Intrinsic value
The other day a friend of mine said that his TV had no intrinsic value, a statement that seemed to make no sense; on thinking it over I came to realize that he was right. TV’s greatly depreciate once taken out of their boxes. Their value continues to plummet the more they are watched, till one day they are sitting on the front lawn waiting for their inglorious disposal.
Beads and other cultural ephemera -sometimes made of material of limited intrinsic value have managed to increase in value because of the “capital” cultures have put into them. This capital is tradition and culture-shared experiences that make mere objects rise above the commodity market, something very few TV sets have managed to do so far.
Often it is not only the material but also the weight of time and memory that permeate a object to set it apart from other similar objects. In Tibet there are beads with little real material value that are raised above mundane market concerns to become almost priceless, the same is true of certain necklaces in the southern Philippines that the Tiboli people hold more valuable than a horse, though made of mere glass beads.
In the modern world we seek for equivalents of objects with intrinsic value these can be TV sets, cars and home appliances along with a plethora or assorted goods. For these objects the dust of time is an enemy-it offers little or no redemption.
I think it is with this in mind that so many people have turned away from some aspects of modernity and sought to create objects with intrinsic value whether made from glass beads or gold or a child’s simple drawing we long to reconnect our history and even create it, it’s a lot more interesting than sitting and watching someone’s else’s history on TV.