Monday, April 10, 2006

Last Word About Slogans

OK, last one, I promise:

"Necessity is the Mother of Invention."

This once was the case back in the day, before the technological boom ("Man, it's cold! We should, like, invent fire or something.").

But once our tool-centered culture gave way to Technocracy, which then produced our current Technopoly, this all changed. Inventions became so easy; the real problem became creating supposed necessities in order to justify them.

For example, I have had the following conversation approximately 274 times:

Person: "What's you cell number?"
Me: "I don't have one."
Person: "WHAT?! You don't have a cell phone?"
Me: "No."
Person: "Why not?"
Me: "Because I don't need one."
Person: "Sure you do! What if you were driving through the dessert in the middle of the night and you got a flat tire? What would you do then?"
Me: "Has anything like that ever happened to you?"
Person: "No."
Me: (Insert smug look here).

It is the nature of our Market-driven culture to invent stuff, and then figure out what we should use it for. The slogan, therefore, ought to be:

"Invention is the Mother of Necessity."

My goal, of course, is not to force my hopelessly antiquated (read: late 90's) ways upon any of you. All I'm saying is that the last thing I need in my life is one more thing I can't live without.