When I first read the book "The Depths of Everyday Life", two words immediately came to my mind – nostalgia, because the cover was a letterpress with a 28 bicycle with a girder.
In this era of luxury cars, cool motorcycles, and electric vehicles running all over the street, people who can remember this object can be easily divided by age, and the post-90s may have a slight impression, and the post-00s almost don't know, but it is an unforgettable memory impression for a lifetime.
Bicycles are just an introduction, and there are countless old things like this, and the people who hide them in every corner of the home and wait for them to be reused are also getting old.
In 2005, an artist named Song Dong did an exhibition in 798 called "Making the Most of Things", which exhibited various objects that his mother had collected throughout her life, reflecting the irreplaceable status of objects in a person's life. The exhibition has also been presented in many countries, and all of them have been very successful.
What does this mean? It shows that we are not completely unaware of the importance of objects. However, we still don't think too much about the deep philosophical questions.
It was only after reading this book that I began to think about the relationship between us and objects for the first time. The author of the book is Wang Xiaowei, associate professor of the Department of Philosophy of the Chinese People's University, and his original intention in writing this book was not to write a philosophical monograph, nor did he think of popularizing philosophy for the public, but to help us observe the various objects that accompany us through a philosophical perspective.
In this book, I saw a lot of familiar and laughing things around me, aroused a lot of curiosity about thoughts that I had never thought about or thought about but had no answers, and discovered a lot of fresh ideas that pushed us to solve the "real problems in life".
For example, the author argues in the book that "two people who order takeout every day are easy to break up", which sounds funny, but is actually in line with the "focus thing" view of the philosopher of technology, Albert Bergman.
Bergman argues that "family dinners generate a sense of meaning through hard work and physical input", and that takeaway is the opposite of a "buying and selling relationship" that can only create a great spiritual emptiness.
Another example is a college student majoring in food engineering, who returned to his hometown in Xiangxi during the holidays, and the old hen soup that was originally full of love became the protein, fat and ascomycetes in his mouth.
After telling this story, Wang Xiaowei said: "The development of nutrition has simply reduced the rich relational content of food to a bunch of invisible nutrients, which may be a great offense to the diet itself. ”
I very much agree with his point of view, whether it is food or other items, there are emotional factors attached to them that cannot be cut off, which is the same as the fact that the ** number is far from being just a string of numbers.
Is this book a philosophical read on technology? Or is it a nostalgic essay book? Or is it an index of minds that inspires us to "look back"? The answer is a matter of opinion. If you are also interested in such a "small book of things" with "unclear qualitative characteristics", then look for the answer in the book yourself.