How stuff creates stuff today

http://www.cartoonistgroup.com/store/add.php?iid=49490

We have had a few experiences with relatives or friends dying and leaving a house full of objects and materials.  When you live in a house or an office, you need stuff, you use it and you know what is where and why.  It is, of course, quite different when you walk into a place that was recently inhabited by someone else.  Especially an older person, who has had years and money to develop some complicated hobbies and activities.

Sometimes, the entire Western world (roughly Europe and the Americas) are said to be based on a materialist culture while, in the past at least, the East has been more spiritually and mentally oriented.  C.S. Lewis says somewhere that "God loves matter, having invented it."  I suspect that both directions are improving, evolving and becoming more aware of the other side. 

The accumulation of matter and materials and goods and property is interesting.  The excellent book "Clutter's Last Stand" is just one of many on the subject of trying to have stuff without being conquered by it.

Right now, I am listening to Matthew B. Crawford talking about manual work vs. symbolic, white collar or intellectual work.  We have, and need, plenty of both.  But modern marketing, manipulation of desires and crafty invention conspire to make it very easy to acquire a little something every day, if not every hour.  The first link above shows how acquiring stuff, storing stuff, and then trying to get to bits of it on demand can easily lead to acquiring more.  The cartoon shows that the father wants to get his screwdriver so that Mom doesn't have to use the butter knife to open a screw.  However, there is too much junk in the way to the tool.  He may use the butter knife yet but he may stop by the dollar store on some errand and pick up another screwdriver.