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The Art of Collecting

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  • Shogun8
    Member
    • Sep 2013
    • 39

    #46
    ^^ Unless somehow your collection reflects a taste level, intellectual sophistication and "well-roundedness" that certain women might find attractive beyond the many other attributes (!) we may have? Or perhaps that's just wishful thinking/delusional on my part...

    Comment

    • Dorje
      Senior Member
      • Oct 2013
      • 284

      #47
      Originally posted by Faust View Post

      I think malaesthetique was tongue in cheek though.
      Definitely.

      Shogun, sorry but I would not recommend bringing up your collections as a topic of conversation on first dates.

      Comment

      • Shogun8
        Member
        • Sep 2013
        • 39

        #48
        Originally posted by Dorje View Post
        Definitely.

        Shogun, sorry but I would not recommend bringing up your collections as a topic of conversation on first dates.
        So that's whats been goin' on...

        Comment

        • PandorasFate
          Member
          • Apr 2014
          • 50

          #49
          Originally posted by Shogun8 View Post
          So that's whats been goin' on...
          Speaking as a woman (but as a caveat, I am a professed super geek) I find that if a man brings up some type of collection that's not "mainstream" (for lack of a better term), that it's highly indicative of passion, thought, and creativity as part of their personality. Last I checked, that's an excellent set of traits. I know your comment was tongue in cheek, but if I meet someone, I want them to be interested in things. Anything. The correct answer to the question, "what do you like?" is absolutely never, "I dunno, stuff."

          Collecting things that please us is an active part of the human condition.I doubt Mr. Fate married me for my Pez dispenser collection, but he didn't run from it.
          “Budget the luxuries first.”
          ― Robert A. Heinlein

          Comment

          • Shogun8
            Member
            • Sep 2013
            • 39

            #50
            Originally posted by PandorasFate View Post
            Speaking as a woman (but as a caveat, I am a professed super geek) I find that if a man brings up some type of collection that's not "mainstream" (for lack of a better term), that it's highly indicative of passion, thought, and creativity as part of their personality. Last I checked, that's an excellent set of traits. I know your comment was tongue in cheek, but if I meet someone, I want them to be interested in things. Anything. The correct answer to the question, "what do you like?" is absolutely never, "I dunno, stuff."

            Collecting things that please us is an active part of the human condition.I doubt Mr. Fate married me for my Pez dispenser collection, but he didn't run from it.
            Ummm - are you free tomorrow evening?

            Comment

            • Shogun8
              Member
              • Sep 2013
              • 39

              #51
              In all seriousness, PandorasFate, thanks for the POV. I would hope that any woman in whom I'm interested would also have the reciprocal interest and curiosity - says something about her substance. Luckily, my instincts are usually accurate in such situations...

              Comment

              • LelandJ
                Banned
                • Apr 2014
                • 201

                #52
                Originally posted by Faust View Post
                Based on my own observations, I must agree. Women want you to spend money on them, the cushy nest they want to create and on the progeny they want you to have with them. Anything that satisfies you and you alone is a waste of money and makes you some kind of an irresponsible child in their eyes.

                I think malaesthetique was tongue in cheek though.
                Assuming you're not the only one in the world with interest in a collection of non-consumable goods, then it usually holds monetary value which is the same thing women look for.

                There's also the bastardized "social capital" potential of "cultural capital" as described in this chapter of Ascent Of Humanity. The author does point out, and rightfully so, the negative social and cultural effects audio recordings have had on society since their invention.

                Comment

                • malaesthetique
                  Member
                  • Mar 2009
                  • 88

                  #53
                  Originally posted by LelandJ View Post
                  Assuming you're not the only one in the world with interest in a collection of non-consumable goods, then it usually holds monetary value which is the same thing women look for.

                  There's also the bastardized "social capital" potential of "cultural capital" as described in this chapter of Ascent Of Humanity. The author does point out, and rightfully so, the negative social and cultural effects audio recordings have had on society since their invention.
                  I find it funny that the author cites Jefferson at length but there is no mention of Adorno or Bourdieu, who developed these ideas far better. All of them however though failed to consider or give credibility to the new forms of creativity and ways to nurture one another only made possible by under the technological conditions of late-capitalism. Benjamin is much better at imagining these new potentials, instead of demonizing the entire industrialization process.

                  Also I take issue with the idea that there was some previous state in human history we lived perfectly in a balanced, more fulfilled, holistic condition. Watch Game of Thrones, but keep in mind mimesis' role in the reification process.

                  Also the writer is completely naive and idealistic about sexuality.
                  Last edited by malaesthetique; 04-25-2014, 05:50 PM.

                  Comment

                  • LelandJ
                    Banned
                    • Apr 2014
                    • 201

                    #54
                    Originally posted by malaesthetique View Post

                    Also I take issue with the idea that there was some previous state in human history we lived perfectly in a balanced, more fulfilled, holistic condition. Watch Game of Thrones, but keep in mind mimesis' role in the reification process.

                    Also the writer is completely naive and idealistic about sexuality.
                    The author never said perfectly, but he does trace evolution of human culture from the beginning of agriculture over 10,000 years ago.

                    With my Japanese heritage, discussing sex is strange but I don't see anything naive or idealistic about what the author has written:

                    The metaphors of "having" and "getting" so commonly applied to sex bespeak the degree to which it has been commodified. Why do we usually not speak of "giving sex" or "sharing sex"? Even in the absence of any outright financial transaction, quasi-economic concepts of loss and gain infuse our culture's thinking about sex. It is unavoidable, written into our self-definition as separate, discrete beings. Yet precisely because its deepest spiritual function is to melt the boundaries that enforce this separation, sexual love, more than any other relationship, is diminished and debased by its commoditization. For the same reason, sex has an enormous subversive potential. The sharing of self it involves explodes the very basis for the world of separation in which we live, and its associated pleasure hints at the ecstasy awaiting us when we throw off separation's shackles. Perhaps that is why repressive political regimes typically exhibit great hostility toward sexual licentiousness—a form of repression that George Orwell identified as a key feature of totalitarianism. Our own society takes a different, more insidious approach to defusing sex's explosive revolutionary potential, attempting to excise its transcendental core. The husk that remains is, depending on the context, an inconsequential pleasure, a biological function, rank animality, obscene temptation, or a frightening taboo. None of these honors the sacred dimension of sex, which ancient Taoist and Tantric practice saw as nothing less than a gateway to the transcendence of cosmic polarities. Potentially a touchstone for reconnecting with the true unity behind our all-consuming play of individuation, potentially a secret window through the veil of our illusory separateness, sacred sexuality has been reduced to a fuck.

                    Of course, whatever we pretend to make of it, sex is far more than this. Its soul-shattering and life-creating potential remain despite the cultural pretense that it is a casual commodity. The result of this delusion? Heartbreak, emotional wounding, guilt, rape, abortion, and a feeling of betrayal stemming from the inner knowledge that we have "bought in" to something infinitely inferior to what life can offer. Hence the near-universal acknowledgment of casual sex as spiritually vacuous and emotionally unsatisfying. The same could be said, though, of any relationship that has been depersonalized.
                    Following excerpt's just as harsh and true imo, and more relevant to forum of fashion consumption which describes me as well obviously:

                    As she is stripped of her traditions, self-sufficiency, customs and relationships, the individual becomes less a human being and more a pure consumer. Remember, contrary to Descartes, it is our relationships that create our identity. The sell-off of social capital thus represents a sell-off of our very being. Surely, to be a consumer is to be less than human. But the sell-off of social capital leaves us nothing but that, consumers, except within the specialized niche of our vocations.

                    In the discourse of the business world, and often in politics too, that is what you are called, a consumer. One who consumes. The very ubiquity of the word inures us to its full significance, so repeat it to yourself a few times. I am a consumer. I am a consumer. I consume. When all other relationships are gone, that is what is left.

                    Comment

                    • malaesthetique
                      Member
                      • Mar 2009
                      • 88

                      #55
                      I would just say that making love, having sex, and f**king are qualitatively different experiences we can have that involve those organs, and that we shouldn't see one as the reduction of any other. These differences existed since antiquity and have nothing to do with the commodification of sexuality or its conversion into a form of capital.

                      Comment

                      • malaesthetique
                        Member
                        • Mar 2009
                        • 88

                        #56
                        Originally posted by Faust View Post
                        Based on my own observations, I must agree. Women want you to spend money on them, the cushy nest they want to create and on the progeny they want you to have with them. Anything that satisfies you and you alone is a waste of money and makes you some kind of an irresponsible child in their eyes.

                        I think malaesthetique was tongue in cheek though.
                        Scathing but all too often true. More so as we get older.

                        Comment

                        • LelandJ
                          Banned
                          • Apr 2014
                          • 201

                          #57
                          Originally posted by malaesthetique View Post
                          I would just say that making love, having sex, and f**king are qualitatively different experiences we can have that involve those organs, and that we shouldn't see one as the reduction of any other. These differences existed since antiquity and have nothing to do with the commodification of sexuality or its conversion into a form of capital.
                          No need to reduce what's already reduced. This reduction never happens outside of one's culture, however much "free will" (mostly another cultural illusion of separation) we were raised to believe exists. Antiquity's a minuscule fraction of human history, and today we're at the culmination of what can easily be described as normalized, rewarded, and celebrated mental illness.

                          The author writes succinctly:

                          Paradoxically, the same principles of mechanism, reductionism, and determinism that promise certainty and control also afflict us with feelings of powerlessness and bewilderment. For when we include ourselves among the Newtonian masses of the universe, then we too are at the mercy of blind, impersonal forces that wholly determine our life's trajectory. In the ideology we inherited from the Scientific Revolution, free will, like all the other secondary qualities, is a mere construct, a statistical approximation, but not fundamentally real.

                          To recover meaning, sacredness, or free will apparently requires dualism, a separation of self out from the deterministic laws of the universe—an ultimately incoherent solution which alienates us all the more. Yet the alternative is even worse: nihilism, the Existentialist void—philosophies which, not accidentally, emerged at the peak of the Newtonian World-machine's reign in the early 20th century. This worldview so deeply imbues our intuitions and logic that we can barely conceive of a self that is neither dualistically distinct from matter, nor a deterministic automaton whose attributes of mind or soul are mere epiphenomena. Prior to the 20th century, these were the only alternatives science presented us, a bleak choice that remains with us today like a burr in the shoe and will continue to generate existential unease until the day comes when we finally digest the ramifications of 20th century science.

                          This choice reflects an apparent incompatibility of science and religion. Intuitively rejecting the "deterministic automaton" of science, evangelical friends of mine choose instead to disbelieve vast swaths of science—all the physics, biology, archeology, paleontology, geology, and astronomy that conflicts with the Biblical story of creation. Meanwhile, scientifically-oriented people occupy the equally unenviable position of denying their intuitions of a purpose, significance, and destiny to life. I often detect a wistfulness in self-described atheists, as if they wished there were soul, God, purpose and significance—Wouldn't it be nice!—but that unfortunately, sober reason dictates otherwise. Sometimes they cover up this wistfulness or sense of loss with an aggressive display of self-righteousness along the lines of "I can handle the merciless truth, but you need to comfort yourself with fairy stories." Others are aggressively cynical and reflexively derisive. The emotions, anger and sadness, that underly these responses arise from the monstrous robbery I describe above. Again, this robbery is not the removal of God from Heaven—it is the removal of divinity from the world. Whether God has been removed to Heaven, as by religion, or extirpated altogether, as by science, matters little.

                          Comment

                          • malaesthetique
                            Member
                            • Mar 2009
                            • 88

                            #58
                            Originally posted by LelandJ View Post
                            No need to reduce what's already reduced. This reduction never happens outside of one's culture, however much "free will" (mostly another cultural illusion of separation) we were raised to believe exists. Antiquity's a minuscule fraction of human history, and today we're at the culmination of what can easily be described as normalized, rewarded, and celebrated mental illness.

                            The author writes succinctly:
                            I wouldn't call that succinct. Its more of a piece of Neo-shamanist propaganda.

                            Rick Tarnas' Passion of the Western Mind presents a far more compelling panoscopic vision of western thought and its detriment to humanity. He now professes the validity of Archetypal astrology. Same camp as Stanislav Grof, who promotes LSD as treatment for overcoming the psychic conflict caused by the original sin of western rationalism.

                            Also see John Zerzan, "The case against art" for more of the like. http://www.primitivism.com/case-art.htm

                            Comment

                            • Shogun8
                              Member
                              • Sep 2013
                              • 39

                              #59
                              So, anybody have any collections they'd like to share?

                              Comment

                              • malaesthetique
                                Member
                                • Mar 2009
                                • 88

                                #60
                                Which Vitra miniatures do you have?

                                Comment

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