Human History X - The Users and The Used

If man could be used as a commodity in Europe, why not in Asia, and why not in Africa; and if man could be used as a commodity, why not as raw material? - Nwafor Orizu, Without Bitterness (1944)


Technology implies belligerence - Peter Watts

Homo sapiens sapiens. Man The Wise. We are so very very up ourselves, aren't we. We may have been better served calling ourselves Homo utens instrumentum Man The Tool-User -- or perhaps, just Homo utens. Man The User. More honest.

Let's expand on that.

For our purposes, it would seem that the keyword in tool-use isn't tool but use because to use something it to control that thing and we have ever sought to control, haven't we. Still, one could argue that we had to.

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Humans, for most of our history, have been faced with an indifferent universe filled with threats. Snow, rain, sun, darkness, beasts, fellow humans, even the ground beneath our feet have all proven dangerous at one time or the other. Given the recent events in Puerto Rico and numerous other places, we can see that they still do. Therefore, most of our history has been devoted to making the world less dangerous, to control it. To that end, we needed and therefore made tools. Spears and arrows for the beasts with sharper claws than our own, fire to light our way and warm our flesh and burn the parasites from our food, wheels to move our burdens and carve paths in the wilderness. All progression in human life has been from finding or making newer better tools.

Here's a question: what are tools for?

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The answer is obvious: tools exist for the sole purpose of making the world make sense. They force it into shapes more suited to our needs and wants, to make it into something we can use. In fact, the purpose is to force nature in unnatural shapes. Nature is, by definition, an enemy, one we have had to defeat over and over again, first and always for our survival and then endlessly for our comfort.

However. Sometimes, the tools we made from nature itself just weren't good enough. Spears and wheels and animal skins are all well and good but they were just that -- inanimate objects moved by our hands. Purpose-built. Singular in function. Sometimes, we need tools that can flex and adapt, that can bend without breaking, that can bleed but heal. We used animals of course: dogs as alarm systems, as tracking devices; horses to lengthen our stride and bear our burdens; oxen to feed our bellies and plow our fields. We bred them for size, for muscle and ...

... and eventually for cuteness

Still, even animals were still not enough to achieve all our ends. They were living but not smart enough, flexible but limited. We needed smarter tools -- and that was how Homo utens raised their heads and looked to one another.

Man himself became the tool.

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Consider the boiling hottest days of the dry season (or summer, if you're in a country with that sort of thing.) In the modern day, even the least-paid worker can just flick a switch on the wall and be assured of the coolest of air. A king, 300, 200, possibly even 100 years ago would need someone to fan him. In effect, the king has taken a human and turned him or her into a fan.

Looked at through an even slightly jaundiced lens, huge swathes of human history have been us using our fellow humans as tools. Consider the following: Harems. Slavery. Eunuchs. Castrati. Theocracies in particular and nd religions in general. The military chain of command. Jannisaries. Suicide bombers. Human computers.

alessandro moreschi, last of the sistine castrati

Consider, for example, the Castrati. You take a perfectly serviceable young boy and right before puberty, you take a knife and you take away his ability to go through puberty -- just so he can sing better for your entertainment. Madness? One would think so but this was done and supported by kings and popes and entire civilized societies for centuries. Why? The user found that harpsichord and bass and flute and lute were not enough, that only the piercingly high notes of a castrated teenage boy were good enough. Unworthy of living his own life by his own choice, he must be reduced to a golden-voiced tool to serve others.

Consider the slave. You travel across the ocean, across the world, to steal people in their millions and bring them back to your land where you beat them into submission, degrade them in every way until they serve your will. We need not dwell on this one, do we.

In the armies of old, to varying degrees, they took away your loyalties (or, if they were "kind", they recruited those with no other loyalties to begin with. Orphans for instance.) The Janissaries, elite soldiers-slaves of the Ottoman Empire, were barred from growing beards, from marriage and from having any job-skill other than soldiering. Why would you do that if not to take a full human being and force him into a single shape?

In the Imperial harems of the ancient world, you the concubine are bound to the sexual urges of one man and denied as much of the outside world as your master can possibly manage. With eunuchs to guard you, no less(!) that neither you nor they be tempted. You are in effect a tool for his sexual pleasure, placed on the rack to be lifted and used when the need arises and put back when done. No other purpose need apply.

NOPE. NO HAREM IMAGE FOR YOU SORRY

Of course, the great paradox is that to make a robot of your fellow human is to render them less useful. The ideal human tool is intelligent and yet still serves - the intelligence of a human and the unquestioning loyalty of a tool. Homo utens welcomed this challenge.

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Consider the eunuchs. Any human with kids, male or female, knows that they instantly become your priority over all other things. Take away a man's reproductive power and you take away his physical investment in the future. That leaves his intellectual investment in the future and that can be shaped, molded and directed; it can be merged with your own.

To accomplish the act of making a tool of a human, one must first take away their reason to think for themselves before then taking away their ability to do so.

Sweet dreams.

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@edumurphy