Yesterday I had this thought about ‘things’, I love the concept of things. The notions of what this word contains in its vageness and of what the definition of a ‘thing’ really is. Althought this concept is less my own and more a reference to “thing theory’’ by Bill Brown, and its depth of comparison between things and objects. Yet mid coversation about how the industrial revolution change the definitiion od how we desire in our daily life. I could not help but ponder this idea of thought about what it is I want in life in the notion of how we as a society are embraced to consume, and consume such awful useless things. This conversation the was so determined on making opionon and solution to how our society has open access to an enormity of produded stuff and has less and less a desire towards artisain craftsman ship appart from a certain type of individual that is mainly in the minority or subjectively doing it for the wrong reasons. Additionly words bourgeois and class slipped there ways into the argument and eventually a new subject matter had arose and taken hold.
Still I was deep in thought. About what I felt was a slightly differnt take on the subject. I think what interests more than the reality of the subject and the great points made, sits within another realm. An interior version of the world, within ones individual persona and identity but also as shared connection between beings and thought. I am not referencing such a collective cionciosness or so I do not think, but I am more interested in a history and a stoty telling. A large part of our human evolution from my knowledge is that we put meaning in to everything, things do not solely contain names but an infinite number of associations to itself and other things. More importantly these associations come from the individual and are shared thought a documentation of the brain, with every growing possibilities that exponentiate based on the containment of knowledge and openness of the imgination.
Further more my thoughts were imagining directly a version of consumerism resonates deeply with me. Although not necesaarily a daily part of my life. That buying a thing or a certain kind of object, you are introducing something new into your life. But in the act of purchasing something you are also buying the knowledge of this thing that you have become to know and forever more this thing that remains in you life, within its past it will always be what you already know and only contain in your mind what you learn of it or of what you begin to imagine.
From here this takes on two realms. The individual and the collective. The individual blahh blahh blah
Where as the collective realm is what at this moment of thought is important to me. An association to objects and things but more so an share association through whats known, what is told and the additional information we absorb. What makes me want to buy a certain indiviual thing that has the abilty to make me happy is the memories of the thing, the life an inanimate object has lived through my interpretation of it and my further interpretation of its past from my presents in the world to the collected knowledge of its history. How it was made, where it was from, who was it made by, does it have a name or does it lack one. Combines in an overlapping of contecxt it from its own history in my head. It appeals to my emotions it keeps me, me. Or maybe it allows me to be the person that I want to be and for this reason I allow it into my life and I understand how this momentum of consumerism has taken this world that we live in.
Yet I think with all this slightly deranged unthought out thought, I have a point although not my intention. But that within this other realm of existence that we live in or maybe, a refernce to some sort of collective consciousness is the richness that if chosen correctly can imbed itself into your life. A connection to more unconscious things that contain within them a history of place, and sense of care and integrity. Something that can be shared and conversed about intently and affluently. There is a reason why people buy art without the desire of its wealth value and part of it to me is that it is open to telling us a story and hold in itself a unique quality and a pieces of history. To conclude this thought I feel as though happiness to me would be to surround myslelf with things of value, thought, memory and things of quality, and what had been briefly mentioned in this conversation, that it is about people and the way that they think rather than aspects and class of society that are dooming us all.