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Is it materialism if you’re emotionally attached?


During one of my day dreams today, I started wondering about the things I’d save in case of a fire. Sherlock and the other living beings of my house were safe, of course. And this is what I came up with, in descending order of importance:
1. My laptop
2. My jewelry box
3. My purse (which already has cash and all my IDs.. Yeah yeah, I might be cheating, but it’s my day-dream!)

It got me thinking; am I a materialist just because I want to save my old and battered laptop and some ear rings? It’s true that I haven’t named my laptop (I’m not that attached to it yet) but I’ll be saving it because of my movies and ebooks and professional software and not because of its monetary worth. Those are all replaceable, but the fact that I still want it in my survival kit must mean something more than plain greed. Then there’s my jewelry box, which I’ll save not because it has a few expensive pieces, but because I’ve selected all of them–even the cheap imitation ones–with lots of care, and I love all of them. Again, they’re replaceable but I’ll miss them all terribly if I lose them. The purse containing cash and IDs was an afterthought I suppose, and could be fairly counted as a symptom of my materialistic nature.

Yes, I love all my physical comforts, and I love shopping, and I love acquiring new things. But the material things that I love most–as apparent by the fact that I’d want to save those in a disaster-type situation–I love not because I’m motivated by financial profit, but because I become understandably attached to them.

So I ask again, is it materialism if I’m emotionally attached to the material things? I’d like to think it’s actually proof of my affectionate and accepting nature!

4 thoughts on “Is it materialism if you’re emotionally attached?

  1. Sentimental and pragmatic. The jewellery because of sentimentality; the purse because of pragmatism; the laptop for both. I’d say you picked what most people would grab. For exactly the same reasons I’d snatch my iPad, wallet and old photo albums. So people like you and I are just boringly normal, not materialistic. You’re welcome.

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