Chopsticks, People!
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
photo credit: Felipe Skroski
I don’t really watch a lot of television, and in particular I’m not usually a big fan of reality TV. Nonetheless, I kind of got sucked into watching every episode of “Survivor Micronesia” this spring. Ever since I was a kid the idea of being castaway on a desert island has been fascinating to me. I read “Robinson Caruso” and “The Swiss Family Robinson” and poured over various survival manuals like the Boy Scout handbook - Yes, I was a Boy Scout.
Anyway, the interesting thing about it to me was the idea of making a decent life for your self with limited available resources. Which brings me to the subject at hand. I had never watched “Survivor” until this past season, and it was interesting to see the things that these people did and didn’t do to make their lives more bearable, but one thing really got my attention every time I saw it. The “Tribes” each had one pot for cooking, and apparently any time they had meat (fish, chicken, crabs, clams) to cook they were under the impression that the only thing to do was to hack it into chunks and boil it into a watery soup. Then they would take turns fishing chunks of it out with their nasty unwashed hands.
Ok, you gotta do what you gotta do, and they were basically starving by the end. However, they were eating coconuts every day, and there was bamboo everywhere, and they had at least a machete for a tool. Also, until they depleted the supply they were eating these giant clams the size of dinner plates. It amazes me that they didn’t whittle out some serving spoons, and chopsticks, and make some plates and bowls out of shells or coconuts - then at least they could eat like civilized people instead of like Neanderthals.
Did they not even think of this? Did they think they couldn’t making something as simple as chopsticks? Maybe the constant threat of being voted off the island made them feel that any such effort was pointless. I don’t know, maybe they were too busy or too tired to do these kinds of things, but on the show you see them more or less just hanging out most of the time.
I’ve often seen people do tasks inefficiently over and over (in the workplace) when a bit of time spent making a pattern or a tool jig would make their work easier, better, and more accurate every day. A very small number of people will actually take the time to tune up a tool, or file off a rough place on a handle, or make a spoon, while most of us just make do until something breaks or quits, or a task becomes un-doable.
Anthropologists tell us that tool making, and using is a hallmark of intelligence, and a key trait of humanity. But after watching “Survivor” I’m beginning to think that it’s only a very small number of us that are actual tool makers.
