I saw a comment by Jordan Peterson recently, stating that tools are inherently “magical”, because our brains re-wire themselves in order to encompass the tool as part of personal identity. This rings as very true, from things such as swords and spears, to cars, computers and smartphones. When a good driver drives a car, his identity is so merged with the car, he for all intents and purposes is the car. When a swordsman wields a sword, his self is the sword. If you treat the sword as an outside entity between you and the threat, you won’t live long.

This is something that has long been the object of my interest, as I’ve watched videos of people talking about their tools – from axes and kitchen knives to guns, smartphones, computers and, yes, dogs.

What I found interesting is that people’s relationship with tools seems to be gender-specific. While men will merge self with their tools and project through them in the world in order to accomplish tasks – the tools being things such as axes, swords, guns, cars and computers – women will see those things as mere things that accomplish tasks; there is no extension of self through them and outwards. To a woman, a car is merely a thing that goes from A to B, a computer is merely a tool she uses to communicate or whatever; there is seldom any interest in how it works, or desire to invest effort in proper maintenance. There are exceptions, of course, but those make the rule. What women identify with, extend through and project into the world are clothes and accessories to their body: makeup, handbags, shoes and so on. Women will extend through those things with as much focus and force as a lumberjack through his chainsaw or a racing driver through his car. I would say the difference essentially comes down to the fact that the men’s primary focus is on accomplishing goals in the world, and their tools are the instruments of projecting self into the world and controlling it. If you want to fell a tree, you might not care what your clothes look like, but you will care for what your chainsaw does, because your life depends on it. A woman, however, seems to be primarily inward-oriented, where self is completely immersed in the body, and the tools serve the purpose of amplifying the body and signalling-towards, essentially advertising body-self as attractive and desirable, which then accomplishes the primary life goal of attracting a desirable mate and starting a family. Basically, a man projects self outwards and modifies the world to make it liveable, and a woman attracts a man towards body-self and tries to wrap the world around self in order to create a protective and controlled nest. Interestingly, there is very little self-awareness in all of this; people just do it and seldom think about what they are doing.

Not me, though. I usually give quite a bit of thought to things people just assume, or not even that. For instance, I observed how I identify with and extend through my tools, and how I feel computers differently, depending on whether it’s a laptop or a desktop. It’s much easier to envelop a laptop into self, because it’s one thing. A desktop computer is different, and I form contact with the peripherals – keyboard, mouse, monitor – while the computer itself is somewhere behind all that, a box with wires that is out of sight and out of mind, however I extend into the filesystem, the drives, the directory structure, the network connections, the software tools I use, and through that into the Internet, and there’s always the question of where exactly is my self when I’m on the Internet? It’s certainly not in the physical room, in the body that sits behind the desk. It’s in some forum, forming connections and interacting through the existing ones. I wonder what the actual topology of this would look like in the global astral – Internet “places” would probably look like those maps of illumination taken from Earth’s orbit, where more light means more human activity and presence, and ideal concept such as “brands” would be points of convergence, things people brush against to acquire their “scent” and project such “scented” self outwards, into the places where others come, so that they are perceived as “enhanced” and “accomplished”. The entire thing is probably quite comparable to dogs wallowing in shit in order to change their scent.

It’s not just brands, however – it’s a more general thing. It’s about being perceived as having the right attitudes about things, not just being properly accessorised. That’s why people virtue-signal on the Internet; they basically wallow in “right” kinds of shit in order to smell “right” and be acceptable and, hopefully, popular, in their desired social circle. Unfortunately, there is very little conscious thought involved in all of this; just social animals scent-signalling and marking territory, or declaring self as marked territory, in submission – I belong to nation, I belong to religion, I belong to “climate change social justice believe everything the authorities say” cult. Inject yourself with bioweapon in order to signal submission to the authorities and belonging to the main stream of the herd in order to claim its protection, and the sense of superiority to the “others”. Believe every kind of nonsense you are told and still declare yourself to be a free, liberal person, because that’s a thing you have to believe if you’re “normal”.

However, if you actually use your critical faculties to process the world around you, the silliness of it all is greatly outweighed by tragedy.