The Hard Way

Yesterday I defrosted the refrigerator and got a mess of weird pink liquid all over the kitchen floor. I wanted to know what it was, so I googled it. Later that night, I needed to learn how to make a Tequila Sunrise. I googled that as well. Today I needed to find out how to commute to NAIA 3. So, yes, I turned to Google. Seems like the answer to nearly every question I have these days is only an internet connection away. Except for law stuff, of course. Wait, I take that back. Except for SOME things in law school.

The internet (and Google) is so accessible, so convenient, so inexhaustible in its variety of information both mundane and esoteric (OK, i just used Google to look for a more appropriate antonym for esoteric but I couldn't find one) that it seems to be the ultimate resource. Need the history of the Baghavad-Gita? It's online. How about the recipe for Sans Rival? That's online, too. Looking for that high school buddy you've fallen out of touch with? Guess where you'll probably find him.

The trouble is that the existence of, and access to, an inexhaustible resource will inevitably lead to the death of resourcefulness. Resourcefulness is the hallmark of all life on this planet; it is that stubbornness, that unwillingness to submit to existing conditions, that persistence in finding ways to impose its will on the world that defines a living being. It was resourcefulness, for example, that led to the invention of the internet. It was a solution to a problem. And now, by virtue of that brilliant solution, the trait of resourcefulness itself may die out.

I hope not. Somewhere inside me, and hopefully inside all of us, is an ignorant savage who wants to do things by himself and not rely on what others have done before. Somewhere inside me is the man who refuses to ask directions when lost, who throws away the assembly instructions before unpacking a do-it-yourself bookshelf; somewhere inside me is the man who wants to figure it out himself. From scratch. The hard way.