An interesting (and stomach-turning) article on Minnesota garbage houses posits that people who end up creating a garbage house are a symptom of people not coping well with information overload and the rush of modernity. Personally, I suspect that garbage housers, like cat collectors and pack rats (the article makes a distinction, I don’t know how much of one there is, besides the existence of paths in the chaos and the theme of the obsession) are the dysfunctional height of an inclination in a lot of people. Like severe depression or alcoholism, I think there are many (not all) people with the potential who don’t actually end up developing the disease. Who knows what pushes you over the edge, but many people live careful lives to avoid a genetic curse.

Hey, look! Someone else already did the related web searching I was going to do after posting this- I’m going to go read it now.