FRAGILE ! HANDLE WITH CARE

As with all notions, the century has also cracked down on the school of thought called materialism and has taken up a role in today's daily discourse occupying a strange and vague, if not downright wrong position in describing an attitude towards the world. Today, the clinging to a certain object for no apparent reason (say a t-shirt that has holes in it, whose holder continues to wear even though it looks as if it is about to burst into threads) is often confused with an obsession with inanimate objects and a pathological strain that urges the subject to yearn for possession of the object or to mourn excessively for its loss. In fact, today's consumer culture has overturned the interest (to find a neutral enough word) to an object as shameful, though at the same time it urges everyone to get hold of (and get rid of) more and more. Apart from the usual and justified arguments on global warming and climate change, Marx's understanding of the commodity is more validated than ever. Today, the severed link between man and its labor can be strengthened with an outlook to possessions that also answers to a spiritual dimension. A man-made object comes out of the pockets of other men, no matter what way it was produced. It may not go back into the pockets it has come out of, nonetheless it carries the residue of human effort and all the shared associations therein. Casting away an object without trying to extend its life is not materialism (in the sense of Madonna's material girl) but rather to recognize and value the existential time one or many people have put into it. True materialists I would say are the thriftiest. Not in the short-sighted (though equally valid) interpretation pertaining to household economy and the like, but because the only way to fight the dehumanization and disrespect to objects that consumerism entails and purports is by attaching some significance to the assistance the object adds to our daily, small struggles. The way one treats an object turns out to be a clear indication of character. Paying the respect due to human effort in its metamorphosed form extends its force to the respect and recognition of what many see as trifles: the daily habits one makes, the public persona one constructs to meet the people that we meet, and the personal details one adds to the aforementioned tasks through long meticulous days of self-searching and contemplation that are the pillars that a true, honest, personal philosophy rises upon. Monetary value is in the background, though still inevitably there. However, objects still deserve a similar respect one pays (if one does that is) to father's watch for example, even if it is illusory and mocked by others. Like the Japanese, the true art of living and being at peace with it all may lie in the conscious effort to add art and beauty to all aspects of our interaction with the universe. All this may be criticized cynically as self-serving, which I would agree, though I am a firm believer that a trained care accorded to the way we deal with the objects that assist in our lives will lead to the careful handling of our human relationships, which are as, if not more fragile than the objects that surround us. We tend to forget that most of our objects will outlive us, and if imbued with enough sincere emotion, will carry on our name with the associations it draws on like a magnet by the people that know, and hopefully, love us. Of course, just like with the loss of a loved one, one always has to remember to let go... This world, with all the people, ipods, jackets and bushes in it, will constantly evade our grasp pleasing us with their company first, then hurting us with their inevitable demise...