What the Knife and Art Can Teach Us About the Phone and Tyranny

Analog creativity makes us human

Le Cheval de Troie. Henri-Paul Motte. 1874.

A primal truth—The knife is to man what the antler is to the elk and the fang to the wolf.

Animals are more physically robust than us because their bodies are their weapons: their antlers, canines, and claws are on them and constantly ready to be used. But if humans are caught unarmed with our soft hands and short teeth—alas for the featherless biped!

The better we became at crafting tools from wood and stone, the more these fundamentally human artifacts replaced what we now think of as non-human features. As tools made us more lethal, our muscles, bones, and teeth became more slender. We became lighter than both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus, who in turn were much lighter than the great apes.

Our unprecedented tool making ability was not only for hunting quadrupeds, but fighting off bipeds. We thus became “first-strike” creatures. The knife, spear, and rifle are weapons, it is true, but my sense is our first-strike tools are not limited to weapons. They are also wrenches, compasses, crimpers, stethoscopes, and tourniquets. Going even further, while these tools merely protect our bodies from breaking, artistic tools protect our freedom, our passion, and our souls. These can be paint brushes, ink pens, djembe drums, or sticks of charcoal taken from a fire.

We are unfinished animals—The knife is not just an inert slab of steel, nor is the pen a meaningless mass of plastic and ink. They are the ability to fashion rafts to ford rivers, save our loved ones from the stalkers in the night, and fight our governments for freedom.

The significant point is we are unfinished animals without our analog tools. They are what finish us. They equip us to own our existence in a hostile and stunningly beautiful world. If we do not have analog tools, we do not have self-reliance. It is now possible for the first time in human history to live without having to own our own lives.

Digital tools and self-enslavement—Modern luxury meant to free us from ancient necessity. This it did. And we were thus freed from the necessity of self-reliance. Knives and finger paint are ancient. They have not changed. This means they show us how much the world around us has changed in the last 20,000 years.

My feeling holding a bone-handled blade is soothing in a savage sense. I am aware of scents of fern and fur; my mind’s eye sees waterfalls and searches for silhouettes of cannibals and tigers in the woods. I feel this can be handled—all of it—with this little tool in my palm that took hours of devotion and attention to create. It is deeply invigorating. Even when I carried a rifle for a living I always carried a knife, for a rifle can jam but a knife cannot. The pistol is one of my favorite things on earth, but it cannot cut a tree or open an Amazon box without making a mess. The blade incites a bit of seriousness and roots us in metal, time, space, and the here-and-now.

My feeling holding a smart phone is a different sort of stimulation. A hyper-stimulation that does not keep my feet on the ground but sucks my scattered brain into a glowing void. This is not the primal centering of waterfalls. Rather it is the empty and sneaky sensation of infinite scrolls, of endless opportunities that are in fact endless ways to die without having lived.

With our digital tools, we are no longer strike first. We are now the ones being struck. These tools are designed to turn us into passive receptacles, empty skulls that may never give birth to a striking thought of its own. It is a false sense of finishedness.

The analog tool demands we unplug from convention and understand the world exactly as it is—defending it with a weapon when necessary, and making of it a poem from our first breath to our last. On the other hand, the smart phone wants us to join a collective and digital fiction; it wants make sure we cannot see beyond the pixelated void created by those who want... what? Power? Money? Nihilistic fulfillment?

Riffing with Archilochus—

“In my spear is my kneaded bread;

In my spear is my Ismaric wine.

And I lean on my spear while I drink it.”

Yes. Archilochus is the man who invented the concept of the “warrior-poet.” He may not have seen what was coming when he was alive 2,600 years ago, but his theory is remarkably sound. Our ancient tools are a reminder that we own only that which lies within the span of our arms, within the confines of our skull, and within the power of our choice.

And without them, what then? Who among us can carve a spear, start a fire with a stick, or draw a dogs face and do it justice? When it comes to digital tools, who can make a smart phone, a laptop, a television? Even going beyond the digital, who can build a house, a car, an electrical system, an airplane, or a grocery store filled with figs from Turkey and cacao from Venezuela?

When our eyes no longer concentrate on the ivory goddess in our palm we spent weeks whittling with love, we find the latest social cause to be enraged about, the terror of the apocalyptic rising of the seas, of nuclear winters, of deadly diseases, of every wretched and abstract event that can plague our lives but which is completely outside of our control.

How many take productive action when they can just stare at a screen?

Now how many lean on their spear and enjoy the spectacle?

What would a time traveling savage say?—When I close my eyes I see a lush forest and, on the other side of a roiling pool, a Stone Age man standing with a knife at the foot of a waterfall. What, then, if he had somehow seen both the ancient world and the modern? The words I hear are these: Why remove yourself from the modern world when you can remove the modern world from yourself? Do you not realize the knife set you free but that you no longer need it? Do you not realize you are born to fight those who profit from you sleepwalking to death with your capacity to strike first with ideas, words, paint, and poetry?

A conviction—I believe in my bones the line between the creative individual and the madman is thin. But a madman need not be creative, while the creative must at times be madmen.

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Welcome to the new subscribers. These essays are not dogma no matter how strongly worded. They are hypotheses and experiments—they are a hunt for ideas that lead to vibrant aliveness. This involves the risk of being wrong which I gladly accept. If we do not push the boundaries and follow any thread wherever it may lead, right or wrong, then what is the point? This is why I am here and it is why I write.

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