<story><title>What’s Causing the Rise of Hoarding Disorder?</title><url>https://daily.jstor.org/whats-causing-the-rise-of-hoarding-disorder/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>im3w1l</author><text>Smaller living space means that you can&amp;#x27;t save the thing you will need once every five year anymore. A previously adaptive behavior becomes poorly adaptive.&lt;p&gt;Cheap disposable items. Where before you would have a few hand made item of high quality, you now get a lot of lower quality items. This is partially related to technological advancement. If things become obsolete fast, it doesn&amp;#x27;t make sense to build with quality. Anyway a consequence is that it&amp;#x27;s easier to acquire a large amount of stuff than before.&lt;p&gt;Anti-landfill propaganda. We are guilt-tripped for throwing stuff in the garbage. We are told to dispose of things in very complicated ways and then it may be easier to just not dispose of it.&lt;p&gt;Breakdown of community and family. Before we might keep things around by giving them away to relatives or friends. There is a satisfaction in passing the torch. But this option isn&amp;#x27;t as available anymore.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jdietrich</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;it&amp;#x27;s easier to acquire a large amount of stuff than before&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suspect this is &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; factor. A behaviour that is adaptive in an environment of scarcity becomes maladaptive in an environment of abundance.&lt;p&gt;When my grandmother was a child, practically the only thing that genuinely counted as &amp;quot;garbage&amp;quot; was ash from the fire. Pretty much everything else had a meaningful value. Scraps of paper could light the fire. Scraps of cloth could make a quilt or a rug. Vegetable peelings went to the pigs and not a morsel of edible food was wasted. Packaging wasn&amp;#x27;t a word anyone was familiar with, but boxes and tins would be saved for re-use. Furniture was repaired and re-repaired until it was only good for firewood.&lt;p&gt;A lot of people were essentially raised to be hoarders, either through direct experience or transmission of those values from their parents. That mindset isn&amp;#x27;t irrational, but it&amp;#x27;s a poor match for the 21st century. It&amp;#x27;s all too easy to lose sight of the purpose of those values and hoard for the sake of hoarding.&lt;p&gt;I think that similar factors explain a significant part of the obesity epidemic. The scarcity-era virtues of clearing your plate and being a generous host become vices in a world of supersized portions and supermarket offers.</text></comment>
<story><title>What’s Causing the Rise of Hoarding Disorder?</title><url>https://daily.jstor.org/whats-causing-the-rise-of-hoarding-disorder/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>im3w1l</author><text>Smaller living space means that you can&amp;#x27;t save the thing you will need once every five year anymore. A previously adaptive behavior becomes poorly adaptive.&lt;p&gt;Cheap disposable items. Where before you would have a few hand made item of high quality, you now get a lot of lower quality items. This is partially related to technological advancement. If things become obsolete fast, it doesn&amp;#x27;t make sense to build with quality. Anyway a consequence is that it&amp;#x27;s easier to acquire a large amount of stuff than before.&lt;p&gt;Anti-landfill propaganda. We are guilt-tripped for throwing stuff in the garbage. We are told to dispose of things in very complicated ways and then it may be easier to just not dispose of it.&lt;p&gt;Breakdown of community and family. Before we might keep things around by giving them away to relatives or friends. There is a satisfaction in passing the torch. But this option isn&amp;#x27;t as available anymore.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eru</author><text>&amp;gt; Where before you would have a few hand made item of high quality, you now get a lot of lower quality items.&lt;p&gt;Hand made items didn&amp;#x27;t use to be of universal higher quality.  Just the opposite.</text></comment>