- The Navy Chair, in brushed aluminum by Emeco.
- Casio F-91W digital watch.
- The illustrated edition of Moby- Dick, by The folio society.
- A Digital Microscope
Things I own.
- The Pilot vball grip, black 0.5mm pen.
- Attitude! - Dinsko
- MacbookAir
- The Marius Sweater.
- A Busserull.
- A nintendo controller.
- Lapsang Suchong tea - or Smoked Tea.
Postscript to Greed
To own a thing - is it possible? The idea of private property may be thousands of years old, some say from when we started to understand the relationship between sex and children, and women became a subject for jealousy. The economic aspect of family and children has strongly influenced family since. It is just now, with the dawning of birth-control, individualisation and the liberation of women, that we can truly be our selves again - our own subjects. They way we now ideally connect, is through the voluntary bonding of small families. But what does this have to do with greed? The economic stability has made us afford not to worry about things - to covet them the way we did before. And education has liberated us from closed thinking, allowing us to see the true worth of objects. They are needed to different degrees. To the degree we wish to participate in social activities, to be free to produce what we want, to maximize our leisure and so on - but many of these objects we can forsake - and what replaces them can be equally fine. The absence of an efficient oven can be replaced by a common ritual to cook together - to make the time enjoyable and a part of "leisure". As we relinquish our notion of want and greed, we may find that this also diminishes the importance of ownership. We might not be so careful to get things back if we lend them to our friends. We may be more willing to part with money to save small amounts of time. (That buss fair to a place within walking distance. Particularly when you spend half your time waiting for the buss.) We might actually recognize that ownership and private property are social constructions designed to make us feel save for the future of our own survival and comfort. But when both are safe regardless, what happens to the construction? Ideally, we ought to recognize that there is a certain amount of comfort we might eschew in favor of those who have far less certainty in their life than we do. We might give more of our wealth away. Anyway. That is what I have come to. But the hedonists still calls to me, and I still have wants which I feel, however unjustly that should be filled. Feelings of greed that I know intellectually to be wrong, but which I nonetheless possess. I have the ethics of economic asceticism, or at least minimalism - and the feelings of one who covets.
These things that I have listed, then, are not things which I always need, or even want. But they are things I covet. Emeco's aluminum chair is, to me, the perfect design. A bowed back to allow for a multitude of seating positions, no arm-rests for increased mobility. A seat slightly angled down, so that what does not slip down what I suspect to be a slippery chair, and a frame I suppose to be light - being made of the same metal used for airplanes.
They are generally things I think will last - which I will eventually give on. Or at least, I wish to share the experience of them. With the Casio watch, I wish to tell the story of how it was the first affordable digital watch, it's dual place in modern culture - it's membership of an aesthetic wich is complicated, old and modern and much more. Things are a gateway to experience, and the stability of good design makes them ships to sail through the waves of history. History does not repeat itself - it is a wave of culture and counter-culture, of tops and troughs - and each design and object takes on a new meaning in a new setting. To buy a thing of lasting design, then, is to participate in the story and help define the meaning of the future.
They are generally things I think will last - which I will eventually give on. Or at least, I wish to share the experience of them. With the Casio watch, I wish to tell the story of how it was the first affordable digital watch, it's dual place in modern culture - it's membership of an aesthetic wich is complicated, old and modern and much more. Things are a gateway to experience, and the stability of good design makes them ships to sail through the waves of history. History does not repeat itself - it is a wave of culture and counter-culture, of tops and troughs - and each design and object takes on a new meaning in a new setting. To buy a thing of lasting design, then, is to participate in the story and help define the meaning of the future.
Maybe we cannot own the objects in a true sense - but history will put us together, and we will own a piece of history.
