[lbo-talk] (In)conspicuous consumption?

[Michael Smith]

On Saturday 22 December 2007 23:04:56 Alan E. DeBakey wrote:
> "Simple" desire to get your hands, for example, on some hand-written Bach
> scores?
>
>   I don't get it. Do you hope  listening to Bach while holding such a thing
> in your possession would make his music, the music, sound differently? Feel
> differently?

No. But that misses the point. Not all desires are instrumental. No doubt all 
can in principle be explained psychologically, like the shoe fetishist's 
interest in footwear. But to the subject who feels them, they are primary, 
given, not derived and secondary.