Home For Fiction – Blog

I once bought a Nikon EM film camera from eBay. I did it just for fun, out of curiosity, whatever you wanna call it. My plan was to try it for a while, then sell it again to someone. On its bottom there was a metal plate reading “Department of Corrections, Facility no:….” (I don’t remember the exact wording). This made me realize that used item journeys is a fascinating thing to ponder on.

Imagine, all the things your used lens has seen, all the experiences around it, all the places it’s been. Someone with a prosaic outlook on life might say “well, hang on! These are mere items, they don’t experience anything! And the people using them aren’t the ones journeying around.”

Although prosaic, this argument is valid. Indeed, used item journeys are not experienced by their users. They are not experienced by the items themselves either, since (as our prosaic imaginary friend mentioned) inanimate objects do not experience. So, what’s going on?

Used Item Journeys: a Vicarious Experience of an Interconnected World

Let’s recall some things I once said about the timelessness of experience.

There is an abstract reality hidden beyond the – largely illusory – veil of time, which connects you as a child to you as an adult. It also connects both those “yous” with all other “yous” that have or will ever have existed. Moreover, these connective links (in our example, the film) form connections that are not only intertemporal, but also interpersonal. They connect not only you as a child with you as an adult, but all other people that have seen (or will ever see) the same film; or read the same magazine; or play the same video game.

In case you don’t realize the implication, it means that when you read the verses of Paradise Lost, there is “something” (the abstractness mentioned in the paragraph above) that links you and Milton.

What this means in our context, that is, used item journeys, is this: Although the item itself does not experience, it still participates in interpersonal experiencing. In other words, it becomes the abstract connecting link between you and every other person who has used it.

Essentially, used item journeys create a layer of collective experiencing that is superimposed on individual experiencing. When, then, you ponder on the possible experiences of every other used of that item, you create and access an instance of what we could call a meta-experience; that is, an experience reflecting on having an experience.

It’s All in Your Head!

Our imaginary prosaic friend is back: “It’s all in your head, you’re making it up!” they yell. “You are imagining other people’s experiences, you can’t know they happened the way you think.”

I agree with our friend, it’s all in our head. And I mean all of it. Every experience you’ve ever had, every single thing you ever heard, saw, tasted, touched, or smelled, it’s all there, in your head. Let’s not get into extensive discussions on empiricism versus idealism (feel free to read my article on Neo-Hegelianism and F.H. Bradley however), but the crux of the matter is this: Experiencing has always been and always will be something you create.

Much of it is generated as a result of external stimuli – the stuff you see, hear, smell, touch, taste. A significant part though comes out of thin air. If I ask you, right now, to think of a red ball with white stripes, you’ll have no problem “seeing” it in your mind, even if you’ve never actually seen one.

It’s the same thing with used item journeys: the mere act of pondering on the camera I bought, helped me create a massive amount of scenes in my mind. Was the camera used to take pictures of prisoners? Was it used to also take funny pictures of the guards? What about the hands that handled the camera which I’m now holding in mind, whose hands were there? Was she a good person? Had she ever had to draw her gun?

Used item journeys are simple stepping stones, for the real journey: that of our minds.