Caution: You’ll Melt

I don't normally GUSH... but Ginger's turned a year old

In the defense of STUFF

Someone on the SA forums once said:
"PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Autmobiles. That's not a clunker it's a street kitten and it's life is sacred."

While my husband and I cheer and laughingly repeat the phrase to our friends - mutual car enthusiasts... the phrase really strikes a note. All STUFF should be treated like a kitten. Most do-it-yourselfers know it, and most backyard- car mechanics live it, that all things should be cared for, maintained, and if the need to dispose arises, should be done with consideration.

We've all heard the phrase, "what's one man's junk is another man's treasure", but how true is that today? How many people find value in a Star-Tac cellphone that uses analog that is no longer supported by any carrier? How many people still carry around black-and-white laptops?
What happened to that STUFF?
Just think, in simple language, every THING you have, had to have been made. Sure, after several iterations, giant manufacturing houses and assembly lines have been constructed to build this THING as cheap as possible. However, a lot of man hours went into building that THING. Take a paper towel stack, like the ones you use in public restrooms to dry your hands after you've washed. It costs less than a cent to purchase a single sheet... but that sheet is a product of many many hours of tree-growth, demolish, transport, cut down and run through pulping machines that were designed by engineers and maintained by skilled tradesmen, packaged and driven to your store where a clerk sells it to you at a ridiculous low cost that in no way reflects the work that went into it. And we use it to wipe our clean hands of fresh water and dispose.

Now I don't intend to be preachy or righteous... I'm just looking at this from the perspective of that fiber. Seeds take a tremendous gamble to
make it to the surface, survive and thrive into a plant. It yearned to grow towards the sun. It might not even mind being cut down years after to be used as paper... but to wipe clean hands? That simple act just disrespected the person who sold it to us, the transport driver who worked long hours to bring it to us, the mechanic who fights to maintain the machines that made it and the engineer who cleaverly designed the machine and even the seed who worked soo hard to grow.

All STUFF is like that...  once you start to see your STUFF from it's (figurative) eyes. You wouldn't pour salt in a Bently's gas tank... but you readily dispose of a working IPOD when it's two years out of production. We really should respect those who make the things we use and use them better. Like cars, if they're broken, we should fix them. If they aren't, we should maintain them. There is no good reason for a 2 year old car that's classified as a CLUNKER should be in the landfill. That is just pure disrespect.  Volvo's have been known to drive into the near millions of miles... after careful maintenance.  Now I won't disagree that there are a LOT of those CLUNKERS out there.. .and their emissions are significant.. in fact I believe everyone who is physically able, should ride a bicycle or WALK anywhere that is less than 5 miles from their home. 5 miles is a 15 minute bicycle ride.  We would use our cars less for certain.

I do believe that fewer cars should have been produced to begin with... but that's all over with now. These cars exist. The problem is, we as consumers treat them like that paper towel in the restroom. We are disposing of perfectly good STUFF, and not doing justice to it by keeping it's parts out of the landfill. No, like dogs, when we're through with STUFF, we just dig and bury it. No one else can have it to keep theirs running, and we'll only scavange SOME of it's parts to smelt down into re-usable material.... but not after we SHIP it to China at nearly 20 GALLONS per Mile of Bunker C (CRUDE).

Anyone who has met a machinist understands that there is a real art in creating something out of raw material. After "Flashdance" people really started to recognize an art in welding... but what about MILLING or LATHE processes? Hollywood doesn't know much about those, and therefore most people don't know either... but when you meet an old-timer machinist, and watch how skillfully his hands manipulate the machines to create EXACTLY the stuff you were expecting, you can't help but be gracious.

Those same people are behind the STUFF you just threw away. The paper napkins and plates, the old cellphones, the AA batteries that are expired, the CLUNKER you just traded.  If we treated our stuff better, it would last longer, companies would make less product and there would be less environmental impact. But in the end most people don't want to think about the environment when they buy their new XBOX, they want what has been designed to be trash, and it's truely all for vanity.

Stuff deserves a better user than us.