One Machine Fits All

by Asa Boxer

Smartphone sweatshop Pakistan.

If the analogical mind is asked to settle on one main cause of sclerosis, corruption and decay in all the activities of human endeavour at the moment, it will finger the machine (and mechanism) as the driving trope and conceit. Despite the advent of electricity, electronics, and logics, our civilisation continues to be dominated by the machine as analogy. And like an adolescent who has just come to learn the fun of sexual euphemism and innuendo, our civilization gravitates relentlessly toward that one metaphor. At root the trouble with our pursuit of Truth is the industrialisation of it into specialised parts to which we can job things out in an effort to resolve various inefficiencies to make the greater machine run smoothly.

The trouble with the Arts today is the same: specialisation, certification, instalment as a cog in some corporate apparatus. Same goes for law, social work, education, you name it. So I can point to the trouble with grand theorising,