We are a species fixated on consumption and materialistic pursuits. But perhaps the biggest mistake we make is not actually in continuously gaining things, but - more precisely - in holding onto them.
Gaining shiny new objects brings us a temporary spurt of happiness, but - once the luster wears off - the ongoing owning and maintaining of these things beyond that initial happiness they provide can create a long term negative offset against our happiness. This negative offset can, of course, be temporarily compensated for by new acquisitions of shiny objects. And as the negative cumulative offset deepens from all the things acquired, the rate and scale of new acquisitions must escalate in order for the acclimated system to attain that same original rush state.
This is a classic addiction spiral. One could argue that the human species has fallen into a pattern of collective addiction to ownership, which produces the short term rush followed by the long term malaise, that must then be dulled by ever increasing ownership - a vicious cycle.
Therefore, perhaps the ownership of external objects is essentially a fallacious concept that is unsustainable and that results in a long term deficit. We are essentially being weighed down and enslaved by the things we own. We service their needs beyond the point of them serving ours. Perhaps it is high time to start unacquiring things.