Name: Why do we have so much stuff? | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2020-08-05T02:45:39.000Z
Duration: 4 min 58 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I have an entire operation around shopping.

Adverbs of frequency

I've got loads of items that I just never even wear.

Beautiful, beautiful quality. I've had it for over a year.

It hasn't even been taken off the hanger.

When we look around the high street and stores

but the most interesting thing about consumption

and buying is what's going on in our minds.

The story of stuff begins in our imagination

That's the space where we dream about all the things

that we would really, really love to have

I always think, "Yep, this is it. This is the item.

What we consume is an expression of our identity,

because our identity consists of a number of different facets.

We have an actual self, who we actually are most of the time,

And they're both as vital to me as the other.

Like, I feel like sometimes clothes help me take on a character.

Buying something new makes me feel excited

at speaking to the parasympathetic nervous system,

the one that makes your heart just flutter,

so I have orders come in at least once or twice a week.

I actually have an order right now that I'm going to pick up.

It's a new dress and I'm quite excited to wear it.

Excessive consumption is actually proven to make us feel

if not bad, it doesn't make us feel good.

Let's say I spend about half my lunch break looking at clothes,

and then I look a bit in between work tasks.

And then you add that to some time when I get home,

is spent looking at websites, looking at baskets, returning things,

yeah, it takes up quite a lot of my time.

many cultures thought of things as opposed to the self or the soul,

and what we see in the modern period is a reversal.

It's a cultural shift that things start to be seen

There's something really interesting happening actually with consumers.

People are actually beginning to get fed up with stuff.

We spoke to three generations of grandmothers, mothers and daughters.

For the grandmother generation, in that post-war era,

there was a much greater emphasis placed upon being frugal.

The mother's generation, they wanted to be modern

and embrace technologies like the freezer and the microwave.

They saw themselves as being experimental,

buying different ethnic foods, trying different styles of cooking,

buying organic produce, ethical products.

What we found was that these generations of women

were all the same in wanting to be different,

was through how they shopped and bought and used stuff.

and the impact the fashion industry has on the climate,

I am trying to be more mindful of my shopping.

So I've recently made a rule to try and make sure that

at least 50% of my wardrobe comes from vintage stores,

and I really want to get to a point where I'm more mindful about it

and it's less fast fashion and less vapid.

We've got so much stuff now, we don't really know what to do with it.

We spend a lot of time trying to work out

how to get rid of the stuff that we've got.

{\an2}"Well maybe we should stop buying all of this stuff."

What we do is retreat back into our imaginations

and into our fantasies and so we start the cycle all over again.

I would say yes, I do have a mild problem when it comes to shopping.

But I like to think that I could stop if I wanted to.

Oh my god, that's exactly what an addict says, isn't it?

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Why do we have so much stuff? | BBC Ideas

stuff

constantly

vital

expression