Posted by Yon Bard on December 02, 1998 at 14:48:04:
In Reply to: Re: Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? posted by Jon Hipps on December 02, 1998 at 14:23:34:
I think we shouldn't romanticize our collecting habits. People collect; it's probably a sublimation of our primordial hunting-gathering. People collect old masters, stamps, Barbie dolls, electric insulators made of glass, tribal rugs, pet rocks, pottery - you name it. Some of these are just sets of meaningless objects, some of these have artistic merit, some of these are exotic, some are mundane. What a given person collects is a result of a combination of chance and taste, and I know of no reasonable explanation for why people (often from the same background) have different tastes - in food, music, rugs, spouses - again, you name it. It often happens that once you start collecting something you become intellectually and emotionally interested in the culture that produced it; sometimes, conversely, you start out interested in some culture, then start to collect its artifacts.
Those of us who collect, say, Turkmen artifacts can romanticize about it more than those who happen to collect artifacts from more sedate cultures, but let's not give ourselves airs - at heart it is likely that most of us are just collectors.
Regards, Yon