.M. Williams leather boots. I’ve always had my eyes on the iconic Australian brand. I was about to give in to the temptation of spending $500 on handmade boots. “They’re of the highest quality and will last a lifetime,” I told myself and got a pair.

Soon the excitement about my new handmade boots gave way to creeping thoughts about what to wear with them. My pants seemed old and cheap in comparison. So did most of my shirts and sweaters. Not to mention my either cheap or non-existent accessories. Needless to say, I got new socks, which alone cost as much as my entire previous outfit. Okay, I’m exaggerating. I didn’t end up like Diderot. But I found it remarkable how my new footwear was pulling me in the direction of a completely new lifestyle. Reason enough to take a closer look at human desire.

How We Know What We Want

How do we know what we want? The surprising consensus seems to be that we don’t. And yet we act as if we did. Let’s look at it from a philosophical perspective, starting with Britain’s foremost ‘spiritual entertainer’, Alan Watts. He describes three stages of not knowing what we want:

In the beginning state you don’t know what you want because you haven’t thought about it. Or you only thought superficially. Then when somebody forces you to think about it and go through it and say, ‘Yeah, I think I like this, I think I like that, I think I’d like the other,’ there’s a middle stage. Then you get beyond that and say, ‘Is that what I really want?’ In the end you say, ‘No I don’t think that’s it. I might be satisfied by it for a while and I wouldn’t turn my nose up it. But it’s not really what I want.’

So how do we make consumer choices then? According to French philosopher René Girard, we observe the wants and wishes of other people and imitate their desires. Hence the term Mimetic Desire. People end up competing for the same objects of desire, which ultimately influences culture. However, this also leads to rivalry and societal conflict. In such times of tension, so Girard, the community unites against an arbitrary scapegoat to alleviate the conflicts. Sounds gloomy? Other theories about soothing our desires are equally bleak.

The psychological concept of Hedonic Adaptation suggests that we have an individual baseline level of happiness. Roughly speaking, this remains relatively constant throughout our lives. This means getting new boots or a fancy dressing gown will only temporarily raise your happiness level. But it also means that negative life events don’t have a lasting impact on your well-being either. We quickly return to our baseline of happiness. Even though we adapt, we keep chasing that elusive feeling of satisfaction with more consumption.

So we don’t know what we want. And even if we think we do, the effects of getting what we desire don’t last very long anyway. Sounds like a recipe for blind overconsumption. Which brings us back to the Diderot Effect and how we can overcome it.

How to Overcome the Diderot Effect

Frustrated with the idea of consumption, our first idea might be getting rid of desire entirely. A noble goal many spiritual people have tried to achieve over millennia. But as Watts knows: “‘In order not to suffer you must get rid of desire. But then people find out that they desire to get rid of desire.” Once the idea is planted in your head, not wanting that new red gown isn’t an option. Unless…


A second strategy is acknowledging what we want but developing a Strategic Disdain for things we can’t have. This sentiment is not only one of Rober Greene’s infamous laws of power. It’s also famously captured in the fable The Fox and the Grapes. A fox is unable to reach the grapes on a vine, so he comes to despise them as a coping mechanism. Fancy red robes are for losers anyway.

A third strategy is to find a middle ground. A more mindful way to deal with the inevitable suffering our desires bring. Philosopher and investor Naval Ravikant suggests seeing your wants and wishes in the context of your life’s mission and making conscious choices accordingly:

Desire to me is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. And I keep that in front of my mind. So when I’m unhappy about something, I look for what is the underlying desire that I have that’s not being fulfilled.

It’s okay to have desires. You’re a biological creature, you’re put on this earth, you have to do something. You have to have desires. You have a mission. But don’t have too many, don’t pick them up unconsciously, don’t pick them up randomly, don’t have thousands of them. ‘My coffee is too cold, doesn’t taste quite right. I’m not sitting perfectly. Oh, I wish it was warmer. My dog pooped in the lawn. I didn’t like that.’ Whatever it is.

Pick your one overwhelming desire. It’s okay to suffer over that one. But on all the others you wanna let them go so you can be calm and peaceful and relaxed.

Naval

Does owning that red gown get you closer to fulfilling your life’s purpose? If not, then you can safely choose to ignore it. And if that leaves you with the question of identifying your life’s mission, check out my articles on the Circle of Competence.

Closing Thoughts

The hard part of overcoming the Diderot Effect is to make yourself aware of the unintended negative consequences of acquiring new possessions. That puts you in a position to avoid or reverse its effects. Monsieur Diderot put it much more dramatically of course, pleading to god: “If you see in your eternal decrees that riches are corrupting the heart of Denis, don’t spare the masterpieces he idolizes. Destroy them and return him to his original poverty.”