101 Things We Take For Granted

mind

Mar 21

"The more often we see the things around us - even the beautiful and wonderful things - the more they become invisible to us."
—GK Chesterton

Imagine time traveling 3000 years ago to show off your toilet paper to your ancestors or 300 years to show off your central air. Even 30 years ago, the cell phone and the internet were lightyears behind! Our ancestors would look at us with their jaws on the floor. Many of us might shrug it off and say, "Yeah, but it's too rough, loud, or slow."

But when we zoom out, we realize that for the first time in history, we live in a world of abundance. We have so much food we're statistically more over-nourished than undernourished, we own so much stuff that 11% of us use a storage unit, and the average person owns 148 articles of clothing per person (only 6% have worn all of them). In other words, we've got it really good.

Why We Take Things For Granted: Lifestyle Creep & The Diderot Effect

But it's not always easy to see this. We've turned incredible experiences into everyday features of living. The reason for this is due to our hardwired brains. The evolutionary cycle of happiness followed by dissatisfaction served us well in our journey, yet our surroundings have undergone profound changes, making it challenging for our brains to adapt. Had we been perpetually content in the past, our survival might have been at stake, as this restlessness is deeply ingrained in our cognitive makeup. It's not something we can simply wish away, nor would we want to. One generation creates something, we're born into it, grow up with it, and build on it through innovation. If we're spending all of this time appreciating things then we're not noting the areas for improvement and stalling progress.

The downside of hedonic adaptation, or the hedonic treadmill, is that we become habituated to even the most incredible things in our lives. This can lead to lifestyle creep, also known as the Diderot Effect.

Lifestyle creep has long existed, but it was popularized by the 18th-century French philosopher Denis Diderot. Diderot initially faced financial troubles when he was unable to pay for his daughter's dowry. An unexpected lifeline came from Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, who provided financial relief by purchasing his library and hiring him as her personal librarian. This windfall led Diderot to acquire a fancy scarlet robe, which he liked. However, the robe clashed with his less-fancy belongings, setting off a chain reaction of purchases known as the Diderot Effect: the tendency to acquire new possessions that triggers a series of additional purchases as individuals seek to align their belongings with the perceived status or aesthetics of the first item.

Thanks to these factors, we habituate to the latest manmade marvel, and in no time we find ourselves complaining about inconveniences like long flights, deliveries taking more than a day, and web pages that take more than a second to load. In other words, we have first-world problems.

How To Hop Off The Treadmill

As a way to step back, I created a list of 100 things we take for granted. They're simple man-made things that we'd likely be lost without. Each one of these might elicit a sharp response in the negative so recognize when that happens and transition to a state of gratitude instead of reflexive frustration or anger. Look on the bright side, look to the benefit, and have a better relationship with it. If we always find the downside of the next mind-blowing thing that we’ll take for granted ("they can send a man to the moon but they can't...") then we're not living a life that is rooted in enjoyment.

I’ve written about 100 simple pleasures in life. These are my favorite things in life that aren’t manmade. Today I’m going to write about 100 manmade things in life. The list is basic to us but think, "What would life be like without it?" or "What would my ancestors think if they saw this for the first time?" View these with gratitude and awe.