Chicken soup for the Luddite soul

Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.

--Swiss playwright Max Frisch

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes...

A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period.... I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.

--Henry David Thoreau, Walden; Or, Life in the Woods

I am very much in agreement with Mr. Thoreau about avoiding enterprises that require new clothes, but I must confess that I am quite glad that he did not choose to direct his disdain towards those enterprises which require new notebooks and writing utensils (ie--all of them). Simplicity and common sense are all well and good, but one mustn't, after all, succumb to fanaticism. Prudence and careful consideration are important qualities to cultivate if only for their usefulness in diverting criticism from one's own faults to those that can be safely identified only in others.