Category Archives: Possessions

FOUR TYPES OF PEOPLE

Four Kinds of People

My wife and I were talking about a piece she read by Tim Keller in which he describes two types of people:

                Those who get what they want and are not happy

                Those who do not get what they want and are not happy

My wife took the second group of people and made two groups:

                Those who have given up believing they will ever get what they want to be happy

                Those who have not given up believing they will ever get what they want to be happy

As we were talking about all this, Doreen asked me if I thought there were non-Christians who truly were happy with their lives.  I do.  In fact, I know some.  They have not yet gotten to Ecc. 2:11. (Take a gander to see what I mean if you are not familiar with this terrific section of Scripture.)  Their hearts are still satisfied with their lives apart from God.

My question to you: Why are so many Christians such unhappy folk?

DIDEROT EFFECT

“Sometimes it’s nice to learn that a psychological phenomenon has a name, if only so I no longer have to think of it as Me Being Uniquely Irrational And Self-Defeating. So it is with the Diderot effect – which, I learned recently (via Lifehacker), is the term for when you buy something new, but then it makes your other possessions look timeworn by comparison, so you end up replacing them, too. The inspiration here is Denis Diderot’s 1769 essay Regrets For My Old Dressing Gown, in which he recounts being given a luxurious replacement. “My old robe was one with the other rags that surrounded me,” Diderot laments. But “all is now discordant”. Before long, he’s obliged to replace his furniture and paintings as well: “I was the absolute master of my old robe. I have become the slave of the new one.”

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/02/shopping-diderot-effect-oliver-burkeman