Large Fierce Mammal

“Man has a large and highly adaptive brain – nearly as smart as a Crow – along with this pesky opposable thumb – one on each side unless you’ve gone through life being called “Lefty”. We Man critters can imagine and build solutions to problems that Nature didn’t give us the speed, wings, teeth, fur, claws, armor, sense of smell, or eyesight to solve otherwise.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – Archaic Revival

In its usage as a noun, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a “tool” thus –

1. A device or implement, especially one held in the hand, used to carry out a particular function: gardening tools

• a thing used to help perform a job: computers are an essential tool; the ability to write clearly is a tool of the trade
• a person used or exploited by another: the beautiful Estella is Miss Havisham’s tool.
• Computing – a piece of software that carries out a particular function, typically creating or modifying another program.

2 A distinct design in the tooling of a book.

• a small stamp or roller used to make a tooled design.

3 Vulgar slang a man’s penis.

• a stupid, irritating, or contemptible man: that guy is such a tool

Today I’m going to simplify the meaning of “tool” into two words – force multiplier.

The term “force multiplier” originally came into use through the lexicon of military terminology, and refers to any enhancement that, when added to a unit’s capabilities, will significantly increase its effectiveness and potential for success. For our purposes here, we will lift the affair out of the realm of exclusivity to human conflict and apply it with panache to the entire spectrum of life.

As a non-human example, Nature has endowed some Birds with the power of flight, while others have been granted the alternative adaptation of being larger in size and fleeter of foot. These capabilities have been granted to otherwise rather fragile creatures as alternative means of enhancing effectiveness and competitive success in the daily grind of life. They are Naturally developed force multipliers.

Likewise, each iteration of Man, leading up to the current free ranging model we meet for good or ill when abroad in the land every day, was a step on the road to development of advanced cognitive function including, very importantly, imagination, and the manual dexterity to put it to work. Every rung on the evolutionary ladder that led from the earliest proto-humans to you and me is characterized by the development and use of tools. Tools that increase the effectiveness of a hunter-gatherer equate to better fed hunter-gatherers who are more robust than less well equipped contemporaries. Enhanced efficiency in getting the basic necessities of life out of a day in the field means less energy expended and risk endured for the same reward you put your ass on the line and slugged it out for yesterday. More time for contemplation of better ways to do things, devising and making new tools and the techniques to go with them – even tools that will be used to make other tools.

A real Tool then must be a True force multiplier – thus a True Tool, and to be that it must fit into one or more vital categories including, but not limited to, making a heretofore impossible job possible, a hard job easier, a risky job safer. In addition, it must conform to the following absolutes, each of which is so important that the order of their presentation is of no consequence –

• It must be maintainable.
• Its durability and longevity must not constitute a built-in guarantee of waste.
• Life with it must be superior to life without it.
• Neither its use, nor the job it was devised to perform, shall represent the creation of an equal or greater problem while solving another.
• It must not represent the lesser of two or more evils.
• For any given task, it must provide a dividend in the form of time expended, materials used, and/or energy required.
• It must exist to do a job that is necessary within the context of sound ecological and ergonomic practice.

In short, it must serve within the balanced Economy of Nature, and not the wasteful “economy” of dollars and cents in which the soothing buzzword “sustainable” really describes business practices that will permit continued rates of growth and consumption – business as usual – with a smaller discernible impact. For any organism, getting through a day requires expenditure of energy and resources for the purpose of acquiring more energy and resources. Simply living in place requires at least a “break even” on that balance, but a higher return is required if the organism must hunt and catch its prey, for reproduction, the rearing of young, migration, overwintering, or hibernation. Everything in Nature is about efficiency and balance, which is why life is, first and foremost, an exercise in energy management. For example, the Way of the Wild demands of each parent that their offspring be made self-sufficient as quickly and efficiently as possible. A tool need not be a physical artifact – rest assured that skilled parenting is a Tool – but to be True it must help, not hinder, such processes, and must never represent a brilliant answer to a question that was never asked. Let’s look at a few modern examples that have gone that way, but didn’t have to.

The cellular phone was devised to increase efficiency and enhance interpersonal communication. Taken at that, it can be a True Tool. As it has come to exist, it is nothing of the sort. It comes with planned obsolescence that will ensure its replacement well before the end of its service life, and is designed to be replaced rather than repaired. In use, it easily lends itself to distraction and attention overload along with unreasonable expectations of immediate contact with attendant damage to real human relations. A perceived need to be in constant contact with those absent from your presence while ignoring everything that surrounds you. Likewise, the ever present MP3 player, that might actually be a cellular phone, that pipes music into the ears of millions at this very moment, turned on the instant their ears were no longer required for anything else. Instead of using music to uplift, it gets used to filter out everything while the oblivious listener weaves down the sidewalk texting feverishly.

The computer can be a tool with limitless potential; as a communications platform, or an enhancer of creative endeavours, it stands without peer. Connected to the Internet, it can provide a seemingly limitless window into the greatest Truths. Alas, it normally serves as a shallow conduit into the meanest, basest depths of human thought. A platform of self-expression from which nasty idiots wield their perversities from behind what they wishfully perceive to be walls of anonymity.

All this having been said though, it’s clear that while a tool may be True or false, the difference can lie in its application as an expression of intent. Application is a creation of the human mind; trained and wielded properly, the human mind is the True True Tool. Think on this the next time you take your cellular phone in hand to text while you walk through the world, or feel compelled to answer that call mid-conversation with someone who’s standing right in front of you. When you fail to keep a commitment because you got caught up in facebook drama. It’s all about intention.

After all, you might be filling the bath tub to wash the baby, or drown it.