Woolly ruse incites irrationality

Sep 04, 2006 18:40

By Elli Leadbeater ( Read more... )

myths, superstition, religion

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min0taur September 5 2006, 15:21:39 UTC
Material things are, as often as not, receptacles for culturally orchestrated meaning. To touch the object is to touch (indirectly) its history and to connect with that history; the act of connection is distasteful in proportion to the intensity of the associated taboo (in this case, murder). What we forget is that history is, first and foremost, a story we impose on the chaos of human events in an attempt to make coherent sense of the mess. The human need to tell (and to live in) stories is what gives objects their symbolic power. How close you are to the event in time is also a factor in the response to the object. (For example, why is John Wilkes Booth's derringer considered priceless? Or: Could Son of Sam's revolver be sold on eBay? Or John Hinckley's? What draws people to buy such things?)

The artifact need not even be "authentic" to affect the beholder. I'm reminded (for some reason) of an odd bit I heard in college: Apparently if you were to assemble all the "pieces of the True Cross" that were sold or traded as relics in the Middle Ages, the resulting artifact would be about thirty feet high. That might be academic folklore, of course. But what's going on here seems to be the triggering of what Hayakawa calls "affective connotations" -- which have everything to do with the quality of life.

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