Beauty and Possession

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I often wonder why we pluck flowers we find beautiful. Or why we take shells that captivate us from the beach. Although, in the moment, we don't think of it like this, upon reflection, I've come to realise that both of these actions remove the beautiful thing from its environment and, in the case of the former, it kills it. And yet, we take them anyway. 

We are so enthralled by its' beauty, that we would kill it and prevent it from propagating, rather than leave it alone so that it can continue to live. We would rather take it for ourselves than leave it alone to bring joy to others. The more I interrogate this practice, the more I wonder why? 

Why are we drawn to possess beautiful things? Or, at the very least, things that are aesthetically pleasing to us, even if they are not so to others. For its' one thing to be drawn to beauty. All of us, are drawn to gorgeous things, people, concepts and personalities. Is the beauty in the possession? Or is the beauty in the thing itself; simply existing in its natural habitat? Why are we so preoccupied with the result that is beautiful, and fail to consider that its' beauty is a byproduct of a process that ends with our drive to possess it?  

Apparently, it's not that deep (lol). According to an Op-Ed from The New York Times:

... brain scan studies reveal that the sight of an attractive product can trigger the part of the motor cerebellum that governs hand movement. Instinctively, we reach out for attractive things; beauty literally moves us.

The study the op-Ed refers to is from CalTech, where researchers were trying to answer the eternal question of advertising: why do we buy, what we buy. In the study, researchers exposed participants to a number of products and famous celebrities (generally brands) and asked them to sort them into two categories, 'cool' and 'uncool,' as they scanned their brains with a functional MRI machine. Thereafter, the researchers weighed these instinctual responses, to a questionnaire participants had filled beforehand. As they studied their brains, they also noticed something interesting in one 54-year-old participant. At the sight of something he wanted, the part of his brain that controls movement lit up. 

This study explains the unconscious drive to physically connect, or own, that which we consider beautiful. But it doesn't explain why. Perhaps this is not a question of science but of philosophy.  To my mind, I want to possess beauty because it reflects well on me. If I have beautiful and desirable things, then I must be beautiful and desirable. Others will think of me as beautiful and desirable. Even if, in the act of possession, I end up killing the very thing whose beauty I seek to possess. 

Or, perhaps, I have been thinking about this all wrong. Perhaps what is driving us is not the need to possess beauty, but the need to possess, in general. Even those who prefer minimalistic aesthetics are not rejecting this possession, but rejecting the consumerism that exploits this drive. Our possessions reflect who we are, who we were and who we would like to be. We are our stuff and our stuff is us. Therefore, it matters more to me that the thing I seek to own is a reflection of myself and my ambitions, than the welfare of the thing I seek to possess. 

I'm not sure if that makes me selfish, or wonderfully and frustratingly human... 

Definitely Both

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