The short answer is that it depends. It depends on your reasons, their costs, and the emotional impact. To understand these, we need to know what we need for well-being. We also need to know the roles and impacts of material things. With that knowledge, we can then determine when it’s good or bad to like material things.
What we need for wellbeing
Before we can look at the role of material things in our wellbeing, we must know what wellbeing is. We must also know the factors that affect our well-being. On that note, your well-being is the combination of your comfort, health, and happiness. Meeting your physical and emotional needs will affect your comfort, health, and happiness. But meeting your physical needs will have the biggest effect on your comfort and health. Also, meeting your emotional needs will have the biggest effect on your happiness. So, here are things that meet your physical and emotional needs:
These meet our physical needs:
Clothing and shelter from the elements
Nutrition, hydration, and oxygen
Sanitation, health maintenance, and healthcare
These meet our emotional needs:
Spending time with people you enjoy being with
Doing things you enjoy
Doing things that make you feel good about yourself
Moments of calm and relaxation
Recognizing that your life is good
What we need to know about material things
It helps to know our relation to material things. It also helps to know the demands that material things impose. This helps us to know when it’s good and bad to desire them. So here are two major considerations about material things:
Humans are tool users.
One reason why people like material things is that our species uses tools. This has been the case even before caveman times. So, our desire for material things comes from our instinct to collect tools. In fact, every useful thing you own is a tool of some sort. Here are some examples:
Your car is a tool for traveling long distances without getting tired.
Your bed is a tool that you use to sleep in comfort.
Decorations are tools for making your home beautiful.
All material things demand resources.
A physical object that needs no maintenance still takes up space. Also, many material things need maintenance that takes up time, money, or energy. Time, space, money, and energy are all useful resources. So you are trading in useful resources for every material object you keep. It also means that for every useless thing you keep, you waste something useful to keep it. In other words, there is no point in keeping something unless you have a use for it.
When is it good to like material things?
We know that a material thing is only worth keeping if it has a use. That use is to improve some experience. It can make the experience easier, quicker, safer, or better in some other way. For example, drinking hot tea from a teacup is easier and safer than drinking it from your cupped hands
If the material thing has no effect on your experience, then it is useless. If it makes your experience worse, then you are better off without it. So, it is experiences that are important. Material things are only valuable if they support the experiences. Experiences that add to our well-being are the best ones for material things to support. So, here are sometimes when it is good to like material things:
When they are for improving comfort
Comfort is the sign that you are meeting your physical needs. Otherwise, you would be very uncomfortable. So if you are starving to death, you would be very uncomfortable. But once you are comfortable, adding extras will not make you more comfortable. So, if you are comfortable sleeping on a full-size bed, you don’t need a king-size bed. It is good to like material things when you use them for comfort. But going to excess will waste your resources instead of adding comfort.
When they are for supporting things you enjoy doing
If you have something that you love to do, it’s okay to want material things that support it. The activity can be a cause, a hobby, or anything else. So it’s okay to want a home theater if you like watching movies in your living room. Again, it’s the experience that is important. The material things are only tools to support the experience.
When we use them to connect with friends and loved ones
Material things can be great when they help you to connect with loved ones. So a car is excellent for traveling to visit people. Also, a cellphone helps you to communicate with people who are far away. But the real value is in the visits and the conversations. The car and the cellphone are just tools to achieve them.
When is it bad to like material things?
As we now know, all material things have costs. So the use you get out of them must be greater than the costs. Otherwise, they are not worth the costs. In this case, you get no benefit from wanting them. It is bad enough if they don’t add to your well-being. But it is even worse if they take away from your wellbeing. Here are some times when it is bad to like material things:
If you will never use them
If you will never use something, then it’s as good as garbage. It will not benefit you in any way. It will only waste your space, time, money, and energy. Your resources are better spent on experiences that add to your well-being.
When they are only to show off status
Status symbols rarely work as well as the owner hoped. Instead of seeming to be high status, the owner often seems insecure. It is because only insecure people need to depend on status symbols. It is even worse when people try to compete with each other via status symbols. There is no reward for the “winner” if there is one. They end up wasting money trying to impress people who they don’t like.
If you envy other people
Envy is the resentment of others for having what is rightfully theirs. There is nothing good about it. Harboring this sentiment would make you the villain and you would know it. This attacks your mental well-being by degrading how you feel about yourself. Envy also causes you to focus on other people’s fortunes instead of your own. This is another way that envy attacks your mental wellbeing. It’s better to accept that someone will always have something that you don’t.
If you are willing to sacrifice your values for them
Whenever you sacrifice your values, you lose a part of your character that you like. If that happens, your self-image suffers. No material object is worth that. Also, some people are willing to commit immoral acts for material things. They make the world worse for their presence. In time, the world will be better for their absence. It is better for you to not be one of them.
When they cost more than necessary
When something costs more than necessary, it takes from things that you value. You will be better off with a cheaper option that works. So, if your car is safe, reliable, comfortable, and efficient, you don’t need one that costs 3 times as much. The more expensive car will waste money that you could use for enjoyable experiences.
In summary, being tool users explains our desire for material things. In fact, every useful thing is a tool to support some experience. But every material thing uses resources. So its use must be worth the cost to be good. Material things can be good if you use them for experiences that support your wellbeing. It can be good to like them in these cases. But it doesn’t help to like them if they are useless. Also, it doesn’t help if they cost too much or detract from your well-being. And it is bad to be willing to sacrifice your values for them.