Thanks Jussi, you've made some good points there.
Possibly if the collector has entered into specifically keris collecting with a mystical/magical motivation, yes, perhaps the reality might be a little to much to bear and interest could be lost, but as I remarked in a previous post, I was not targeting keris collecting with my question, I was targeting collecting. In general. Orange peels. Cow pats. Red Cross badges. Stamps. Original Rembrandts. The whole sphere of collecting.
Lets say I'm a cow pat collector. Surely I would want to know what difference age, diet, geographical location, drying time --- & etc & etc & etc made to the form and consistency of the cow pat. Serious business cow pat collecting.
I feel that the "want to ", but "too lazy to learn" is probably absolutely spot on. As a teacher your professional opinion in this is clearly an informed opinion and I reckon you've hit the nail on the head. Mostly people want information served up on a platter. Preferably a silver platter. Not a lot of people are prepared to do the digging to find the gold, they want it left in their letterbox.
And yes again:- having an appreciation of music is a very long way from making music.
I feel you've given us a very nice little analysis of human nature here Jussi.
The simple fact of it is that not everybody needs to be an expert to appreciate something, we can appreciate the object in an almost total lack of knowledge about the background of the object.
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