I've owned the margarine tub for 13 years. I just bought the clock last week.
The story of how either one is made constitutes an amazing, complex tale of international trade, technology development, invention, and so on. If you don't believe me, please tune in to my favorite TV show: How It's Made, on the Discovery Channel. I challenge you to find more than a few objects in your home where one person gathered the materials from the natural world, crafted them, and personally gave them to you to use. You will find hundreds, even thousands of items that came to you in a vastly more complex manner.
When my kids were little, one of their favorite books (and mine) was "The Ox Cart Man" by Barbara Coonts. With a simple story and wonderful illustrations she showed how an industrious New England family in the 18th or early 19th century worked all year to grow food, make clothes, candles, and most of the things they used. At the end of the end of the story, the father leads an ox and ox cart on a several day journey. The cart is loaded with many of the products of their industry. Item by item he sells it all at a coastal city. Then he walks home with a few sewing needles, perhaps some candy, and a few coins in his pocket.
One's first thought might be how wonderful it is that the family is so self sufficient in their agrarian life. One would be wrong. The needles and the coins are made of metal that required a mining, transport, smelting, and a host of industrial processes using sophisticated equipment.
The needles were required for many of the simplest of the home projects: knitting, sewing clothes, sewing harness. Perhaps on other trips he used the coins to buy metal pots, hammers, axes, or a plow share.
Even sugar candy was a product at the end of a long chain of agriculture, industrialization, and international commerce. Sugar not made into candy or sold to bakers around the world was often converted into rum, which fueled a profitable and legal international drug trade.
Any society appreciably simpler than that of the ox cart man's is stone age. No metal. Little trade. And yet even those stone age folks may covet a new flint knife or a better loincloth. They are often willing to fight and kill to get or keep. On those rare ocassions where modern man has found what he thought to be a primitive paradise, as with the south sea islands, we were simply ignorant of what truly transpired there. In the same way we have sometimes chosen to be ignorant of the complex industries that enabled the ox cart man and his family to thrive. We turn our eyes away for a moment and do not think about the wars fought to take the ox cart man's land. We forget about the slaves taken for the sake of growing the sugar cane. We choose not to think of the miners, steel makers, and factory workers that make needles or coins.
Why are people working so hard, struggling, fighting, thinking, buying, selling? Why are all these things made? What is it we hope to gain that our hunter, gatherer ancestors or neighbors didn't have? A steady supply of food. Clothes. A warm, dry place to sleep. A few beautiful objects to admire. Entertainments of one sort or another. How It's Made is a great show. Why it's made is a question for the ages.
6 comments:
I think about that all the time dad. It totally blows me away how many different machines and molds and people creating those things go into ALL of the products all around me. I can't let myself dwell on it too long. It also drives me a little nuts, because where do I get off thinking I get to "do what I'm passionate about" and be fulfilled through my work and expand my mind, when millions of people work in these factories producing every tiny little thing I own and use. What about them? Are they really doing a work they're passionate about? Why should I think I get to if they all don't. Does that makes sense. I know you'll go back to the "why me?" thing now, but really. I just don't see where I get off.
By the way, not to burst your bubble, but I never really liked the ox cart man, I thought it was pretty boring, but I let you read it a lot becuase I knew you liked it... and I liked you...
it is a GORGEOUS fall day today, i wish we could all go for a walk at Finley Wildlife refuge together.
Nice. Oh, I've been meaning to ask you this dad: where does plastic come from? That's it. I pretty much have no idea. I figure it involves chemicals that are perhaps obtained somehow through mining.... I'm sure you'll have a good answer for me.
Also, I'm pretty sure I did in fact like the ox-cart man. And, I, too, have been reminiscing about family outings to Finley wildlife refuge. So those were definitely a good idea. (Despite the fact that I suspect Charles may have thrown fits over them...)
Also, I like the family fellowship here. Very fun. Love you.
Julia Rose
oil
Yeah, I believe polymer is synthesised using petrolium is it not?
I sent an answer to Julia via e-mail about plastic since I didn't realize that anyone else might care.
Here is the low down:
Plasticity is the property of being able to be softened, shaped, stretched. Plastic is a general laymans term for a whole variety of materials that have those properties.
A few occur in nature (like chewing gum made from chicle in tree sap)
A few more can be chemically synthesized from materials such as celluose (the backbone material of plants).
Many more are chemically synthesized using oil as the starting material.
The chemical structures vary, but often have this in common: long repeating chains of a simpler molocule. These long chains are called "polymers"
The exact properities of any given plastic can vary tremendously. Some are soft, some are much harder.Some are transparent. Some are opaque. Some melt at low temperatures, others at higher temperatures. Some are resistant to chemical attack, some do a good job of preventing moisture from penetrating through a film or sheet of the plastic.
The earliest synthetic plastics were developmed in the 19th century, but the really big boom in types and amounts of plastic has occurred in the past 50 years or so.
Plastics use about 4% of the world's oil consumption. Good progress is being made on how to reuse and recycle some types of plastics to reduce the need for further oil consumption and to prevent build up of solid waste.
Kent
Kent, I will never cease to be amazed at what you put on your blog and how others respond to it! Thanks for letting me be a part of your family fellowship. Hi Julia and Viggo and?????. Looking forward to see you.
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