282: I Want It All

[Dastardly]

The urge to collect speaks to our old hunter-gatherer roots. You didn't know when your next meal was, so you grabbed anything food-like you could carry. This later developed into making sure you had a worthy collection of weapons and tools, so that you'd be better prepared to handle any given problem that crops up. And then we, as mankind, became collectors of knowledge, so that we'd be equipped for any problem or puzzle that might stand in our way. (This is to say that our innate curiosity or desire to learn may be directly linked to this collection instinct.)

Very nice comparison. You went deep into the roots and your arguments make sense.
My only question is: this hunter heritage is often more remarkable on men, because in these old times you are speaking of (sorry if I misunderstood) men were the only hunters, right? Women generally stayed "home".

After your reply, I am thinking about how come I have this strong colletor sense...

The men were the primary hunters, yes, but the women were the primary gatherers very often. Foraging for wild vegetables, fruits, and the like. They were still an integral part of the hunter-gatherer experience.

I think you've raised another interesting side-issue about the gender differences prevalent in collecting styles. A lot of the women I know that collect things do so in a casual, passive way--my fiancé buys faerie figurines when she sees them, but almost never seeks them out. In other words, she gathers faeries. This tendency may come from the nurturing instincts still present in females, which revolved around establishing and maintaining a "home base" while raising the offspring.

Men, on the other hand, tend to more aggressively collect things. They'll trade, search, and go after the rare or missing pieces for their collections. In other words, they'll hunt to collect. The collection is simultaneous with a sense of achievement when they "catch" the piece they were looking for. We'll also "show off" our collections more often than a lot of women (who admire and care for their collections more introspectively), as these represent trophies signifying those achievements.

(Of course, in other more patriarchal animal societies, the male doesn't do the hunting. Such is the case with lions. But people do often forget that the male lion's job is to fend of other male lions, so he's doing some rough work himself.)

I'm speaking in very broad generalities here, but I think these are common enough to be considered valid (though not universally binding)...

 

[Dastardly]

Don't be too concerned if you find yourself constantly hunting for collectibles and achievements while you're gaming - that's just the way you're wired.

I don't think it's just a human urge to collect things; I think a big part of it is the difference between men and women (or boys and girls to be more accurate). I'm going to generalise now, so feel free to be an exception.

Boys tend to want to collect and own things, and boy's toys are definitely designed with this in mind. They're usually a variety of very similar toys from a large range, that the boy will want to own as many of as he can (whether he's "gotta catch 'em all" or just building an army of Transformers, the same principle applies).

A lot of the "nerdier" hobbies are also "boy's hobbies" - train spotting, stamp collecting, tabletop wargaming - and they all involve an awful lot of collecting stuff. They often involve collecting things that don't really matter to the collector - I'm sure plenty of you have owned toys that you didn't really like, but fitted in with your toy collection. Or have mp3s of songs you don't like (and skip every time they show up on shuffle), but deleting them would mean you had *gasp!* fewer tracks in what is basically your mp3 collection.

Even non-nerdy, but traditionally boyish hobbies involve collections - football cards & stickers, getting each year's kit for your favourite sports team etc.

And I can't think of any tabletop wargamer who doesn't have at least one entirely unpainted, unassembled army lying around somewhere - something he's collected, but clearly isn't important enough for him to do anything with.

This is why videogames which are frustrating, or just plain shit, but provide unlockables or achievements (or some other such collectable) are still bought and persevered with by men - we're willing to put up with quite a lot to see our collections (of games, of gamerscore, of bonus tat for TF2...) increase.

Girls on the other hand, while they do get targeted with certain toys that could be (and sometimes are) collected (My Little Pony = Transformers for Girls) don't tend to exhibit the same behaviour.

Instead they tend to focus on a few toys that they really enjoy, and lavish a lot of attention on them - this does involve buying accessories and so on for the toy (so the toy company still wins), but they don't tend to amass the same vast collections of similar crap that boys end up with (and that mums aren't allowed to throw away).

Which probably explains why girls just aren't (generally) as interested in those "nerdy" hobbies - they're about collecting things, which girls haven't been engineered into obsessing over (when and if they discover there's a point to the hobby beyond collecting things, like playing games or painting models or whathaveyou, girls are much more likely to be interested).

This would also explain why videogames targeted at women rarely succeed (developers seem to think girls like collecting ponies and rainbows instead of collecting guns and blood).

Whereas games with an engaging story or quality gameplay are popular with everyone.

(incidentally, I don't think we're "hard-wired" to behave like this - it seems much more likely to be cultural - we still try to turn little girls into wives and mothers, and little boys into bigger boys (with jobs) - and as I said at the start, lots of generalising in there so there are plenty of people who are exceptions (especially as we're trying to move a bit more towards equality of the sexes, which changes the way we raise our kids))

you'd think that it would be immensely satisfying to finally accomplish something you'd worked so hard at, but all I felt when I finally did it was a profound emptiness

There's a reason that "May all your dreams come true" is a curse; we're goal driven to the point that having no goal to strive for is like being bereft.

("May all your dreams, but one, come true" is the corresponding blessing)

I think you might be overlooking the collecting instincts of women because they look different than those of men. But I believe they are clearly there, just exhibited differently. See my post just above for a comparison of who I think they differ, and let me know what you think...

 

[Soylent Dave]

I think you might be overlooking the collecting instincts of women because they look different than those of men. But I believe they are clearly there, just exhibited differently. See my post just above for a comparison of who I think they differ, and let me know what you think...

Interesting... but I have difficulty believing that our urge to collect ties directly into our hunter-gatherer roots.

Firstly because, as the primary hunters, men would be less inclined to collect things for the sake of collecting them (rather than more so).

Secondly because existing primitive societies on Earth (not that there are too many left!) don't do much in the way of collecting and storing things for the future - hunter-gathering is very much a 'live in the moment' way of existence (which is why it ultimately gets supplanted by agriculture)

I think our current urge to collect and own things is a more modern cultural imperative - I'm not going to lay the blame at the feet of capitalism (that'd be far too easy!), but we do live in a society where we're brought up to believe that 'owning stuff' is really quite important.

But it is also notable that in most species it's the male who does the mating displays - we tend to think of women as being more colourful (and thus making more of a 'display', wearing makeup etc.), but collecting and displaying a load of tat could well be seen as part of attracting a mate ("I'm so successful I had time to collect all this matching shit when most males have to worry about food and shelter"). This theory does fall down a bit when you realise that women are rarely impressed with stamp-collecting...

-

You are definitely right to point out that women do have an urge to collect things; I think I did intend to say something about that (but obviously I didn't do it properly).

What I should really have emphasised is that men (boys) tend towards collecting things for the sake of collecting them (or for the sake of making their collection bigger). Women & girls tend collect things that they are going to use or appreciate directly.

So a man will collect toy soldiers he doesn't particularly like, or buy games he doesn't have time to play (and keep them, unopened, on his shelf for weeks - I'm sure many of us have done this), because a big part of his reason for collecting them is increasing the size of his collection (and the sense of achievement that brings).

A woman on the other hand may still end up with a large collection of something (the most obvious stereotypes being clothes or shoes), but it's more likely to be something she'll make use of directly - even if it's just the once. And, as you point out, a woman is much more likely to 'care' for the things in her collection (as items, rather than as an achievement).

 

[Dastardly]

- snip -

What I believe is happening here is that you're mixing up the explanation for the instinct and behavior with the particular subject upon which the behavior is performed. It's not about what good stamp collections are--that's a separate issue--it's about why this person feels the need to collect anything. The "why" of a particular subject is usually a product of environment, upbringing, or chance, and is largely immaterial.

Our instinct to collect stems from the fact that, in our hunter/gatherer days, we didn't know when or if we'd find another meal. Take what you can carry and hold onto it. Hunt the big animal and use it for as long as you can. Acquisition is the instinct. (Showing these off as trophies does, as you indicated, stem from the mating game.)

In our modern society, a lot of our basic material and emotional needs are met, but the instinct to acquire and stockpile is still active in the primitive part of our brain. So, our mind, seeking to appease that instinct, gives it a new "need" to fill. Usually one that's pretty trivial. The subject is just an outlet for the latent instinct, when it doesn't have more pressing things to collect (or when we need a distraction from our perceived inability to collect the more important things sufficiently).

Men collect actively (hunting) to acquire and achieve a stockpile of trophies. Women collect passively (gather) to nurture and appreciate the collection. The subjects are usually trivial, and the choice of those subjects is heavily influenced culturally, but in the end the desire to collect really comes down to something more instinctive. Culture encourages and takes advantage of it, for sure, but the behavior doesn't originate from culture.

 

[Soylent Dave]

Our instinct to collect stems from the fact that, in our hunter/gatherer days, we didn't know when or if we'd find another meal. Take what you can carry and hold onto it.

This is part I disagree with - hunter-gatherers don't stockpile. It's a subsistence level existence that doesn't (typically) provide enough food for the tribe to enable a stockpile - hunter-gatherers live from hand to mouth.

So I can't really so how our beginnings as such would lead directly to a more modern culture where collecting stuff is important.

(especially not when we've been through a lot of other stages of development, many of which do have the acquisition of 'wealth' as an important factor in societal prominence)

 

[Dastardly]

Our instinct to collect stems from the fact that, in our hunter/gatherer days, we didn't know when or if we'd find another meal. Take what you can carry and hold onto it.

This is part I disagree with - hunter-gatherers don't stockpile. It's a subsistence level existence that doesn't (typically) provide enough food for the tribe to enable a stockpile - hunter-gatherers live from hand to mouth.

So I can't really so how our beginnings as such would lead directly to a more modern culture where collecting stuff is important.

(especially not when we've been through a lot of other stages of development, many of which do have the acquisition of 'wealth' as an important factor in societal prominence)

It was difficult to stockpile, to be sure. That doesn't mean they didn't try. Also, we don't want to look at just the very earliest stages of this type of society. At this stage, they didn't have ways to preserve foods, but they tended to stay in an area that was populated with food-critters until it was depleted... this is one of the earliest types of stockpiles. They'd seek out and find these herds, which were a ready-made "collection" of foods.

Then, when it was time to move, you'd better believe they didn't leave with empty packs. They'd use the resources to get enough food for the journey (as best they could manage), and probably stockpile some weapons and tools as they developed these technologies. Later on, their agrarian descendants would discover ways to preserve and store food for later, better demonstrating the technique of stockpiling--but certainly not originating the desire to do so.

The desire among hunter-gatherer peoples to get as much as they could was a survival function that developed because it was so hard to get enough to create a stockpile. That's part of why the instinct to "get while you can" is so powerful (which is why we have to feed it substitute "foods" in this day and age).

Those other stages of development you mention are just more complicated and artful expressions of that same basic instinct. When we moved toward specialization, bartering meant you had to stockpile goods in order to have enough to use and trade. When we moved onto currency, that became the thing to collect, as it allowed you to acquire everything else. All of these are the logical extension of 1) the innate desire to acquire and collect and 2) our increasing ability to better fulfill that desire.

This collection instinct was important to us as social creatures from the word "go." Most other animals? They hunt when hungry--especially the solitary types. Social creatures, though, survived better if they had an instinct that told them to gather even when they were not immediately hungry. This helped to provide for themselves and others, who would in turn be working to help the whole group, too. Social creatures have a collection instinct (see: Ants). The absence of widespread, efficient means by which to satisfy that instinct doesn't negate it--it necessitates it.

 

[Smokescreen]

It's a wise idea, I think, to read this article and keep in mind the Skinner Box episode from Extra Credits last week. Just because it mines some similar territory.

 

[Tim Latshaw]

Personally, I think that the worst thing achievements and trophies have done is turning collectibles in an either-or situation. Before it happened, I wouldn't try to pick up all the collectibles, just as much as I could. This way I wouldn't skip tricky collectables, but wouldn't need to go back to pick them up if I missed it. I got 53/100? Cool, I got over half of them. 87/100? Great, I found a lot. 96/100? Wow, that's excellent, I got almost all of them!

Achievements don't care about that. Got 99/100? Yeah well tough look kid. Better comb this drab overworld for a few more hours to see if you get that last collectible. Yeah no thanks. I have better things to do with my time.

I agree. I think, for some people, gamerscores and trophies have altered collecting from a self-satisfying activity ("I found all this game has to offer!") to a competitive goal ("If I collect all these items, it'll show I'm better at this game than Larry!").

Let's take a game from the past that was significantly panned for being a collectathon: Donkey Kong Country 64. If a version of the game was released today, but had achievements for collecting everything with every character, how many more gamers would be willing to do it?

On the other hand, I appreciate when a game awards you as you progress through finding collectibles. Arkham Asylum was good at this, encouraging you to find stuff but not demanding the absolute highest effort for any recognition. Guess that makes me happier to receive regimented rewards than those that are random.

 

[Soylent Dave]

we don't want to look at just the very earliest stages of this type of society.

I think that's really the part we're disagreeing on - your 'hunter-gatherer' definition is wider than mine is; when I say H-G I'm really using a quite narrow definition.

I will add, though, that

Later on, their agrarian descendants would discover ways to preserve and store food for later, better demonstrating the technique of stockpiling--but certainly not originating the desire to do so.

There are primitive societies on Earth right now who appear to have no desire to stockpile things. These also tend to be cultures where ownership is entirely collective (including of things like 'children'), and where there is either so little food that the idea of creating a stockpile just wouldn't occur, or that there is so much food (compared the size of the tribe) that it's basically stockpiled already - in a 'there's lots of it growing (or living) near the village' way.


and also

When we moved toward specialization, bartering meant you had to stockpile goods in order to have enough to use and trade.

is backwards, I think - the move into agriculture meant that farmers suddenly had a surplus (which probably couldn't be stored for very long); so they created the concept of bartering (for alternative kinds of food, or (later) shiny stuff) in order to do something with the extra food they had.

-

This collection instinct was important to us as social creatures from the word "go." Most other animals? They hunt when hungry--especially the solitary types.

Squirrels and (many) birds are solitary, territorial types. They're also known for stockpiling things (and in the case of certain birds, stockpiling shiny, useless things...).

I do think our society and pack instinct has had an impact on our desire to collect and own stuff, but I don't think it's because we're social creatures. Most herd animals don't collect & stockpile stuff - ants & bees are a bit of an exception; if you treat the nest/hive as a gestalt organism, then they do stockpile a bit like humans do - but then they've stopped being social creatures (and if we treat them as a society, then they're stockpiling resources for the use of others - often at the expense of the individual - which isn't quite the same as collecting them for yourself).

Most herd animals aren't also predators, of course - but while pack hunters will secure a kill and guard it while the pack feeds (sometimes over a few days, which could count as stockpiling, considering wolves haven't invented refrigeration), they're doing so collectively - rather than individually, like humans. And squirrels.

 

[Dastardly]

There are primitive societies on Earth right now who appear to have no desire to stockpile things. These also tend to be cultures where ownership is entirely collective (including of things like 'children'), and where there is either so little food that the idea of creating a stockpile just wouldn't occur, or that there is so much food (compared the size of the tribe) that it's basically stockpiled already - in a 'there's lots of it growing (or living) near the village' way.

The key word here is "appear." They appear to have no desire to stockpile things. When viewed through the lens of our culture, yes, there culture appears very different. Speaking to a few rare extremes certainly doesn't disprove the notion that we have an innate desire to acquire things we need (which translates later into a desire to acquire things we don't "need" when our needs are mostly filled).

the move into agriculture meant that farmers suddenly had a surplus (which probably couldn't be stored for very long); so they created the concept of bartering (for alternative kinds of food, or (later) shiny stuff) in order to do something with the extra food they had.

But participation in the barter system made it necessary for someone to specialize so that they could have that stockpile. You can't trade potatoes for potatoes. I'm not arguing what caused the idea of barter. I'm simply saying that as we developed it, having a stockpile became a necessity, in the same way that having a pile of money is necessary now.

As to the animal talk, yeah, we can split hairs and go back and forth for weeks on how some animals this or that. I do see a point where you're experiencing some confusion, though. You draw a distinction between collecting for oneself and collecting for others. I see two behaviors fueled by the same instinct--to acquire beyond the immediately necessary.

I haven't disagreed that our society has shaped how that instinct exhibits itself, but when I talk instinct, I'm talking about instinct--a very basic and automatic response or desire. That instinct is to acquire things we need, feel we need, or will need in the near future. Society has shaped the instinct into something else, but it's there at our core.

If it wasn't, how exactly could society have built so much upon it? Each society changes how it is expressed, but it's there. A society doesn't have to engage in materialistic collection of merchandise in order to be demonstrating the same base instinct as a figurine collector.

We're wired to collect the things we need. We're also wired to prefer order and completeness, which partially explains why one might be so anxious to get that last piece of a collection (though not why they started it).

So, in summary:

Instinct: provides the root cause for collecting behavior
Society: shapes and alters the expression of that behavior

You seem to assign the lot of it to society, and that's what confuses me so.

 

[beema]

Only thing is, if you are collecting physical things in real life, there's the chance that you might posses something that only a very few people, or perhaps nobody else, has collected.

With these games, you are collecting the same stuff that thousands of other people are. There's something that feels very sad and unfulfilling when you really think about it.

 

[Valkyrie101]

I specifically try NOT to get achievements, unless they're like the ones in Fallout and you'll end up getting them anyway.

Why?

 

[kementari]

For some, the satisfaction comes from experimenting with arranging, re-arranging, and classifying parts of a-big-world-out-there

This is exactly what I do, but I don't think it's to fill some kind of disorganization or control void in my life. I spend hours every week (at a conservative guess, probably an hour a day) "organizing" in World of Warcraft - playing with the guildbank, auctioning items, analyzing which items go to which characters I know - but my real life is almost even more frighteningly stratified and organized, if it's possible for such effort to be scarier in real life than in pixels.

Also, a slightly different type of collecting than you discussed, but with regards to the type of hoarding that's possible in games like Oblivion... I'm the worst hoarder in the world, in those games. Every one of my houses is immaculately arranged, accounting for hundreds of hours of both "acquisition" and futzing with the crappy physics system... but in real life, I have really very few possessions (about an eighth of the wardrobe/shoes/handbags/makeup/jewelry of my other female friends - even the nerdy ones) and prefer to own little of real/monetary value. Tech items and books are the exception; I have quite a few books and I enjoy having a high-quality computer/phone/ipod/what-have-you, but I don't spend absurdly on those either.


So... analyze me. Why do I collect in games, but not real life?


Edit: I guess I should use a different word than "hoarding" to describe the kind of behavior I mean. Even in games, I prefer nothing to be out of place or just "sitting around", and prefer my character to be as lightly laden as possible. It's not the hoarding behavior you see on those awful, vomit-inducing tv shows, it's just that I'm compelled to find one of everything and display them attractively and in an organized fashion throughout the game. My real life mirrors the latter part - despite not having very much stuff, I prefer "a place for everything, and everything in its place", and when everything is, it needs to look nice, too.

 

[Soylent Dave]

Instinct: provides the root cause for collecting behavior
Society: shapes and alters the expression of that behavior

You seem to assign the lot of it to society, and that's what confuses me so.

(Sorry about the delay in replying)

While I do agree that a lot of the reason we want to get things in the first place is down to instinct (ego and id, psychologically speaking), I do see the fact that there are human cultures that don't allow the id free rein as meaningful.

In which case, I think one of the driving forces of society is probably environment, rather than just our instincts - this then builds into a certain model of society which exaggerates the environmental conditions for future generations.

So in our society, we've pretty much always had spare, but still limited, resources (in fact the nature of European culture is 'you have lots of food for some of the year and bugger all for some of the year; so you have to stockpile if you want to live) - so we built a society where 'having lots of stuff' was important (and brought status). This is reflected on a smaller scale by our desire to collect.

In other cultures, where there has either been incredibly scarce resources or incredibly abundant resources (year-round), they haven't attached status or power to owning things - so the society they've built (or did build in the case of cultures we happily obliterated through the use of flags and smallpox), developed along completely different lines - and the people who live in it simply don't want to to collect and own things.

It's bizarre, but the fact that there are human cultures where, say, eating your fill is all you ever want (and the idea of having spare food is a truly ridiculous concept) I think shows that it can't - or at least can't just - be a driving, instinctive force within humans to collect and own things.

Rather, I think it's a combination of our environment and our psychology (instinct).

I'm not saying that instinct isn't relevant in human psychology; I'm just saying that I don't think it's the most important part of this bit (although of course our instincts have shaped our reaction to our environment, so there's definitely a fair old bit of overlap there)

 

[Dastardly]

- snip -

I think we're getting closer to agreement here, really. I'm certainly not one of those that's a pure "humans act on genetics and instinct" robo-human. One of our defining features as a species is our ability to consciously recognize and suppress raw, instinctive desires. It's one reason we don't just poop on the sidewalk, as a for instance.

I just think that in this case, an "instinct to acquire" acts as a seed of this behavior. It's certainly not the comprehensive explanation. As a teacher, I firmly, firmly believe that environment plays a far more enormous role in our development than genetics or instinct could ever hope to. I just think that there is an instinct in us for this. It doesn't drag us down the path, or perhaps even lead us down the path. But I believe it points us down the path, increasing the likelihood we'll tend in that direction.