NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND -- PART FIVE: NOWHERE MAN's "Cut & Control" Journey Through Time!

Like many writing projects, ideas are conceived and gradually developed in the mind of the author long before they are captured in a book or article. That has been the case for this author with Nowhere Man in Nowhere Land.

For decades, I committed words to notebooks without uncovering the conceptual core of what I was thinking or trying to say.

Then I read James Burke and Robert Ornstein’s "The Axemaker’s Gift: A Double-Edged History of Human Culture" (1995), a book that explained how society cuts existence away from the “way it was” into a new sense of reality, a reality that has gained something much desired but at the expense of something lost, possibly forever. The theme throughout these pages will reflect that perspective and core idea.

So each new tool invented changes existence and represents the latest aspect of the “cut & control” phenomenon. This has become the cultural reality of “Nowhere Man,” for each new tool has devalued what was and replaced it with a more valued tool. No one worries about the cost or the loss, only the promise. The inventor of each new tool is celebrated, which urges him on to invent yet another tool. People rush out to buy the new tool to make it part of their daily existence. No one seems concerned about the cost benefits involved as attention is only on the efficacy and convenience of the new tool.