Everything required for every tiny task in everyone’s day is the product of a technological iceberg that remains comfortably submerged and hidden from daily awareness.
Take for example the writing of a grocery list. You need a piece of paper and a pencil.
Let’s have a look at a pencil. I don’t know anybody who can make one. Graphite is a soft, crumbly mineral that comes from England or Sri Lanka or Mexico.
It is easy for me to be proud when I overhaul a Volkswagen engine “by myself”. But who gets the credit for the parts that I am able to buy, the tools that I must have, the machine work that imparts renewed life to old cylinders? I can only conclude that half the planet was involved in the overhaul of my engine.
If every act, every artifact, every move we make rests on the work of others, I can find no way to avoid the conclusion that a great many people are very good at what they do.
What is most puzzling, then, is the amount of friction that exists at every level between groups of people who need each other. Within organizations it is commonplace to hear open warfare between departments. ~ On a global scale, the rhetoric runs hotter, but the phenomenon is the same. The same people who expect to get a head of lettuce for 99 cents resent the presence of the people who pick it for $2 an hour.
With over three thousand former students in my teaching career, there is a chance that somebody, somewhere, has found a practical use for something they learned from me. ~ I got a Christmas card this year from a former student thanking me for recruiting her to work in the Microbiology lab. This job is no gem. It is cruddy, smelly, repetitive, and slightly risky work for low pay. Apparently, it caused her to rethink her educational goals and switch to Microbiology. By her testimony I changed her life. Oddly, she didn’t mention anything about the courses she took from me.
The whole world is giving money to help people along the Gulf Coast. Let’s hope that money is put to good use.