Hmmm... So, I guess I am patching up the holes in my literature education, currently reading Walden by Thoreau. Not exactly sure how it fell off the radar when I was growing up...
One of the things that struck me is how right he is in a lot of his discussion of the chains which bind society. I had spent some time thinking of this myself over many years (hahaha, I'm making myself sound old right now). .. But as right as he is what I started thinking about is that yes, I do agree with him that we have far too many things, we exist for the material, trinkets and useless things to fill our lives and act as a kind of projection of our personalities and nature. Although, having said this, very few people have this gift, of originality mostly, more often than not, people simply acquire items which are currently fashionable, hence having others make this decision for them.
Now, what struck me, is that yes, I agree with Thoreau on the undue importance we place on our possessions, work and abode, as they utterly surpass their utility, and yet, I enjoy owning beautiful things like clothes and jewelry very much. So how can I reconcile this? Well, here's my attempt...
As a species in my opinion we strive for aesthetics, the beautiful in most things that we do. From the very basic, where faces which are most pleasing to us are those which are most symmetrical, symmetry being most practical, which beautiful features also being those which bring most utility (or at least did, when we sat behind computers less). So, our idea of beauty is necessarily linked with utility on a fundamental level. And yet, I think if we had all the things we 'needed' in the most ideal form, I believe we would still want/need desire and acquire things that have absolutely no utility and yet somehow we would desire and find them beautiful. Why is this? What is the utility of simple beauty? I guess this comes about as an attempt (in the most sincerest form, I do not refer to people who blindly follow) to project our personality, and of course we desire/prefer to see ourselves as beautiful.
If for example I were a hermit... would I still want to own a beautiful bracelet? what would that mean to me? I think yes, I would, once I had satisfied all my basic needs/necessities, I would have a desire to own not just any bracelet, but a specific one which pleased me. I guess, this comes from the fact that if I were a hermit, I would still marvel at the beauty of nature around me, wouldn't I? and beauty of nature does not exactly have any direct utility for me.
Hence, there is utility in 'simple' beauty as a means of projection from the abstract thought space/subconscious of a person to the 'real'/tangible world, something we all crave, and yet very few of us manage to do it with honesty.
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