The Importance of Things

Here we have a thing. As things go it does, on the whole, seem like a remarkable example of why we like things so much. It seems there is some deep part of us, some place deep within the fundamental heart, if not the soul, that makes humans yearn for things.

This… this…. Thing we have here, sitting in the prized very heart of the Very Nice Things Indeed shelf in the Museum of Things in Düsseldorf, seems to epitomize, to ooze very thingyness itself. If indeed Plato was right and there exists in the universe something that is the very essence of a concept, a perfect example of it, then this piece – many would argue – is that epitome of thingyness, it is the thing – as a concept – made real.

Of course, things have a long, long history, even the earliest beings that we could call human had things, crude by today’s refined standards, but things none the less, proto-things even.

It seems that humans not only want, but need things. We feel somehow incomplete without our things around us, we feel defined made real by our things. The great sages, mystics, religious leaders all wanted … tried to make people turn away from things. They often tried themselves to live without things, turned their backs on things. However, rather than being lauded, praised or emulated for this desire to live without things, we look upon their like with suspicion with distrust, ‘the expression ‘holier than thou’ comes to mind. We feel deep down within ourselves, in the part where our love, and need, of things resides, that a life without things is – really – no kind of life at all.