If you’re in the midst of your Christmas shopping, read on. Things can give you a break. The clue is in the subtitle: “Humanity’s Epic Journey from Naked Ape to Lifetime Customer.” Chip Colwell brings us the story of humanity’s ever-increasing desire for possession and the impending catastrophic consequences.
It all started, he tells us, a very long time ago. The roots of our greed go back even further reasonable man appeared on earth. The direct ancestors of our species began collecting tools more than three million years ago. Some of the ancient stone axes excavated by archaeologists are strikingly elegant and show virtually no signs of use. “So why do we make them?” Colwell asks. “Maybe to make something good out of it.”
The downturn really began when a wider range of assets became available, he said. Neanderthals wore animal skins as clothing, but that was also true. reasonable man who began to sew clothes and decorate himself with jewelry.
Colwell tells us about many archaeological discoveries, including the 1991 discovery of a man murdered five thousand years ago in the Italian Alps. The truly dramatic surprise, however, was the volume of his personal belongings. The man, later named Ötzi, had a backpack and was carrying at least 400 items.
Why he was killed remains a mystery, but it may have been related to his property. “He may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Colwell says. “But he could have been killed for his things.”
Colwell is an American archaeologist, museum curator, and journalist. Means ThingsIt tells many stories about our relationship with things, and also describes our exponentially growing need for more things.
With the Industrial Revolution and mass production, our purchasing habits skyrocketed and spiraled out of control in the 20th century. The accumulation accelerated. In 1947, the Collyer brothers from New York had accumulated so many items in their home that after they all quickly died, emergency services had a very difficult time finding their bodies. After several weeks of difficult evacuation, the building had to be demolished and later turned into a public park. “Ultimately, more than 300,000 pounds (136 tons) of items were stolen from Collyer’s home,” Colwell writes.
He mentions the theory of conspicuous consumption, formulated in 1899 by American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen, which plausibly argues that conspicuous purchasing reflects our desire for higher social status. He also explores the rejection of materialism by religious and philosophical ascetics. But anecdotes and details about the growth of consumption are more important to him than the reasons why we want to consume more and more.
The most disturbing part of Colwell’s story occurs when he arrives in the present. It reminds us of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a floating wave of discarded plastic the size of Peru – and the mountains of discarded clothing in Chile’s Atacama Desert, visible from space. Maybe we’ll actually shop until we drop. Colwell is concerned about our material attachments. In his words, it is “a desire that is collective suicide, death by things on an uninhabited planet.”
In the meantime, there are many fascinating stories around, Things Richly illustrated and filled with attractive charts, graphs and images. So it is a desirable object in its own right, and so the difficult dilemma arises as to whether going out and buying it might simply contribute, however slightly, to the problem he so aptly describes.
Source: I News
I am Mario Pickle and I work in the news website industry as an author. I have been with 24 News Reporters for over 3 years, where I specialize in entertainment-related topics such as books, films, and other media. My background is in film studies and journalism, giving me the knowledge to write engaging pieces that appeal to a wide variety of readers.