Meet Ben Franklin

From BIUL III.

If you can hang a door, you will never be poor.

Houses will always have doors. This will never change. And oftentimes, the people inside the houses lack the skill or know-how to fix the door. Sometimes the people are too busy, or too old. They will still want to get in and out of their house. If you can hang a door, the world is your oyster.

If you use a computer, you can learn what it takes to build or repair one. There will always be people confounded by computers to the point of apoplexy who will throw money at you to make them work. It’s not a far cry from the home automotive industry that was quashed earlier this century for good. Cars are practically computers now anyway.

Phones are another matter entirely. It’s either discouraged or illegal to tinker with them, in the cases where it’s even possible. So when your phone stops working, you have to return it to the carrier and purchase a new one. The person at the phone company doesn’t even know how to fix it. It’s shipped off to a sweatshop in a third-world country, and you either upgrade or do without. And since they gave you access to a coveted “portable computer”, you’ll gladly pay to keep up with everyone else (as you perceive them).

That’s a lot of emphasis to place on something so far outside of practicality, that can’t be physically maintained or modified.

Where it gets insidious, is when one kid sees something that another kid has, and now has to have it. It could be a toy, a phone, an item of clothing, or a game. It will occur outside of adult scrutiny. Now it’s all down to one thing:

How far somebody’s kid will go to get what they want. 

O my brothers, you better hope to whatever you call God that that kid’s parents raised him right. If not, it’s down to the integrity of the desired object in question. If that object happens to be a fancy phone, then once again, we’re seeing a community being waylaid and divided over class and money. The haves and have-nots become clearly visible to each other. Everybody has a phone, right? Have the monopolies not convinced you of their necessity by now?

The average smartphone is so expensive, the phone company has to shackle you to a contract to pay for it. Even though we all started taping over our webcams, every phone comes with at least one built-in camera. It’s barely necessary to own a camera anymore; in fact, it’s discouraged, by the convenience of sharing photos taken on the phone. Boom: another hobby gone. No wonder the camera shop down the street went out of business.

Why would anyone want to know how to operate a real camera, anyway? That involves developing film, which takes care and patience. Plus, there’s all those weird lenses to remember. Why not put every aspect of photography into the non-existent hands of programs and hard drives?

Do you get what I’m saying? That all these companies capitalized on the average person’s overwhelming desire not to look stupid?

Remember the guy who used to get angry when you used a word he didn’t know? He’s got a phone now, so he can discreetly look up the word, and no one will be the wiser. Which is fine, until he doesn’t have the phone anymore, and he gets even angrier when he realizes he never retained or learned anything. Meanwhile, his paycheck went to some phone company, and he’ll never get it back. That ain’t gonna help matters either.

The Achilles’ heel is the convenience. When you barely have to do any work to learn something, guess what- you won’t learn it. Why would you? What’s the point of all those silly math classes, when you can just carry a calculator?

Because, fool, the discipline. I had to take math classes because I had to get it into my head that there were things I didn’t understand. Maybe even couldn’t. When you feel shame because someone caught you without the answers, that’s meant to be the fuel to help you reach the next step. And believe you me, no one has the answers. It’s all about appearing as though you do.

Which you would, if you could hang a door.