'Such omniscience ... would extinguish its soul'

In science greater knowledge is always and indisputably good; it is by no means so throughout all human existence. We know it from art proper, where achievement and great factual knowledge, or taste, or intelligence, are in no way essential companions; if they were, our best artists would also be our most learned academics. We can know it by reducing the matter to the absurd, and imagining that God, or some Protean visitor from outer space, were at one fell swoop to grant us all knowledge. Such omniscience would be worse than the worst natural catastrophe, for our species as a whole; would extinguish its soul, lose it all pleasure and reason for living.

—John Fowles, The Tree (1979)

Why should there not be a handle?

It is characteristic of the spirited man that he takes an expansive view of the boundary of his own stuff--he tends to act a though any material things he uses are in some sense properly his, while he is using them--and when he finds himself in public spaces that seem contrived to break the connection between his will and his environment, as though he had no hands, this brings out a certain hostility in him.  Consider the angry feeling that bubbles up in this person when, in a public bathroom he finds himself waving his hands under the faucet, trying to elicit a few seconds of water from it in a futile rain dance of guessed-at mudras.  This man would like to know :  Why should there not be a handle?  Instead he is asked to supplicate invisible powers.            

 It's true, some people fail to turn off a manual faucet. With its blanket presumption of irresponsibility, the infrared faucet does not merely respond to this fact, it installs it, giving it the status of normalcy.  There is a kind of infantilization at work, and it offends the spirited personality... 

There seems to be an ideology of freedom at the heart of consumerist material culture; a promise to disburden us of mental and bodily involvement with our own stuff so we can pursue ends we have freely chosen. Yet this disburdening gives us fewer occasions for the experience of direct responsibility. I believe the appeal of freedomism, as a marketing hook, is due to the fact it nonetheless captures something true. It points to a paradox in our experience of agency: to be master of your own stuff entails also being mastered by it.

--Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft (2009)

Metricate, American Style

This story is true. Any resemblance of the persons to fictional characters, living or dead, is coincidental.

Time: Summer 1975
Place: Chicago
Scene: Plush Lounge in Fantastic Hotel where educators at the First Annual America School Metrication Convention are meeting for a week.

Persons                    Symbol
Ms. Libby Elementri    LIB
Mr. M. Etric                MET

[...]

MET: Japan had a great effort to go metric originally in their schools, but did not have the backing of industry. It took them forty years to convert. At one time they even had three different systems going for them. England had a pretty good effort on the part of industry to metricate, but their educational program left something to be desired.

LIB: How do you see our situation

MET: I hardly even know you.

LIB: Come on, don't be funny.

MET: Well, our industries and large corporations like IBM, GM, and Ford are really leading the way, and there is this guy out in some place called Rhode Island—I think it's in New York—he's really pushing American metrication. Now it is up to our educational institutions to do what they are supposed to be expert in—educating. The whole problem is educational, no matter what sectors are involved.

LIB: What do you think our schools should do?

MET: Metricate, American style.

—John Izzi, Metrication, American Style (1974)