Wendy Harmer’s new foray into the life-style focused documentary is a surprisingly considered approach to our obsession with ownership and the objects that give our lives meaning. But at what point do we stop possessing and start to become possessed?
I’ll admit that I thought I was tuning into a series on a celebration of our collective obsession. The sort of program you expect to see elderly women with staggering collections of egg cups and aging men standing at the doors of garages crammed with 19th century type-writers. Wendy Harmer is both the presenter and writer of the series and, after all, she is better known for her lengthy career revelling in the ridiculous on breakfast radio. But I was comprehensively mistaken.
Harmer does bring her light-hearted sense of humour to the topic of the possessions that cram our homes, but the examination is every bit as informative and insightful as you would expect from an ABC documentary series.
The grand question under discussion is, ‘what do we get from all of our stuff?’
It would be very easy, looking out on our consumption-driven society, to conclude that stuff was in fact the problem and we could all just do with a lot less. I’m not going to argue the point, and neither does the series. What Wendy Harmer does draw to our attention though is the multitude of roles that ‘stuff’ serves within our society.
Enter Esther, the expectant mother who is also expecting a gaggle of friends to arrive on her doorstep at any moment for her baby shower. As Harmer points out, “Even in the womb we are starving to accumulate a great big pile of stuff.” But accumulating baby products here is not just about having the latest Elvis-styled Quadruple-0 jump suit. In this context, the presentation of stuff is an essential part of the fabric of relationship. “We want to give support and the way we tend to do that is not just emotionally but by giving materially. By giving stuff,” the episode informs us. In fact, for those familiar with the popular Christian book ‘The Five Love Languages’ author Dr Gary Chapman identifies the giving of small gifts as a primary means of communicating love for a significant number of people.
Possessions also play a healthy role in forming identity. Again, this is not to say that ‘we are what we own’ but that what we own helps us know which communities we belong to (from the tribal Masai to the urban teen) and puts us in touch with our personal histories. “We document for ourselves our lives in terms of our objects,” says sociologist Dr Beryl Langer. The toy car was the one we received when we went to school; the football our gift from Uncle Trevor, and so on. But what happens when our life becomes only about the stuff we have or hope to accumulate?
There are few better times to observe the vast accumulation of useless stuff than in the days that follow a marriage ceremony. Who amongst us married people has not looked down at the sixth quiche dish and wondered what passes through people’s minds when they stand in a shopping centre and consider how best to convey their affection for you and your beloved? As I said above, the temptation would be to say that a drastic reduction in giving was the answer. However Jesus Himself was not adverse to handing out wedding gifts – the wedding at Cana ended in an exorbitant gift to the newly weds – He just made sure they were appropriate and appreciated. Consider how valuable a saleable supply of fine wine would be to a couple in a poor village whose expenses had not stretched to covering their own required celebrations?
The chief problems with ‘stuff’ from the Christian’s perspective are context and ownership. The Barbie in one setting is the valued and meaningful present whereas in another it is just doll number 28 to be barely glanced at. In that respect, we have to value the things we have more not less, and seek fulfillment from the love they may represent, not simply their quantity and frequency of arrival. Furthermore, ‘stuff’ can be a great source of joy – it can be beautiful, meaningful, encouraging etc – but how tightly we hang on to it says a lot about the state of our hearts.
Jesus warned people to “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions,” (Luke 12:15). Harmer does a good job of drawing out the problems associated with the unnatural and forced value we put on ‘abundance’ because of the directives of transitory fashions. However it is this concept of ‘possession’ that also causes problems. Karl Marx said the problem began not with objects but with ownership and moved from this to communism. You don’t have to go that far, however, to recognize an intrinsic truth. As faulted humans we move very easily from having to holding to withholding. CS Lewis was keen to point out that we as humans couldn’t ultimately claim ownership of anything, even our bodies. Everything came to us as a gift. The writer of Ecclesiastes was just as keen to point out that we could barely control our possessions during our lives and certainly not after our deaths. Clearly there is nothing wrong with enjoying what God has given, but we might better see ourselves as custodians rather tha owners. Seen in those terms, every object becomes an opportunity to serve someone else.
Open House TV reviewer Mark Hadley is the Culture editor at Your.sydneyanglicans.net and Christianity.net.au.
