functional fixedness vs flexbility
5 months ago
let’s say i need to open an envelope. usually, i open letters using a letter opener—a tool purpose-built for the task of opening letters.
but i lost my letter opener in the shuffle of my move. perhaps it’s in a bag, somewhere. but for now, trying to retrieve it is not worth the time.
what do i need? i need a letter opener. but is that really true? is what i need a letter opener—or do i need something that could also fulfill the role of a letter opener? i don’t need a letter opener per se—i am looking for something to fulfill the function of helping me open letters.
in order to find an object to fulfill that function, it likely ought to have similar characteristics to a letter opener. it should be relatively flat, slender, and provide the right leverage to tear through paper.
what else might fit the bill? ah! a butter knife.
a hammer is a hammer, not because of anything intrinsic to the matter that makes it up, but because we have decided it is a hammer. usually, that is because it meets some level of what we might think of as a hammer’s essential qualities. but the categorization of a hammer as a hammer, is, in many respects, an arbitrary (and also a somewhat fraught) exercise.
what else could a hammer be? and what else could be a hammer?
if someone tells us, “this is a hammer,” should we listen?
there is a kind of sneaking satisfaction in finding a use for something other than what it was initially intended for.
People turn things into trash so easily. Then those things are treated as filthy… and no one ever finds worth in them again. Kei Urana, from Gachiakuta
think about the moment something becomes trash. why? why is it now trash?
monolithic capitalist enterprises extract material wealth from the earth, depleting our reserves of lithium, deforesting swaths of rainforest, so yes—of course, the solution is for you to buy fair trade chocolate. and therein lies the problem—the abstraction and diffusion of responsibility. none of us are truly accountable to the whole thing. i throw something into the trash—where does it go? where does it fucking end up? i don't know.the myth of the individual
will it stay that way forever? have you even thought to care? and is framing it as “caring” or “not caring” on an individual level also the problem?
this is a pipe. this is not a pipe.