November 2017

New Philosopher

For curious people

New Philosopher5 min read
Contributors
DBC Pierre won the Booker Prize for his debut novel Vernon God Little, which was also awarded the Whitbread First Novel Award in 2003 – the first time the two awards had been granted to the same book. Pierre is also the author of Ludmilla’s Broken En
New Philosopher2 min readEnvironmental Science
Forever Shopping
We no longer go shopping. Those days are over. This is the conclusion reached by auditor KPMG in its latest survey on the shopping habits of the planet. Fast-changing technology, and streamlined logistics and payments systems, has seen US$1.9 trillio
New Philosopher4 min read
News From Nowhere
Nothing produced by humankind can last forever. Still, according to Hannah Arendt, human products may be divided into two categories, distinguishable by their durability. In the first category are what Arendt calls consumer goods, by which she means
New Philosopher5 min read
Is Less More?
Clean lines, absence of decoration, avoidance of clutter, simplicity, and above all functionality – these are the characteristics of modernist architecture that were encapsulated in the phrase ‘less is more’. Although originally coined in Robert Brow
New Philosopher2 min read
Stuff Stats
Compulsive buying disorder (CBD) was recognised as early as 1915 by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. He described the existence of oniomania, or ‘buying mania’. In 2015, the global amount spent globally on goods and services at the household le
New Philosopher5 min read
The Stuff Gap
There are many warm and fuzzy sayings about owning your own home, not least of which is one by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard: “If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house prote
New Philosopher1 min read
The Power Of Possessions
After the sudden and unexpected death of my husband, I found it difficult to dispose of his clothing and personal items. Impulsively, I began to make photographs. I see now that I was trying to understand the power and mystery that seemed inherent in
New Philosopher6 min read
The African Lightning
Seventy years ago this year the 7,974 tonne cargo ship African Lightning was launched at Kearny Point, New Jersey, by the Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock Company. She was a cargo ship that looked like a cargo ship, back before mega-ships, before conta
New Philosopher5 min read
Are You A Collector Or A Hoarder?
My father was a practical man, not given to superstition. But he did have one little rule, more ironic I think than serious: we weren’t allowed to count his owls. He had started collecting them in his youth. Our mantelpiece was covered in owls of all
New Philosopher11 min readPersonal Growth
Living In A Material World
Zan Boag: We live in a culture that is obsessed with stuff, yet it’s generally viewed as a negative to be materialistic. Why is this? Tim Kasser: I think this ambivalence reflects some competing tendencies in the human mind and in human culture. On
New Philosopher5 min read
Enslaving Things
It’s an obvious truth – almost too obvious to need pointing out, really – that the world consists of two kinds of things: those with inner lives, and those without. Humans, plus presumably at least some animals, have thoughts, emotions, and intention
New Philosopher5 min read
Selling Childhood
We learn about stuff, as with so much else, when we are young. Adults provide children with objects of play to foster creativity, frequently through role-playing. However, playthings, often quite unintentionally, have introduced us to modern consumer
New Philosopher3 min read
1 To Be Is To Buy
Tom Chatfield is a writer, broadcaster, and philosopher. Dawn Raffel is an award-winning editor and author. André Dao is the Deputy Editor of New Philosopher. Margaret Gibson is a university lecturer and writer. What’s your favourite adver
New Philosopher3 min read
2 Our Stuff Tells The Story Of Our Lives
Possessions tell the story of our lives, quite possibly better than we can. We regard our stuff as utilitarian, aesthetically pleasing, or – ideally – both. But over time the objects we accumulate take on emotional weight. They signify the places we’
New Philosopher3 min read
3 Things For The Future
I’d been sitting in John Gulzari’s living room for more than an hour when he suddenly jumped up and rushed from the room. John is a Hazara man who fled Afghanistan in 1999, and I had been interviewing him for a book of oral histories about people’s e
New Philosopher3 min readPopular Culture & Media Studies
4 What We Leave Behind
The surviving traces we leave behind have expanded from a social history of largely discrete physical objects in time and space to spatially abstract, temporally complex digital artefacts. Both constitute the economic and emotional stakes of inherite
New Philosopher1 min read
The Dog And The Shadow
A DOG, crossing a little rivulet, with a piece of flesh in his mouth, saw his own shadow represented in the clear mirror of the limpid stream; and believing it to be another Dog, who was carrying another piece of flesh, he could not forbear catching
New Philosopher9 min read
What Your Stuff Says About You
Zan Boag: Your book Snoop looks at how we form impressions of others based on their stuff. In your research, you literally looked through people’s stuff. You picked under beds, peered in closets, rifled through music collections. How did you go about
New Philosopher4 min read
Stuff
“To have is first to create. And the bond of ownership which is established then is a bond of continuous creation; the object possessed is inserted by me into the total form of my environment; its existence is determined by my situation and by its in
New Philosopher5 min read
A Commodified World
When I was twelve, I was told about ‘rampant consumerism’. Perhaps the chat was prompted by Black Monday, when the Dow Jones dropped by almost a quarter. Perhaps by acquaintances, buying yet another new car. Perhaps by my childish fixations: the eter
New Philosopher2 min read
Ethical Children
Why do my parents insist on me sharing my toys, when adults never share their stuff? When you are raising children, you have a bunch of responsibilities. You have to keep your children safe, healthy, and happy. Plus, you have a responsibility to he
New Philosopher3 min read
Ethical Dilemma
Every birthday, holiday, or visit, my parents and parents-in-law give numerous gifts – clothes, toys, stationery, etc. – to my children. The presents are for the most part made in sweatshops, tend to break, and are forgotten about within days of open
New Philosopher11 min read
Life, Death, And Everything In-between
Could you give a sense of what an incredible collector Henry Wellcome was? When I hear his name, I think of that scene at the beginning of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane with all the amazing loot piled up that he’s collected from around the world. The c
New Philosopher6 min readCooking, Food & Wine
When Grief Is On The Menu
A photograph of a half-eaten sandwich is buried deep within my camera roll. Every now and then it will pop up as I scroll through pictures or when I am uploading new ones. I stop and breathe a little differently for a moment. I know the date without
New Philosopher6 min read
The Philosophy Of Anorexia
I am a psychiatrist who has specialised in the treatment of anorexia nervosa for more than fifteen years. During that time I have had the honour of assisting many brave people negotiate their recovery from this deadly and tormenting illness. I also h
New Philosopher2 min read
Our Library
Newspaper headlines exalt the local lottery winner. Get-rich-quick books climb to the tops of best-seller lists. Multicolour ads flash on web pages. Celebrities on television hawk everything from sport utility vehicles to mascara. Although they diffe
New Philosopher9 min read
Keeping Up With The Joneses
During the earlier stages of economic development, consumption of goods without stint, especially consumption of the better grades of goods – ideally all consumption in excess of the subsistence minimum – pertains normally to the leisure class. This
New Philosopher2 min read
What’s On
The Perth International Arts Festival is the oldest annual international multi-arts festival in the southern hemisphere and is Western Australia’s premier cultural event. The first Perth Festival was in 1953 and it now offers the people of Western Au
New Philosopher2 min read
Around The Web
Until the 19th century, hardly anyone recognised the vital role that everyday buyers play in the world economy. Professor Frank Trentmann, author of Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, traces the growth in momentum and awareness of
New Philosopher2 min read
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New Philosopher5 min read
Fleshy Stuff
Blame Christianity, if you like. Better still, blame the Enlightenment. But western societies have, historically, been so skewed towards favouring the mind over the body, consciousness over mere matter, spirit over flesh, that we’ve practically forgo

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