I don't think this is actually going anywhere, so if you have anything better to do with your time, now is the time to close your internet browser and go do that. (You've been warned).
I Started by Thinking About Guns
Then I started to think about swords, and artifacts in general from times of war. Kids often have hollowed out hand grenades they got at gun shows or flea markets. Young boys like to carry knives and play with lighters. I get a sense that this is a gender specific trait, which I'll try to make a case for.
I think the reason we hold on to these relics is because of a sense of transferred power. Transference in the psychological sense that we shift an emotion (specifically the desire for power) to the object at hand. My Dad used to babble about an old economics concept called, "Guns and Butter". Simplified, the concept is that those who have the guns, have any commodities they want to take.
Psychologically speaking - guns, knives, fire... these are primitive forms of power. In a very barbaric sense, we still attach this type of power to these things, although bound by morality and the constraints of a social justice system most of us choose not to try and exact the power we feel when we have a gun, knife or similar instrument in hand.
I do acknowledge that there also exists an appreciation for history in the collection of certain artifacts, but even in that appreciation I don't doubt that at the very core of an individual there must be something deeper than a love for knowledge. I think it's probably primal, hard wired within us.
I don't think many people would disagree. You see it in literature when it comes to boys, with titles like "The Dangerous Book for Boys". You see it in pop culture, look at movies marketed towards men. While women are targeted with movies like, "Sisterhood of the traveling pants" and "The Notebook", men get "Die Hard" and "The Transporter". This is not to say that some women don't like these movies, or crave power the same as a man would. To polarize and stereotype is foolish, as there are outliers in every study and generalization.
Evolutionists will argue that this division comes from our primitive history. Men were hunters while women were gatherers. Men killed while women gave life. If that is true, what about those barbaric forefathers? Did they have even more primitive forefathers who were more androgynous? Was this behavior simply a fluke of evolution or a result of traits which had a different purpose when they developed? Surely random evolution didn't see fit to give one gender an advantage over another for the purpose of politicking, warring and bureaucracy. I doubt that it even did so to benefit hunters versus mothers. As a Christian, I think there is a different reason.
God said so.
Wow, prophetic right? God made man, in His own image. We see that God is a powerful being. We see him victorious in the old testament in wars, we see him bring down plagues when he is hacked off. We see a destructive side when he destroys Sodom and Gomorrah. When He is destructive, he is just. When he is angry, he is just. God's justice, and his power are something, that at the core of our creation, we try to have for ourselves. We are young boys who want to be like Dad, so we try to emulate him in a childish way.
Girls, I don't think are left out in this concept either, but they get a different set of attributes at the heart of their being. God was a creator, he breathed into us life. God is loving, and he is merciful. Again, I don't deny that both genders may possess these qualities in equal measures in many regards. What I am trying to get to is the primitive brain, the hippocampus of our gender, and the driving factor beyond the conscious mind we are able to analyze with any amount of logic. At this core, the androgyny of our existence is boiled away, and the core of who we are as men or women is left without the tuxedo or pretense of society.
Perhaps, simplified, I am saying that men represent God's justice, while women represent his mercy.
I know, it's a stretch, and a huge deviation from the original thought... but I warned you this was going to be random rambling.
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