When Upgrades Steal Freedom

Upgrades are often downgrades in disguise. When Diderot wore his old robe, he didn’t worry

about ink stains. He wiped his pen on it. He lived freely. He was the master

of it. When he bought the new robe, he became afraid of ruining it.

He stiffened. He lost his freedom. When you buy an expensive white couch,

you stop letting friends drink red wine. You stop letting the dog jump up.

You stop living in your living room. You become a curator of a museum—not the resident of

a home. So how do we stop this? How do we break a pattern wired

into our brains? We can’t live in a cave and never buy anything nice—but we can build firewalls.