"It’s easy to let oneself off the hook and say, Oh, it’s human nature ... to use objects to define ourselves, but it seems ultimately more fruitful and hopeful to wonder what about our current society invites and provokes this sort of thing, which seems to trap our identities in things to a degree that seems unprecedented."
It got me thinking. To what degree am I defined by my objects? And what does it say about me that I'm typing this rumination on a laptop I pulled out of the trash that runs Windows 98 and turns off if I so much as touch the power cord? *Sigh.*
We are certainly living in a highly materialized time. Perhaps the ubiquity of things necessitates that the current age of object-as-self is unprecedented. But did the medieval peasant not engage in this behavior? Something tells me he would measure his worth (and therein define himself) by the quality of his horse, the sheen of his blade, and the fields he sowed. And before that, the Greeks and the Egyptians. The remnants of their civilizations are self- (or in this case society-)defining objects. Pyramids and columns.
Which brings me back to the ubiquity of things. The heights of manufacturing and technology we've reached allow things to be all the more common. In 2009, we simply have more opportunity to paste ourselves onto objects. In doing so, we run the increasing risk of defining ourselves in impossible terms.
Are there precedents? Where are we headed? Those are questions I leave to the esteemed psychohistorian...
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