11:13:11
Old & Worthy
Recently, I read an essay by Stewart Brand, founder of The Whole
Earth Catalog (TWEC), titled "Good Old Stuff Sucks." At age 69, Brand
argues life experience has taught him to throw out the old in favor of
the new. Brand seems to be atoning for an early-70s, back-to-basics
agenda, widely promulgated in TWEC, by claiming he was wrongheaded and
anti-progress. Now give him "100 percent not-cotton clothing,
genetically modified food (from a farmers' market, preferably), this
year's laptop" and so forth.
![[butcher steel]](Steel.gif)
Like many who argue a glittering generality, Brand
doesn't lay out
all particulars for his case in an admittedly brief essay.
I agree progress improves some of our material life. I would not
argue for a return to vacuum-tubed radios housed in resonant wooden
consoles. No, that ignores what solid-state electronics gives us: the
manufacture of circuitry on chips increasingly as cheap as printing on
paper!
What I reject is the blanket condemnation in Brand's argument about
old stuff. For example (and related to Brand's disenchantment with the
"old buildings" he formerly championed), I live in a 95-year-old house.
A Colonial Revival with the same double-hung sash windows Brand now
reviles in favor of Andersen manufactured windows.
It also has about three dozen working
shutters alongside those
windows. Shutters with movable slats, hinged so they can be closed. The
first thing I did when I moved in was take down the shutters, have them
professionally stripped to bare wood. Freed from decades of paint, I
rebuilt all as needed (for some only the slats were salvaged and the
whole frame rebuilt). Okay, I'm a competent woodworker and saved with
DIY. But unlike Brand with his senior wisdom, I fail to see
rehabilitating, repainting shutters as any burden whatsoever. It was,
for me, a small price to pay for the privilege of living in this house.
No, I believe, selectively, old stuff matters and has
worth. Why
else the saying, "It's stood the test of time." As another example of
my reverence for old stuff, I offer my grandfather's butcher steel.
Probably as old as my house. The butcher at our local Whole Foods backs
me up in saying only a steel puts as keen an edge on a kitchen knife.
Progress is selective and we must not lose sight of the fact that
new (especially disposable) is not always better, not always
sustainable, and probably unavailable in any post-petroleum future! So
Stewart Brand, keep your hi-tech GMO apples. I'll stick with ones
longer
in the making.
Read Charlie Dickinson's
story collection, The Cat
at Light's End, as an ebook in these downloadable
formats:
.mobi
(Kindle)
.epub (most other readers)
.pdf (for PCs)
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