On collecting, the collectible and being collected
a short essay by Jeffrey Chan
Are you a ‘collector’? I would be surprised if you are not one. It is human to collect. We collect what is owed to us--we try--but we also collect what fancy us. Therefore all of us perform the act of collecting to some degree. Yet only a handful can justly call ourselves as collectors.
Collectors are not necessarily connoisseurs. As a matter of contrary opinion, I think that collectorship is quite opposed to connoisseurship. You can collect shells for yourself on a lonely island (perhaps to amuse yourself amid this unbearably imaginary loneliness), but there, it is meaningless to call yourself a connoisseur of shells. After all, connoisseurs necessarily demand others who can recognize their connoisseurship, but collectors merely depend on themselves. Besides, one can collect just about anything that can be collected--even for things that do not fit into any collection; but the connoisseur is inclined to stick only to the good taste. Because of this, a connoisseur is likely to have been brainwashed. But as a collector, you just have to be yourself.
However it is said that the collector collects only what is collectible, generally deemed as what is rare. But rarity does nothing to make something collectible, unless rarity also makes the collectible valuable. By value I do not mean monetary value. After all if one collects because high rarity sometimes confers high monetary value, then one is hardly a collector than a merchant, quite ready to liquidate his collection when the price is right. In contrast, a collector is never quite capable of liquidating his collection; he can only dismantle it. No, by value, I am strictly implying the intrinsically valuable. One can only collect what is intrinsically valuable, because the extrinsically valuable is what one sells. Even so, I am not selling the beauty of pebbles or soda caps to you--I cannot--rather, I am suggesting that it is very hard to talk about the intrinsically valuable today even when this is the sole motivation for us to become collectors.
Does this mean that all that is intrinsically valuable is also automatically collectible? I reckon this is a foolish question; but collecting is a fool’s grasp: what is more foolish than collecting that which we can never truly own? I shall nonetheless answer this foolish question as a foolish collector: “no, even though we try”. A genuine smile, a worthy handshake, a good friend or an apt idea are all intrinsically valuable but none of them is collectible. Yet we try to collect them through photos and memories, via websites and books such that we heroically attempt to transcend what is uncollectible by collecting.
By suggesting that we collect all these things, I might have given you the impression that collecting equates accumulating. Nothing is further between these two actions. To collect is intentional; but to accumulate is unintentional. To collect requires an organizing theme or a plan beforehand; but to accumulate one only needs a working credit card and perhaps an all consuming life. A garage sale is the consequence from an accumulation of things--I know, because I had organized one before: I did not quite know I have so much things that had turned into stuff--but a collection is an organized thematization of things. Psychologists tell us that we collect because the collectibles grant us our identities. Yet I tend to think that we have to invent new identities for things before we can begin collecting them.
However vast this range of organizing themes (does one collect based on a certain color, a historical period or a certain appeal?) or plans (how does one begin to collect?) are, all organizing themes or plans for the collectible must include the criterion of either a set or a range. Indeed, a collection is either based on the completion of a finite set or the following of an infinitely expanding range. A collector who aims for the completion of a finite set is historic--he is always on the lookout for that one keystone to complete his collectible set. But a collector who aims for an expanding range is a futurist--he is set on following an infinite set that never ends. Collecting based on a finite set terminates when a set has been completed. However collecting based on an infinite range only terminates when a collector meets his Collector. The ethics of enoughness is therefore quite distinct--while the former rests on completion the latter relies on persistence.
This question of what qualifies as enough or self-limiting unfortunately puts collecting squarely in the vicinity of the moral. After all, E.F. Schumacher has remarked that any activity which fails to recognize a self-limiting principle is of the devil. Since I have not seen the devil working (so far) as a collector of things, going by Schumacher’s remark I must therefore assume that some self-limiting principles are working in the collecting of things. I have observed that many collectors rest on their well-deserved laurels after completing some self-congratulatory sets. Others who are more likely to persist in expanding their infinite collections take the occasional and apologetic hiatus (i.e., ‘my wife has capped my credit limit because she has uncapped hers’). But since I am neither near to the completion of a set, nor am I wedded to a credit-capping wife, I have therefore yet to formulate my own self-limiting principle.
As a matter of fact, collecting is one of the few remaining activities today where one can still find conviction despite the absence of a unifying creed or an organized religion. Go to one of these collectors’ shows--be it stamps, coins, antiques or fountain pens (yes I collect fountain pens)--and I would be surprised if you did not depart without that same glow of having seen God. To collect demands a remarkable level of faith--who knows where or when one would find that particular pen Luftwaffe officers used or that special Etruscan coin? Yet the true collector finds the signs leading to his potential collectible everywhere. Just like the first (and real) Templar who looked up to the sky: in hoc signo vinces (in this sign you will conquer), the collector marches with a truly unstoppable faith in order to find his collectible.
Because faith is inseparable from purpose, it is therefore prudent to ask just what purpose is served by the activity of collecting itself. Beyond the egocentric purpose of congratulating oneself (one has to do this from time to time just to remain sane in this world, I think), one possible and productive purpose is that collecting is also preserving. For this we have the many unstoppable saints of the collectibles to thank; for without their unstoppable efforts, large tracts of human histories would have either remained buried or more likely, bulldozed and razed, and bulldozed again by the quickening bulldozers of commercialism. Of note, I reserve my special thanks to the collectors of old and rare books, those decrepit volumes detailing unfashionable knowledge or oddities despised by both the philistine pedestrian and the peddlers of fashionable science. Largely because of the saintly efforts of such book collectors, some modicum of humanity--our historic ignorance--has been preserved than destroyed by the latest NYT-BS (I mean the New York Times Best Seller list).
Like all worthy questions that ultimately turn upon themselves, if we collect things then what (or whom) collect us? Unlike the foolish question I raised earlier, I like to think that this is a rather relevant question in an age of facebooks and linkedins. In my short life I have witnessed teachers collecting students (yes, but I also read Harry Potter), universities collecting professors and states collecting talents. I don’t really know if teachers actually form sets of their collectible students or if states pander after an infinite range of talents. However what I know is that to collect undeniably also means to exclude.
Frankly, I have no idea if I am being collected by something or someone. I don’t even have a clear opinion if being collected counts as being privileged or unfree. Oddly despite the fact that I have thought a little about collecting things, I am at a total loss on living human beings being collected. Assuming if I am being collected, what or who is collecting me? What is the theme of this collection? Is this collection organized by color, history or some appeal? And assuming if I am not being collected, why am I not being collected? Is it because I do not fit into pre-existing collections based on color, history or some appeal? Or am I actually a collector who cannot be collected?
I don’t presume to have answers to these questions: they are for you to work it out. All I have to chip in here is that to collect is human; and if you have yet to start, it is nice to begin a little collection of something.
