Daily Short Thought Round-up #4

This week: musings prompted by Stuart Brown’s book Play

May 05, 2023

A warm hello to you,

Do you find that ideas can come from the most unexpected places?

For instance, a fountain pen.

I recently bought one, and I’m now wondering how I lived without it. The kids were entranced by it, too, so much so that they made me get them one each. Ada is taking hers to school, and it’s whipping up desire there. In a funny kind of way, it has become a plaything - a tool for play, a toy perhaps, that’s enabling a particular vein of ‘being’.

It’s made me think about how tools carry with them cultural values.

For instance, a fountain pen brings with it - in fact, I’d go so far as to say it encourages and necessitates - focus, care, consideration. When you use it, you have to slow down. This slowness seems to provide the time and space that’s needed for thoughts to crystallise and ideas to manifest in a way that they don’t with a keyboard or even a normal pen. And the beauty it brings is attractive, infectious.

Are these values things that we’re losing as we prostrate ourselves before the idols of efficiency and productivity?

What might the world look like if all kids grew up with a fountain pen, and it was one of the primary ways in which they thought and expressed themselves? Would this be different from the one now, where the primary way ideas are manifested is through social media?

It’s worth thinking about.