Every so often I’m forced to stop dead trying to reconcile something I’ve come across. 
Years ago, the pause was shorter than these days. The biggest puzzles come when others apply labels, especially to me. Labels are useful enough and handy, but their use often implies more than is possible to know. ‘

Xample, is there a faith community in the Twin Ports? Where does it meet, elect or select officers, and conduct operations according to a specific set of bylaws? I’d guess there is no actual community of faith because faiths vary widely and don’t, so to speak, march to the same drummer. 

Suspecting I’m not alone being contrary (Harry being one of many versions of nursery rhyme Mary gardening cockle shells and silver bells) or skeptical or difficult, however you see it, I’m pretty sure of the existence of others because (despite this sentence running impossibly on) the Reader allows me to go on, presumably or possibly because they know contraries exist and have a purpose other than annoyance. 

If not for being contrary we’d, yourself included, be fleeced of all things and left paying off immense debts to pay for useless gadgetry such as, I may as well, smart homes and appliances. 
 Smart. I recently sat through education to smarten me up on things smart in appliances and homes. How smartly grand to have a washer turn on and do its washing thing while busy you are at work or in transit. Smart. 

The skeptic inside me doubted the washer strolled room to room to gather a towel here, socks there, etc. Who, then, did so? Possibly, taking a wild guess here, the person with dirty laundry had collected it and put it in the machine and then (here’s the good part) demonstrated the dire need for smartness by being (person and machine, both) too damn dumb to add soap, etc., and turn on the wash cycle. 

No, NO, NO, it was somewise represented as smart to go somewhere else and remotely turn on the smarty-washer. The wisdom of so doing escapes simple me, though, 

t’ be perfect honest here, I did see the benefit being able to remotely activate the dryer to do its things in absentia. Grand. Then when you arrive back home all full of wonder at world smartness you’ll still be the smart-one needing to move the clothes from washer to dryer and do the drying for real. 

Not needing to go to the river to wash clothes, having water piped indoors, those were smart improvements. But how smart to add a thousand dollars of upgrades to accomplish essentially the task of a simple wringer machine? 

I believe that believing an expensive system has to be better is, itself, a concern. New and improved are gimmicks, as Twain might call them, “snares and delusions.” 

Delusion? Yes. Look, for near-time example at most any newer vehicle with a computer touch screen providing a great many options and bits of info not needed to drive and very likely distracting and confusing for the driver. Too many meddlers is my conclusion. 

The clothes are not measurably cleaner, the drive not a bit shorter, nor is life made simpler with complications. 

What has improved (meaning grown) is cost. 

Do you now carry routine data fees that when considered cumulatively explain the poverty of your wealthy existence? Hmmmm? 

Too cynical am I? 

Perhaps, but I’ll wager there’s a meddler out there scheming to convince me of a way to sell me on a way to turn on the dishwasher while I’m shopping for socks; all in hope of funding their tropical island dream home. 

Is it unreasonable to consider civili-zational collapse might follow and a tipping point reached when the majority of a population doesn’t know what is or how to use a simple potato peeler? 
 Rapidly expanding unfamiliarity with basic items and tools is possibly as threatening as climate. Both are slow moving. Both can be countered by adaptation. 

It’s unlikely, in my view, The Netherlands would stand still and let itself be drowned. Would you? No, you’d move, do something other than wait to be flooded. But by the time a civilization operates as if potatoes come frozen, pre-peeled, in plastic sacks and ready to heat. 

Too often (an apology follows) I pursue tangents making scant sense. That’s because things little and insignificant as potato peelers are meaningful. Recognizing what’s important might be tricky as spotting what’s smart and isn’t. 

In earlier, Harry dinosaur, time I was hit with another continual education prompt alerting me to the deep insidiousness of sociological evil evidenced in shampoo. (I am not fabricating. Tis true. Shampoo.) 
The categories of dry or oily or normal were all based on the hair of non-original non-aboriginal non-native hairs from European sources. This information or view was presented as proof of discriminatory bias most insidious and cruel. How could a decent person ever again shampoo free of guilt? Far worse than lice, how does one remove unseen racist nits from the scalp? I could never again be clean. 

 Having been educated (versed) about the importance of intersections I can’t help but spot some. Before my eyes the intersection between smart technology and ethnically insensitive shampoo jumped to the fore, a superior supremacist position I know to be wary of. 

But you’re wondering, “What?” Asking “What nut bar connects new tech with traditional hair care?” That’d be me, laser focusing on the unlikely but real dazzling human aptitude to complicate and overdo just about anything for any reason imaginable. 

We shine like stars making things costlier and more involved. We do. We think it’s smart to add expensive options. We think we’re smart to have discovered prejudice in oily-dry-normal. 

I apologize to readers upset by wicked leaps from potato peelers to new tech. Such gyrations are wildly unhelpful. I agree, but technology is itself socially unsettling, then add social, gender and political theories growing thick and fast as bristly needles in a spruce bud. 

We exist where an old-style peeler works next to a new gadget. We live in damn interesting times.