“But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.”
So says Thoreau, and as it happens I’m inclined to agree. Although, perhaps, the tools he was referring to are a bit different than the tools I’m referring to. Technology has advanced a bit, you understand.
What are tools? As I see it, they are means by which to accomplish something, whether it be a hammer to bang in a nail or a vacuum cleaner to clean the carpet. Simple, right? Tools are meant to be used, and use them we do. A lot. I mean, where would we be without pencils and saws and watering cans and ice cream cones?
And yet, by relying heavily on anything, one tends to find themselves almost enslaved to it – “tools” of the object, one might say. Take TV, for instance. TV is a tool through which many find themselves entertained. So entertained, in fact, that they can become like zombies, entranced by the colors and sounds and action. Just ask any parent of a pre-teen. Kids of all ages (and that includes adults, by the way) find they MUST watch some shows and they CAN’T miss an episode and they HAVE to see the whole thing through, every second of it, even commercials. How much more enslaved can you get?
And what about all the stories you read about monsters who overcame their creators? The monsters were created as tools of destruction, perhaps, and yet in the end it was the masters who were forced to serve (or destroyed by) the monsters. You get the idea.
The tools Thoreau was referring to are most likely along the same lines (not about the monsters, about the enslavement to TV); he may have been referring to something as abstract as feelings. Macbeth became a tool of his tool – greed. At first his greed had him simply wishing for more (like the kingship), but his greed eventually took over him and he went around killing people to achieve prophecies and get what he wanted. Using cleverness to steal money in a particularly conniving way is using a tool, but perhaps you may become too clever, in some way, and that “cleverness” will only bring about your downfall or make you trip up.
It’s never meant to happen – I mean, no one goes around saying “I want to become a tool of my beauty”, or “I want to serve my TV”. But it seems almost inevitable. Relying too heavily on anything cannot have a good outcome. If you rely too hard on your laptop, and it crashes and loses all your life’s work, what then? If you rely too hard on an accomplice, what might happen if they decide to turn you in to the police to get a $1,000 reward?
As Thoreau says, “But lo!” Surprise, surprise, people do find themselves enslaved to the TV or turned in to the police. It’s not because of anything they did, besides for relying on their tools too heavily. Whatever the tools may be, the results are basically the same. Men have become tools of their tools.
