In keeping with Justin’s theme, I believe that a critical discipline in the fight against materialism is a periodic move across a continent. Seriously. Below is a photo of the mountain of some of the stuff (I couldn’t fit it all in one shot) we plan to sell or give to charity after just one day of packing! Tonight and tomorrow I expect Mount Materialism to engulf the rest of the room. Sheesh, and I consider myself a minimalist.
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Quote Radical Congruency at will. Inbound links are appreciated, and required for direct quotations.
There’s nothing like a move to make you see how much you have that you don’t need. If it’s not worth moving it’s not worth having.
People from other countries can tell us a lot about the materialism of our culture. I have a friend from Colombia who used to tell me that she just couldn’t understand why Americans were so interested in things. She thought the whole idea of “knick-knacks” was just absurd. I really didn’t have a good answer for it. I had to agree.
When I saw the way she lived, I was a little humbled by it, and it caused me to wonder why I would collect things that I don’t even really care about. It’s one thing to have an heirloom or two that your parents or grandparents have handed down, but why do we need to go out and buy meaningless little glass or ceramic things that we never use and forget to even look at most of the time?
Maybe I’m grouchy (it’s highly possible), but I think the whole birthday, Christmas, father’s day, mother’s day…etc., etc., thing is getting out of hand. My husband’s birthday falls one month after his sister’s. Every year, we send a check for $20.00 and a month later, we get back a check for $20.00. Where is the meaning in that?
Last year, I went down the store to get my sister a birthday card, and the clerk forgot to put the card in my bag. I was forced to write a letter to my sister. I wrote in the letter what she meant to me and things that I remembered the most about her. She called me crying and thanked me for that letter. It was way more meaningful than a check.
April - good story, and good point. Money can’t buy happiness, love, or enjoyment of life, and can anesthetize us to their potential when we look for a consumer version of each of them (like the greeting card you were wonderfully cheated out of :)).
Once upon a time all my possessions fit in a toyota pickup (well, just barely). Now two of those 50′ moving vans probably wouldn’t be enough (I mean they’d probably get everything in the house, but then there’s the separate garage with a loft). Where did I go wrong?
It’s very, very hard to keep a simple, non-materialistic life, especially in America. People often comment on the lack of pictures on my house’s walls, little chatkas/nick-nacks, or other non-utility items. But, to me, it’s completely natural, and sane.
The Shakers had it completely korrect.
If it don’t have a function, it don’t belong among us.
yes, the Shaker idea that objects without functions don’t belong among us is probably more life-giving than life-denying or -draining in the long run, but we’ve GOT to leave a place for ART, which is most “useful” to us when it is practically useless (and when it can thus defy utilization by some group or tradition–think The Book of Virtues which took so many classic tales out of intelligent circulation simply by pinning them to the wall with a pedestrian “moral to the story”).
So, Rob, I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just a little nervous about throwing Everything out. Knicknacks are almost always cheesy and silly, and their collection can easily get out of control, but they also represent something important to the collector–something USELESSLY important–and this inner desire for something purely “useless” and beautiful (something that defies use as simple propaganda or as a touchstone for some ultimately milquetoast moral message) can be a good desire to indulge from time to time (and may even represent a good starting place for evangelism).
Dunno if that makes sense. It’s early. What do you think?
Knicknacks can serve the same function as photographs–they are a tangible, physical hook on which we hang our memories of past experiences. This is psychologically and spiritually an important function.
I frequently feel the need Aaron has expressed–to “de-content” my life. There is a real sense in which the purging can be freeing. But I frequently knock heads with my wife on this one, because lots of the stuff I see as junk she sees as incredibly meaningful to her. Take, for example, the dirt-encrusted pair of plaster cherubs she hung on our mudroom wall. They’re frankly ugly, and I wanted to trash them immediately when I saw them. But then she explained to me that they once hung in the living room of her grandmother’s house, but when she died they were tossed in a pile of refuse in the family barn and spent two decades there. By saving them, and displaying them–dirt and all–she felt she was rescuing something real about the memory of her grandmother and our children’s great grandmother, whom they will never meet.
How can I toss such things in Shaker-esque condemnation of their “functionless” nature?
Now, her stack of 50 or so unused plastic and ceramic plant pots growing mold in our basement is another matter entirely…
Good post Virusdoc. I think there’s a need to establish a balance bewteen keeping and tossing. We need a principled understanding of this concern. Maybe someone would like to try to articulate a “theology of the knicknack” for us.
When my wife and I moved into our current house (just after our wedding), we had to consolidate two whole apartments into one not-so-big living space. We actually got hooked on the great feeling of throwing stuff out (we even had TWO FULL garage sales). I love to toss junk that i won’t need in the future. I like a clean living area. I do, however, have a giant rubbermaid container filled with old memories stuff, and I’ll probably carry that with me wherever we move to next. I’m trying to annotate the memory objects, though, so that when I’m gone, my kids (or friends or family or whoever) will be able to make sense of it all. And then maybe put it in a museum for my fans to visit. (HA!)
Everything will be dust…just don’t worship things…or yourself. What is the meaning of your physical self, your resources and their application ? He gave us all things to enjoy and use in right ways, according to His purposes. If it is just “stuff”…then there is no problem having it , or not having it…some( not here) Shakerishness could be a worship of that in itself…being that way. Pride is possible either way, entrenchment either way, focus on the wrong stuff or not stuff either way. I have known Holy people who lived in castles with thousands of things, and unHoly people who lived in one room with no posessions. If either way affects your personal ability to be who you should be, then shed the impediment.
I am happy that some people got into the beanie baby thing to apparent excess …I go to Goodwill Industries and find all of the incentives I need this year for my monthly “endangered species” award. Yeah…if “it” has no use or meaning…think about cycling the object and reapplying the resource, say…from selling it in a yard sale. I pretend I am moving once a year…if I would not want to see it on the other side of the continent…pay to move it…then for sure I reapply the resource. Lord be with the Ogles as they labor in the move.
I have no problem with art, but i do have a problem with ars artis gratia, and so should you. ;-]
To my astonishment, in this The Digital Age, many people think beauty and function are somehow like oil and water; Sure, they can co-exist, but always shall remain distinct from each other. Not.
Although Shakerism is by no means no the only example in history, it’s easy to continue with them as an example. Shaker furniture, i think most would agree, is quite beautiful. Look at some of the Shaker spiral staircases. The symmetry in itself is a form of art — but always with a function.
Akin to haiku, doing anything within a constraint, kind of like a pressure cooker against any expression of function, yields beauty.
For a more contemporary example of where pure function yields beauty, i give you one word: Apple.
It’s time to rethink the slipper-slope idea of “art for the sake of art.” Imagine an entire civilization, and entire culture!, dedicated solely to function, and more percisely, towards understanding the *nature* of Truth (because that is where pure function at any level leads). Society, our economy, and our art need not be merely for its own sake.
rob@egoz.org
thanks for sharing, Rob
I like Rob’s idea that you can’t really separate artfulness and functionality, if I’m understanding Rob’s argument correctly (if not, consider it an original thought :)). Apple and Shaker furniture - good examples. I think what turns a lot of people off to art is seeing huge, expensive art that is utterly useless, like the crucifixes in urine display that gained notoriety after receiving funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (tax dollars). But Powerbooks are cool.
lots of many-splendored terms swirling around here, and I’m starting to get confused. Let me try to add my voice back into this stream.
Functional art can be wonderful. So can something that’s functional with a sense of design. So can a piece of art that is completely useless. They’re all great and (I think) all important.
All sensitive viewers have found pieces of art that are Practically useless that nonetheless speak to something in them. This isn’t idolatry, as long as you understand that it’s not the actual physical piece of artwork that’s sending out this feeling like a radio wave; this feeling finds expression in your interaction with it. Consider: If a painting hangs in the forest when no-one’s around, will anyone derive pleasure from it?
Apology for the Useless: Is a wonderful sunset useful? Well, useful yes in the sense that it reminds us of the awesome nature of God. But you can’t sit on a sunset. A sunset won’t help you open a jar of pickles. It’s Practically useless, but it’s wonderful nonetheless. Are we idolators for loving nice sunsets? No, because we appreciate the God behind the beauty. I think practically useless art works like that, and can function as an “in” for introducing a sensitive someone to Jesus.
After all, it was God who gave us an innate love of the beautiful. It’s wonderful that this love of beauty is put to use making Shaker chairs. That’s awesome. And I agree about Apples being beautiful and functional. But we’ve GOT to leave a space for the Practically useless art, just like we’ve got to leave a space in our spiritual lives for just spending time with Jesus. During this important time, we’re not trying to get commandments or miracles out of him. We’re just trying to be with him, to feel his presence in our lives. It’s Practically useless time. Now, we’ll probably leave that time with a usefully renewed sense of self/mission/etc., but not if we go into it looking for something Practical. The brain/soul/heart needs this kind of useless “down-time.” Perhaps that’s why we sleep.
So, whaddya say?
PS—I’m not defending crucifixes in urinals. Clearly, a sense of taste is important too.
Art is a personal expression. Who am I to declare another person’s expression worthless? I can judge only the worth of my own choices, since only I know my motives for doing them. A crucifix in a jar of urine may be a legitimate and deeply meaningul expression of a person’s spirituality at a given moment. I have certainly felt, on many occasions, that my faith or the God who is the object of it is contemptible; worth flushing. This feeling, expressed creatively, is not without function. See also Ecclesiastes and several of the Psalms.
So, I guess I am defending crucifixes in urinals, or at least the concept that God has given us the freedom to place his Son there if our spiritual state requires it. Is this not the message of the cross?
BTW, how did we get here from Aaron throwing away stuffed animals?
I think we might’ve traveled the road of free-association, though I’ve enjoyed the journey. Learned a lot from this thread so far.
I’m not opposed to “useless” art either, but I do think that people tend to get cynical about art when they see big famous pointless useless art at huge expense, like the NYC Central Park Gates.
What? You don’t like Cristo? Don’t you like to be happy? Wouldn’t you pay out good java-money for a cupful of orange whimsy? And you call yourself American. Where’s your majesty? And your bad special effects?
/Last post for awhile
//promise
Because no one else said it and I couldn’t resist, I’ve got dibbs on the baking pan, the stuffed animal, and the plastic bag.
Well, J.Lo, i’m morally bound to warn you that all those fluffy stuffed animals will only lead you to eternal damnation (if i believed in that). But, the bake pan, that’s totally holy.
;-]
Easy there holy warrior, I might e-mail you a neopet.
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…..
^ ^
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Well, hell. My grinning mohawk man really turned into a straight to hell arrow.
I guess a simple D: will have to do.
lol