Machinery and life - essay

I am so upset about the situation in Gaza I simply cannot deal with it at the moment. How people who themselves experienced so much pain and agony cannot empathize with the Palestinians is beyond my comprehension. To punish a million and a half innocents because of one Israeli captive is beyond unconscionable. Will no one ever curb Israeli genocide?

Anyway, perhaps an essay will help take my mind off this disaster. I wrote this when I still lived in Santa Monica and worked in Los Angeles. I am happy to report that here in Bonners Ferry we have only one (1) street light. We have no elevators (there isn't a three story building). Life is simpler but, of course, you can't escape the machines.

An interesting thing about culture (in the anthropological sense of that term) is the fact that we seldom reflect upon our own. We conduct our day-to-day lives virtually oblivious of what we are actually doing and what is happening to us. Consider, for example, the machinery that regulates our lives from morning to night –and consider, too, our awesome dependence upon that machinery.
Although I doubt there are statistics to bear me out, I’m personally convinced that that machine that starts our day, the ubiquitous alarm clock, must surely shorten the life of anyone unfortunate enough to have to employ one for any length of time. What a shock to the system, that awful din that startles one from blissful sleep into anxious activity anticipating assignments, assignations, and other assorted events often with artful anonymous dodgers one is unlikely to see again. This first traumatic event simply begins a serious of encounters of man with machine, not only unprecedented in human affairs but also downright mind-boggling (as we say these days).
Next, depending upon your personal habits, comes the electric razor (although all razors are machines of sorts), followed by the shower. I am ignoring light switches as there are far too many of them. After the shower one has to deal with the refrigerator, toaster, stove, perhaps an electric can opener, juicer, and etc.
Outside the home one is still totally at the mercy of these symbols of human ingenuity, these mute and not mute at all objects that in fact guide and control almost our every movement. The garage door opener without which one would (ugh) be forced to operate essentially the same machine. And, of course, that most stupendous machine of all in the “civilized” world, the automobile. Better hope that it starts. Wonderful invention and helper that offers us more independence than ever before – and perhaps it does – but not when it exists in proximity to the machines that regulate it, those tall or hanging three-eyed sentinels that stand strategically at every corner to tell you and your automobile just what’s what. Heaven forbid that you should just let your poor human judgment allow you to violate their better judgment. Big brother might be watching you on his or her faster and better equipped machine.
If, as is usual, you successfully negotiate these benevolent artificial watchdogs, you may well confront still another example of the genre which will allow you to park only after extorting some form of payment, either on the spot, previously, or sometimes later. Assuming that the code on your plastic card is correct, and further assuming that the machinery that allows the barrier to raise up and down does not malfunction, your arrive at last at your place of work. Not quite, of course, there is still the elevator. Elevators, at least many of my acquaintance, appear to have independent minds. They often come and go as they wish, not necessarily as you need them to. But not to worry, one does typically actually get to the office (I am omitting locks and keys as well as light switches, but this is not meant to denigrate their importance lest I offend and one or the other refuses to work for me anymore (this does happen).
There is probably no place in the “modern world” where one is more at the mercy of machines than in the office. From the water cooler and the coffee maker right through the telephone and the computer your life is either well-organized and efficient or so disrupted as to leave you either apoplectic or speechless, or both. Can there be any more frustrating phrase than “the machines are down again?” This is especially enjoyable in banks.
I have skipped over a whole host of “middle range” or semi-archaic items such as filing cabinets (do the drawers on yours always work), desks, typewriters (remember them), cardex files and etc, and even the more mundane necessities such as toilets, sinks, towel dispensers and the like – life can be pretty miserable when one or more of this totality of machinery breaks down and refuses to cooperate.
Then at last, when the clock on the wall or the watch on your wrist tells you it is time to leave you start going through the whole process in reverse, your final ironic act being – you guessed it, having to set the friendly little round face of that very machine that started you on your day. Who says we are not creatures of free will and determination, rugged individualists, masters of our own destiny? How big is their computer?