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scattered thoughts

Just a thought that’s been running through my head lately. I find it really interesting how, from the perspective of most of human history, every single person walking the face of the earth today lives better, at least in some ways, than the richest of kings in the past.

I’m mostly referring to various technologies available to nearly everyone that were unimaginable in the past. Even the poorest of the poor in the poorest countries have some kind of access to the telephone, for example; perhaps they need to spend a days wages to make a two minute call on someone else’s cell phone (big business in poor countries right now, one guy in town gets a cell phone and rents it to everyone else). I don’t care how great you were a hundred years ago, you couldn’t make a phone call.

Even the basics, like nutrition… yes, there are starving people, but a massive worldwide infrastructure of air travel, improved farming, disposable income in developed countried, and media at least gives them at least a chance at getting a free bag of rice shipped from the US. A hundred years ago “tough, dude, you’re in a drought, no one outside of the drought even knows about you, you’re just screwed.”

But the single human artifact that I think most eloquently expresses the improvement in our world is… The Disposable Lighter.

A hundred years ago (give or take 50) fire was a massive pain in the ass. Once you had a fire lit, someone had better keep an eye on it and keep it from going out. If yours went out, you went to a neighbor, but if that neighbor was a half hour walk away in the snow, you’d probably stay in and make it yourself. And making a fire without a fire is a huge pain. Keeping the fire going was a job - even a full time job (I think) at some times (I think, and don’t feel like looking it up, that’s what the Vestal Virgins did all day, just kept the main fire in town burning. Not sure, though). If you go to sleep without some kind of coals that will last till morning - you’re going to be pissed off.

I mean, at a friend’s house the other day, we spent a good half an hour just trying to get a nice blaze going. We had kindling, paper, dry logs, matches, lighters, and even lighter fluid, and we had a hard time getting more than smoke. Leave out the matches, lighters, and lighter fluid, and forget it. I realize this is a lost art, and there are some who can spark up a flame in ten seconds with a couple of sticks, but still, I’m sure it was never easy.

Hence, the pinnacle of humanity’s mastery over the sublime, the divine, and the profane: The Disposable Lighter.

The Zippo wasn’t invented until 1932; the first lighter, running on hydrogen with a platinum catalyst, came in 1816, and matches in 1826. We may have “mastered” fire ten thousand years ago… but we didn’t fucking OWN it until less than two hundred.

The lighter is amazing to me because it’s one of those things that could have been invented much earlier. I mean, it’s not like a computer, there’s no specific reason you couldn’t make a Zippo with ordinary hand tools two thousand years ago - it’s just flint, steel (~250 B.C.), a wick, and some flammable oil. The idea seems obvious.

Amazing. I mean, think about it; I would bet that the greatest king of Egypt would have given you plenty for a plain old Bic. In today’s terms, probably an SUV. Like a nice one, an Escalade or something, with chrome rims and a DVD player. For a lighter. I mean, not that he specifically had to start fires himself, but just for the what-the-hell value. Just so he could be the only guy in anywhere who could go “need a light? Oh, ok, here.”

I’m just sayin’, y’know?