We, as human beings, but not necessarily all of us, take for granted that which surrounds us. I say, “not necessarily all of us,” because there are some of us who do occasionally consider stuff. We think about it. We muse.
And when I refer to our surroundings, I don’t just mean mountains majestically looking down upon our insignificance, or rivers meandering their lazy ways through our mundane lives, as there aren’t mountains or rivers all over the place. Well, at least the last time I checked, there weren’t any in Tooting.
No, I’m referring to things. Stuff. Objects which we mere mortals use on a day to day basis without giving them a second thought. Things that, in my humble opinion, should be given much more consideration. Here we are, in the 21st. century routinely using admirable objects of fantastic complication, requiring skills far greater and brains hugely more capable than either yours or mine, to make them, and never giving them a second thought. Worse than that, very often these things are treated with utter distain.
How many times have you heard a young person saying that they must have a better mobile telephone because theirs is rubbish. Or a chap telling his mate that he’s bought the next generation of Fuji camera because his previous one is really not up to much. Funny that. Because, when he bought his previous camera it was the best thing since sliced bread, and it hasn’t got worse!
I think it’s high time that this was all put into some kind of perspective. Nobody seems to have any perspective anymore. I was chatting to a bloke in the pub the other day who was complaining that he needed to change his motorcycle.
I said, “Why, has yours gone mouldy, or something? You were extolling it’s virtues from the roof tops when you bought it last year!”
He looked at me, a little bemused and said, “No, it’s just that the new model is much better. The old one’s rubbish now.”
You see, this is where people get confused. The old model is exactly as good as it was when it was new. The brilliance it originally exhibited, and which the test reporters raved about, hasn’t just flown out of a nearby window. It’s just as good as it always was. It’s only that the manufacturers and their marketing men have got hold of you and persuaded you that you can’t do without the new model. That’s all. The new model may well be better than the old one but that doesn’t mean that the old one, which they originally said was fabulous, is now rubbish! The old one is exactly the same as it was before. It hasn’t changed. We’re so gullible.
Now, back to this perspective thing. I asked this motorcycling chappie a question. My intention was to try and instil in him an understanding of how we look at the very wonderful things that we use every day without realising how wonderful they actually are.
I asked him, “What’s the most simple thing that you can think of which you might use on a day to day basis?”
He thought for a while, but it became clear to me after watching him staring into his beer for about 30 seconds, that it would probably help my cause if I prodded him along a bit, otherwise I would run the risk of tripping over my own shadow and get precisely nowhere.
I suggested, “A pencil?”
“Ah, I get it,” he said, “yes alright, a pencil then. So, what’s your point?”
Well, I said, “Could you make one?”
More thinking, more staring into beer and a lot of beard stroking later, he eventually said, “It’s only a matter of getting the middle bit into the wooden bit, and once you’ve got that sorted out, you’re home and dry.” Of course, he’d totally missed the point, until I told him that I meant that he should make a pencil from scratch. By that, I meant that nobody was providing him with the wooden blank or anything. Or, even the wood! I told him to think again. More beer staring.
In order to make the blank piece of wood for the pencil, he’d need to cut a tree down. In order to do that, he’d need to use an axe. In order to do that he’d need to make an axe. But he’d need iron with which to do that. So mining for iron ore was now on the cards. Then using the ore to make the iron. So a furnace of some sort? Loads of knowledge and skills appearing on the horizon, and he hadn’t even got started. Fashioning the axe? Sharpening it?
Now what about making the layers of wood and what type of tree should you choose, and what part of the tree? Then there’s making the slot [accurately] to accept the graphite, bonding the layers together to encapsulate it and planing the resultant blank. More tools needed then. And more skills to make them. And the glue? A whole new subject!
And on the subject of graphite. Where’s that coming from? And the clay, sulphuric acid and animal fats to mix with it? Simple thing, a pencil.
Now we’ve got the matter of painting the pencil. It could be plain wood of course, but heh, it’s only a simple pencil, isn’t it? May as well paint it. Mmmm … chemistry now. Dyes and stuff. Application of paint? Yup, more knowledge and more tools to make from scratch.
Oh, and I was forgetting the rubber on the end and the brass ferrule (which you need to make) to hold it onto the end of the pencil. You’ll need to discover that you will need sulphur chloride, pumice and some rape seed oil. Oh, and and a little cadmium sulphide to give it that nice pink tinge.
I looked at the man with the motorcycle and said, “You know what? I don’t think I’m quite ready to make a mobile phone yet, am I? Or indeed the car, I just heard you say was a useless load of crap. And you can’t even make the simplest thing you can think of.”
Look, I’m not suggesting that nobody should aspire to getting better stuff or anything. All I’m suggesting here is that a bit of perspective wouldn’t go amiss. Ask yourself, before you go ‘off on one,’ what you, as an individual, can actually do. You might find it a sobering exercise and then appreciate how amazing the case for your mobile phone is, never mind its contents.
Of course the reality of this argument is far more complicated than I’m suggesting here. There is indeed a terrible load of rubbish made, but I hope my point about perspective and taking things for granted is also made.
So, the next time you look at something and say “What a load of rubbish,” just ask yourself, “Could I have made that?”