I got onto this track while observing how others live in relation to the stuff that they ‘have’. A few additional thoughts coalesced between the annual moving of house, the monthly payments for a storage unit 800 miles away, and the effects of having too much stuff myself.
The personal nature of this dialectic rests within the character of an individual’s relation to reality, to the world, and to the perceived structural manifestations of that world. A worldview of flow acknowledges that change drives all conditions, that ‘things’ are temporary configurations of energy flow. A worldview rooted in the hard structures of materialism sees ‘things’ as mutable in their immediate usefulness, based on their potential to persist, if that characteristic is acknowledged at all. Both views stand in deep relationship as to how life is lived, moment-to-moment. Both are forced to acknowledge the transitory nature of be-ing.
Using suggests a consumption of a limited resource, something that is recognized or at least assumed to have a finite material life. And, when ‘finished’ or ‘used up’ the object is discarded, after being rendered use-less. But isn’t it such that everything gets used up? Sure, but there seems to be an inherent level of violence correlated to the rate at which something is used up. Laboriously accumulated or meticulously assembled things may be destined or actually created to be destroyed in a single usage: the explosive weapon. Although time is often measured relative to human perception and human life-span; this metric applies an anthropocentric stance that seems reasonable, given that many of the things used up are human fabrications. However, the speed question suggests that a slow dissolution is a constant background condition. If you don’t use me up, I will be used up anyway.
Taking-care-of suggests a stewardship that is governed by a continuity of interaction and attention meant to project the usability, the use, perhaps into a long future, perhaps a passing from person-to-person, beyond the individual’s life-time. In a way transcending the limitless hubris of the anthropocentric: it will last longer that I. However, to maintain usability an object needs to maintain its ordered existence: this requires energy and attentive care. Life-time and life-energy are drawn upon. Living is compromised. And, in the end, nothing will stop the dissolution that entropy enforces. You may be taking care of me, but I will be used up eventually.
Turns out, a majority of the ‘things I own’ are use-less to begin with: The Archive. Well, perhaps not completely bereft of function, but certainly not when in a survival mode. The Archive is the carrying of a story, of stories, forward in time. The use-full-ness of the story is directly correlated to how it augments survival—how it carries us through. The propagation of information forward in time is the core value in this. Whatever the form, information represents an ordered configuration of energized matter. However, value is relative. Information, energetically carried forward in time, compromises the viability of the carrier in a direct way. Without the compensating augmentation, it is not a good idea to participate in such a process as an organism. Use-full-ness is relative and changeable depending on circumstances, what was once useless may later become a valuable source in another context.
Using suggests a recognition that the end game is ever-present. Nothing is forever. Order cannot be maintained indefinitely. Energy runs out. We leave only the dissipating measure of our transitory presence: ripples radiating from that short cosmological pulse: use it, or lose it.
Taking-care-of suggests a refusal to recognize our impotence. Resisting the inevitable. Gentle raging at the dying of the Light. A refusal of the commonly assumed nature of reality: that caring is somehow an eternal value.
In the end, perhaps neither style of engagement with stuff really … matters. pffff!
