Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Why Humans Start Collections of Specific Items

An Insightful History and Explanation Regarding Why Humans Start Collections of Specific Items: Just as eating food provides temporary hunger fulfillment, so does obtaining a new object. …For a collector, the satisfaction from attaining a new piece quickly subsides… and the hunt resumes. Collecting as a form of preserving the past confirms our belief that there must be an infinite truth. Life existed before me and it will exist after me, and “Here’s the proof.” …And collecting as a form of establishing one’s identity is a celebration of individuality because no two collections are the same. Your button, coin or card collection creates a conceptual circle of magic that wards off uncertainty and chaos, helps define you, and proves not only that you exist, but that you are unique. A collection is a secure micro world of order entirely controlled by you in a macro world of chaos… but that becomes a problem when the toy trains control the conductor.

5 comments:

Deb said...

I've collected a number of things over the years (books, teapots, snow globes, costume jewelry, cobalt blue glass, etc.). Nothing of great monetary value, I just enjoy "finding" objects--Goodwill, yard sales, second-hand places. I have to be careful though--once I have three of anything, it's a collection and that gives me permission to "acquire" more of them. I'm at that stage with fleurs-de-lis now.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Just books here, plus baseball cards when I was a kid.

Rick Robinson said...

The word "collection" carries a lot of meaning, so I tend not to use it. However, in the sense thie post uses it, books, of course. Also art prints, brass model locomotives, and, in a way, plants, since every garden is a collection of them.

Don Coffin said...

I do have a collection (other than books and CDs)--post cards depicting the courthouses of Indiana's counties.

Dan said...

Books, movies & weird junk