Hands

I have been reading Darian Leader's latest book, 'Hands - what we do with them and why'. Psychoanalyst Leader reflects on the hand and how we have always kept them busy. He argues that our hands, through sensory touch and exploration, have helped evolve and shape the world around us. Looking at the history of civilisation and child development, Leader argues that our hands have a conscience of their own. But why and what might this reveal about ourselves?

I aim to explore our hands as tools to question and create, thus evolve us. Our hands have evolved us from the first-man and define us from animals. It is through the sensory nerves of our fingers that we explore and feel; through hand-writing, painting, sewing, our hands busy themselves as we reflect and express ourselves.

Taken into our connected era, our hands fidget with our smartphones as we wait for the bus. (Before smartphones it was newspapers, cigarettes etc). The device works on tap and swipe gestures but does not utilise the sensory nerves that we receive from more tactile actions. With our increased use of screen-based technologies, and decrease in hand-making activities, do we alter something in our humanity? Are we becoming less inventive and more complacent?

In 'The Thinking Hand' by architect, Juhani Pallasmaa, he states that "in our global networked culture that puts so much on the virtual and visual, the mind and body have become detached and ultimately disconnected. The role of the body in understanding the physical world and human condition has become neglected... Hand-tool Union and Eye-hand-mind fusion are essential for dexterity and how ultimately the body and the senses play a crucial role in memory and creative work.

I reflect on a conversation I had with my ten year old daughter's classmate when she came round for a play date. They had connected online to play Minecraft together on their iPads. I asked what she'd like to be when she grows up. She reeled the usual jobs that our education system churns out, a doctor or a vet, dentist etc. I know her to be a very creative person so I asked why not an inventor, a product designer. She said she'd considered it but then couldn't think of any products to invent because we have everything we need now. 

This interested me and I reflected on the generation I grew up in, where we were considerably poorer and less sophisticated in technology. We played with Lego, drew, played outside with imaginative role-playing, kept diaries. If we were really bored we played paper, scissors, stone with our hands. I can remember taking my toys apart to see how they worked, understanding it's mechanism by the way the cogs connected. 

We are unable to do that with our mobile devices; we don't question exactly how it works because it's as untangible as working out how the internet works. It is a non-physical thing that we just accept.

But as I have found in Tony Fry's Becoming Human by Design, the world has changed around us (climate change, huge global inequality, mass-migration), and we need to evolve again. He argues that to avoid defuturing ourselves, we need to become the 'humax'. We need to be inventive in ways that are futural.

I now have a good foundation for my writing. I have the What and the Why; my aim is to start writing these two parts of my thesis with the theory that I will then arrive at the How.