Frugal Green Living: Watch Out For the Diderot Effect

Not having any grand new frugal life change announcements to make today, I have been nosing around the established writers on frugality that are not annoying (which really limits your choices), and found a piece by Philip Brewer at Wisebread titled "have a style, not a lifestyle." He discusses the Diderot effect, which derives from a story written by Dennis Diderot in 1769, discussing what happens after he is given a lovely new dressing gown in Regrets On Parting With My Old Dressing Gown, or, A Warning to Those who Have More Taste Than Money (which I think might describe me.)

Why didn't I keep it? It was used to me and I was used to it. It molded all the folds of my body without inhibiting it; I was picturesque and handsome. The other one is stiff, and starchy, makes me look stodgy. There was no need to which its kindness didn't loan itself, for indigence is almost always officious. If a book was covered in dust, one of its panels was there to wipe it off. If thickened ink refused to flow in my quill, it presented its flank. Traced in long black lines, one could see the services it had rendered me. These long lines announce the litterateur, the writer, the man who works. I now have the air of a rich good for nothing. No one knows who I am.

In its shelter I feared neither the clumsiness of a valet, nor my own, neither the explosion of fire nor the spilling of water. I was the absolute master of my old robe. I have become the slave of the new one.

In his new robe, all of his surroundings look drab and tired.

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 its 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.

Soon Diderot is changing everything, buying new chairs, armoires for his books, mirrors over his mantlepiece. His table puts up a good fight, but soon meets its destiny and is replaced by a "precious bureau." He then talks of how this consumerist urge to make everything as expensive and beautiful as his robe is going to drive him to ruin, and how consumerism will ruin us all.

Evil instinct of the convenient! Delicate and ruinous tact, sublime taste that changes, moves, builds and overturns; that empties the coffers of the fathers; that leaves daughters without a dowry, the sons without an education; that makes so many beautiful things and great evils. You who substituted in my house the fatal and precious desk for the wooden table: it is you who ruins nations.

Diderot had it right; If something is comfortable and it works for you, keep it. Once you start replacing things it becomes very hard to stop; that's the Diderot effect.

You can read the whole story here on google books.

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