On Tools
Some tools are simple: hammers, homes, clothing, wheels, knives, guns. Some are complex: math, money, machines, computers. Some are prerequisites: water, food, REM sleep. And some tools only come with the “being human” package: language, dexterous fingers, full-color sightedness. But the most powerful tools, the tools that shape who we really are, are of another kind altogether….
These tools don’t have clear boundaries. They aren’t able to be defined just as an object used by a subject for a defined purpose. This is because we as the user decide and mutate the tool’s boundaries as we go along using them: friends, family, beliefs, rationalizations, drugs, anger, love. You could lazily call these tools “abstractions”, but they’re more like stories — stories formed by connecting a lineage of meaningful events associated with personal or shared experiences coalescing into an existential consensus we take as the tool’s effective definition.
I say “effective” because, though it’s not explicit, we are all continuously updating or wholly changing the definition of these tools. And we do this for our own survival, because these are the tools which lever our body to move our minds - ideally to a desired state – They get us through the day. Get us through life. As our creations, we humans are the first and only ones able to wield these kinds of tools and, as tools are defined, use them.
This is who we are! We are humans. Our decidedly distinguished advantage is the vast extent in which we can create, use, and share tools. Everything we interact with in life is shaped by us into a tool to be used in one way or another and there’s nothing we can do to change that. You are a monkey if you don’t.
In fact, even monkeys use tools! I actually think one of Life’s main purposes is to create and better use tools and that humans are simply the best that’s been seen so far. Maybe we’re just tools Life created for itself after all… But whether that’s true or not, the fact remains that we advanced tool users can do quite a bit with them. So let’s talk about what is true for tools.
Availability
We are obviously limited to only the tools we can reach and grab – the things closest to you (mentally and physically). If you extend your reach or increase the quantity of the things around you, the more tools you will have available, but you still only have a limited number of appendages in which to grab them.
Whatever tools are within reach, and how hard they are to grab, is called “availability”. So a person’s availability is the collection of tools available to them which they subconsciously rank-order either from the results of previous usage or alternative substitution options. .
Most times this availability is a curse. You become the cliche “To the man with a hammer, everything is a nail”. You repeatedly use only the tools easiest for you to grab. This is why it’s so important to expand the tools closest to you, your avail. They define your limitations. They define your potential. They define your versatility.
Versatility (or Using a Spoon to Spread Butter)
The less precision needed for a task – or the less the effect precision has on the task – the more options available of satisfactory approximating the solution to that task.
In other words, instead of a knife, you can use a spoon to spread butter on your bread without there being any real consequences. However, try using a spoon for cardiothoracic surgery and you’ll be met with a different mannered customer.
There’s nothing wrong with spoons. Sometimes all we have is a spoon. But if you only think life will require you to need a spoon, then don’t ever expect to eat pasta. Sometimes you need to go and buy the whole kitchen set.
Extension & Reliability
Most know Whitehead’s nomic: “civilization advances by extending the number of things we can do without having to think about it”. Well, tools are the vehicle for this extension. They encapsulate and compress the thought it took to make them so those thoughts can stack with others into something greater.
If you know you’ll frequently need to travel long distances, having a car and a phone with GPS always close by allows you to not to worry about how you’re going to get there. It allows you to focus on the destination; to not think.
This is “Extension”. By stacking destinations instead of trips, you cook with gas instead of kindling. You get the most out of yourself and of what you’re capable. Extension also means that tools can transform our limited human-bounded input into other domains, allowing us to manipulate things usually out of our existential reach.
And Extension only works if the tools around you can reliably do what they should. This is why we humans prefer what we know. Those tools we’ve used which have worked for us in the past. New tools are often avoided because we’ve never reliably used them before.
New Tools & Invention
Creating a new tool or using a tool to invent something new all together is truly the pinnacle of human ability. The best tools get passed down through so many generations. It’s as if they’ve always been there. Their origins are so intertwined with human history that whole conspiracy theories get written about how they may have gotten here.
The best tools change the environment around us so well that it has no choice but to submit to the will of the user. Now this may seem like hyperbole, but remember that lifeforms co-evolve with their environment. So to permanently change our environment is to in fact copilot evolution with Life itself. Copilots of creation.
Final Thoughts
This is as far as I can take the importance of tools for now. If the ability to use God’s paintbrush isn’t enough for you, then by all means continue to ignore the tools around you and the infinity of tools you’re able to create. Continue to act powerless when challenging situations arise and you can’t meet them. Tools are the only tools you have. Choose wisely.