I like old machinery. It tends to be simple, and rugged. Because it is considered obsolete, it tends to be available, cheap, and with a little tinkering it will often get the job done very well. I was unloading a truck and pulling saplings out of the ground with my 89 year old tractor just yesterday.
I think this interest is practical, but many more pursue it as a hobby. There are numerous web-sites devoted to this interest, innumerable threads about “Look what I found in the woods”, and “Hear it start for the first time in 20/50/80 years!”
Of course, people keep refining old principles and inventing new machines to speed up or lighten any task you may think of. The new stuff is lighter, faster, cheaper (than what the old stuff originally sold for in those mythical “constant dollars”), maybe easier to use if you can figure out those Chinese instructions. It also tends not to last very long, but that’s okay because a newer even better one is coming soon. Some have a lot of fancy lights and noises that may not contribute much to the function, but they look cool. Some have lots of safety features, to keep you from doing things with them that someone thinks you oughtn’t, or from sticking your fingers In the wrong place. I mildly crunched a car once that I was rolling because it would not start, because the steering wheel was locked, a feature that somebody thought was a good idea. Often it reports to some central data hub all about you and what you are doing…What could go wrong with that?
I confess, I’m an engineer. I absolutely love God and Nature more than machinery, but playing with machinery lets anyone feel a tiny bit God-like, in the sense that we can pretty well understand its processes, start and stop it at our will, get great piles of stuff done with it, and often improve it as we learn .
Of course the actual inner complexity of every piece, every bolt and every atom of metal is infinitely more complicated as God created it than we will ever understand, but it apparently pleases Him to let us ignore most of that, and make things work.
It is possible to look at human societies as machines, too, with components and functions, and we know a good deal about the “atoms” of societies, too: the individual fallen human beings like us.
All societies have parts that make things, raise food, build houses, and defend against dangers to the parts and to the society as a whole. Craftsmen, farmers, builders, soldiers. Often many individuals contribute to more than one function.Continue reading“Starting an Old Engine, Part 1, by John Leyzorek”
