Schopenhauer
on Collecting Action Figures
Robert M. Price
My name is Bob, and I’m an action figure addict. But you
already knew that, didn’t you? As I write, the San Diego Comics Convention is
afoot, and I am consulting the DC Direct message boards and other websites to
gather the latest news and clues from DC Direct and ToyBiz as to which
long-desired characters they are going to incarnate in plastic this coming
year. And reading the DCD board posts, I realize that not only am I not alone
in my addiction, but, thank God, I am not even the worst! There are others at
least as obsessed as I am, some even worse, like the poor souls who, upon learning
that their favorite characters were pushed off for another year (something I do
not make light of!), swore to give up the hobby altogether! Why this reaction?
Certainly they were not trying to throw a scare into DC Direct with a boycott
threat. Nor was it a symbolic protest like those 60s campus radicals who
refused their diplomas from schools that had investments in South Africa (or
whatever it was). At least my guess is that the posters just could not stand it
any more. The hobby had become a pain rather than a joy. As Sheryl Crow sang,
“If it makes you happy, then why are you so sad?” It was like an unsatisfying
relationship: it had become more trouble than it was worth.
I have
watched this tendency grow in myself, but I have tried to adjust my attitude,
an adjustment I recommend to you, dear reader, if you have the same
proclivities. The nineteenth-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (The
World as Will and Idea) helps me here. Schopenhauer was quite the
pessimist, drawing much from the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, which was just
then beginning to be studied in the West. The first Noble Truth, the Buddhist
diagnosis of what ails mankind, is “Life is suffering.” The second is the
etiology of the illness: “Suffering is caused by desire.” The third is the
prescription: “The cessation of suffering brings the cessation of desire.”
Schopenhauer
elucidated the truth “Life is suffering” by describing life as a continual
pendulum-swing between frustration on the one hand and disappointment on the
other. You can’t rest for wanting a thing (a career, a relationship, a
possession), but then if and when you do get it, the luster is gone! And you
feel disappointment, even if the thing was exactly what it was cracked up to
be! Why? Mr. Spock says, “Having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting; it is
not logical, but it is often true.” Oh, but it is logical! You see, we
only “desire” what we do not have. In fact, this is precisely why the word
“want” means both “lack” and “desire.” The feeling of desire is a species of
anticipation, and thus it must disappear as soon as the goal is reached. You do
not want what you have, which is also why you do not appreciate
what you had till it’s gone. So once we get what we wanted, we go back for the
thrill (or the punishment, for which the collector is a glutton) of rejoining the chase: wanting
something new. Surely that is also why people pursue extramarital affairs. It’s
not so much forbidden fruit tasting sweeter as the renewed thrill of the chase.
The real
question is whether there is anything better to replace wanting with than
taking the newly-won for granted and starting to want something else. If there
is, then we could get off the neurotic merry-go-round. I think there is, and it
is the more obviously logical path that Spock was hinting at. It is possible to
reach contentment if you change your mind by simply stopping to appreciate what
you have, appreciate it for all the reasons you once desired it. To objectify
it and contemplate it is to reestablish a bit of that distance that occasioned
your desire in the first place. When you appreciate a possession, you are in
effect imagining, “Wow! What if I didn’t have it?” “What if there wasn’t one of
these neat things?” “Isn’t it great to have it?”
Ask
yourself the question, wouldn’t your collection be terrific, wouldn’t it be a
source of joy and admiration even if nothing else ever came along to add to it?
That poster who announced he was done collecting action figures and would be
selling all he had collected was predicating
the validity of his collection on the possibility of its being completed with
the figures he still wanted. And when it seemed they would not be forthcoming,
not any time soon, anyway, he suddenly saw his collection as worthless,
undesirable! I don’t want to make that mistake. I am more and more inclined to
sit there when I get a spare moment and bask in the radiance of my Justice
Society display, my JLA gallery, my Avengers, my Legion of Super Heroes, etc.
And then I think how great it’s going to be to fill the gaps in the roster of
each. But I don’t forget that what makes me want these other hypothetical
figures makes me enjoy the heck out of the ones I’ve got. The day I go to
Heroes Are Here to pick up my Reign of the Supermen figures (next March, seven
long months from now) will be a mighty happy day for me. But today, when I can
go take a look at the Cyborg Superman and my Kenner versions of the others, is
a happy day, too!