Thoughts about kinetic creativity and privilege

"Innovate on existing platforms (We’ve got bicycles and mobile phones in
Africa, plus lots of metal to weld. Innovate using that stuff, rather
than bringing in completely new tech.)"

When I was in grade school, I participated in Odyssey of the Mind for a couple years. OM was most notable in that it was my one opportunity to work with my hands. We built a rickety human-powered vehicle out of two mis-matched bike tires that one operated like a wheelchair. We tie-dyed yards and yards of fabric for costumes and other uses. We sawed and hammered and painted and sewed. We screwed up a lot and had to fix it ourselves—no adults allowed.

After I got older, I never had the opportunity to do anything so mechanical, physical, and hands-on as OM. I used the well-flaunted creativity-building skills of the program, to be sure, but my classmates and I were encouraged to apply them to more intangible arts—storytelling, art, music composition, playwriting—not anything physical. I went to an excellent school, with well-taught cla**** in art, English, music, and other liberal arts-type subjects. However, the more technical cla****, such as shop or consumer sciences, were little better than study halls and ceased entirely once we reached high school. Thus, OM was virtually my only experience in seeing physical, tangible hacking and repair as a brainy thing and as something I could do. Perhaps I watched someone replace a car tire once in driver's ed. I admired the scene in the movie Apollo 13 where the engineers are challenged to find a way to make the Odyssey's CO2 scrubbers work in the Aquarius' air filtration system using only materials already on the spaceship. Neither of those was enough for me to glean anything useful, though.

It's somewhat surprising to me to realize this, but it shouldn't be. Although I had family who were farmers and carpenters and factory workers, both my parents were white-collar. I grew up in a wealthy suburb and attended school with the progeny of doctors and lawyers. No one pushed or suggested trade school or other mechanical professions on us. Over 90% of my class went to four-year colleges, most in the liberal arts and sciences. Our destiny was to make more than enough money to pay for AAA to fix our flat tires and for plumbers to fix our broken toilets.

As I've gotten older, though, it's occurred to me that everyone really ought to know these things, and practice them on a regular, if occasional, basis. Even if white collar workers can't handle extensive car repairs or shingle replacement or artisan-level carpentry, knowing the basics is empowering and enlightening in so many ways. It's not just a matter of DIY frugality—though that is one advantage. Rather, exercising that kinetic intelligence once in a while gives you a wh*** new perspective with which to understand the world. If you own a sleek, solid-body aluminum laptop and shiny new appliances, if your material possessions are unhackable and by default you throw out broken things rather than repair them, if you've never seen the moving parts that undergird your life and job and economy, how can you possibly expect to understand people and societies that are not so cool, crisp, and manufactured, where life itself is jerry-rigged? (You know, everywhere that's not a wealthy First World neighborhood.)

It makes perfect sense that well-meaning Westerners would instinctively try to solve problems in Africa and other less developed regions by hauling in and laying down a comprehensive, brand-new technological system rather than learning about, fixing, and building upon what's already there. It's what they're used to.

During the summer of 2006, my main mode of transportation around suburban Philadelphia was an ancient, borrowed pickup truck with no detectable suspension and more rust than red paint. A friend and I were coming back from a movie theater when we heard the worst noise coming from the back of the truck. When we reached the house, we realized that the tailpipe had cracked and was partially dragging on the ground. My friend went in and fetched a wire clothes hanger, string, and some pliers. He tried forcing the hanger to untwist with the pliers, then by hand, until I showed him how to hold the twisted head with his knees and rotate the 'shoulders' of the hanger with his hands until it untwisted, a trick I'd learn in some long-ago childhood crafting session. I then used the undone hanger wire to tie up the tailpipe and hold it in place, securing the ends of the wire in ways that would be hard for the motion of the car to jostle loose. At the end of it, the tailpipe was still cracked, but it was straight enough to be functional for the remainder of the summer.

Rigging the tailpipe in that way was a silly thing. It was a small thing. Yet I felt so much pride in it.

I have much to learn. But I have a bit of a sense of what I don't know.