{"id":5500,"date":"2026-04-21T16:58:02","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T16:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/?p=5500"},"modified":"2026-04-21T16:58:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T16:58:04","slug":"the-diderot-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/the-diderot-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"The Diderot effect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Recently, a friend of mine bought a new sofa set, because he felt that the one he had, was old and ugly. After checking around, he found a certain furniture store, which offered him several classy pieces of furniture. After going through the variety of sofa sets in the store, he finally settled on one. Happy, he took it home.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

By Jonah M. Makau *<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His house suddenly felt like a palace, particularly his sitting room. However, almost suddenly, after a few days, he realized that with the new sofa set, all the other things looked weird. Or somehow, the sofa set looked the odd one out. Even his friends a few days later began saying that with such a sofa set the house needed a better television. My friend had thought of it. In fact, he had even noticed that coffee table and the carpet appeared rustic. Within five months, he changed all those things, including the paintings on the wall.  In fact, after the five months, few people could recognize the room, remembering what it had been before. It was on the sixth month that my friend realized that he had actually used up the money he had planned to save in case of an emergency in the family. What my friend did characterises what many of us do many times: buying things, only to find ourselves in a cycle of buying more things. It is called the Diderot effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Diderot effect explains the reasons why we buy things that really do not need. Simply put, the Diderot Effect can be described as \u201cthe introduction of a new possession into a consumer\u2019s existence which often results in a process of spiralling consumption.\u201d Sometimes the motivations behind the move come from the society, but other times they come from our own internal fantasies. The Diderot Effect is named after the 18th Century French philosopher named Denis Diderot, who was popular as a writer of the encyclopedia, but who remained poor until a famous person bought his library handsomely, changing his life for the good. With the new fortunes, he bought a gown, which made him to change not only his entire waldrop, but everything in the house, returning into a miserable state again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the Diderot effect is as alive as it was when Diderot himself existed. We buy a suit and soon we realize that we need shoes that matches the suit. Before long, someone notices that we don\u2019t have a nice watch to match the suit and we head to the shop. With time, we find ourselves spending more money on accessories that are said to go hand in hand with the suit. That is the moment we realize that we are misusing our resources, and that we are accumulating non-essential things. In fact, it is the moment we realize that we have become slaves of spending, as the philosopher once admitted, he had been a master of his old gown, but then the new gown had turned him into a slave.  <\/p>\n\n\n

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Today, the best person to help us prevent this tendency is none other than our Founder St. Joseph Allamano. In his life, and in his administration of temporal goods, he learned the secret of avoiding what we may call the \u201capparent need\u201d, using the virtue of simplicity. Our Founder lived a simple life, and was contented with what he had. This does not mean that he did not pray to improve what he had, but that he was not anxious for opulence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know that a reduced, intentional consumption lifestyle leads to higher-quality, more sustainable, and less stressful management of material resources. Naturally, by reducing too much dependence on material wealth, individuals regain control over their lives, shifting from a “having” mode to a “being” mode, which inherently simplifies financial management. Given that St. Joseph Allamano lived a freely chosen simple life, even his management of the funds of the Consolata Shrine did not become a burden to him. In his maturity as an elder, our Founder knew that simplicity changes the role of goods from being status symbols to tools that serve real human needs. That is why he was able to plan and track all purchases, focusing on utility and necessity rather than impulse. This was how he managed to prevent the Diderot effect, in which buying something leads to a spiral process of more buying leading to useless accumulation of goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Joseph Allamano knew that a simpler lifestyle meant fewer possessions, leading to less time spent cleaning, maintaining, repairing, organizing, and storing items. That is how his life style ended up translating into reduced administrative burden. In truth, today our Founder is telling us that by reducing the volume of choices and possessions, we experience reduced “analysis paralysis” and decision fatigue, allowing for more confident administrative choices. This is another way of saying, that a simpler life style improves also our decision-making capacity. In essence, simplicity in life transforms the administration of goods from a burden of accumulation into a streamlined, intentional, and ethical practice of stewardship. May God through the intercession of St. Joseph Allamano inspire the virtue of simplicity in our life, so that we may be effective tools of announcing God\u2019s generosity to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Father Jonah M. Makau, IMC, Postulation and History Office, Rome.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, a friend of mine bought a new sofa set, because he felt that the one he had, was old and ugly. After checking around, he found a certain furniture store, which offered him several classy pieces of furniture. After going through the variety of sofa sets in the store, he finally settled on one. Happy, he took it home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5501,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,143,16],"tags":[186],"class_list":["post-5500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-featured","category-founder","category-spirituality","tag-saint-joseph-allamano"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5504,"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5500\/revisions\/5504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consolataafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}