Philosophy of a Shoe Factory
I have the propaganda insert of a
daily paper to thank for these ideas; it was as thick and large as a folio
volume and concerned itself with nothing but the development of the technology,
the organization, the social services, the economic, political, and moral
foundations of a shoe factory. It is the largest shoe factory in the world. It
fabricates ___. It serves___needs of the world. It employs___workers. It
nourishes __people. It is no small thing. Some people would say, such reading
is more valuable than a novel. I can’t quite contradict them. But since I love
novels, I would first like to look at the shoe factory from this stand point.
We Standardize
For older readers, who grew up
before we were standardized, an explanation is required: in industrial terms,
standardization means that everything that can be made just as easily alike as
differently is made in the same unified way by all factories. That has great
advantages, clears away a completely pointless disorder, cheapens and makes
life a pleasure. If one wants to change the ink ribbon of a typewriter, one no
longer has to search for a store that sells just one type of ribbon, because
all typewriters will have ribbons of the same width and length, and if one
loses the rubber on a pedal of one’s bicycle, one no longer will find 400
different kinds of pedal rubber advertised at the bicycle shop, among which
precisely the one you want is missing, the one that you have in an isolated
exemplar on the second pedal. A great number of things are already being
standardized, screws, fittings, apertures, armatures, construction parts for
pipelines, hospital supplies and laboratory apparatus, tools, luggage, and a
great deal more is being standardized, there are commissions bearing noble names like Fanok and Dechema, and we stand at the
beginning of a great spiritual movement, which the Renaissance will have
nothing on.
It should thus be allowed to make a
few preliminary predictions about the time when the standardization movement will
not only refer to products, but people too. There can be no question but that
the standardized person will have many advantages when compared to the
unstandardized, but despite the fact
that energetic attempts to attain this goal are underway, unnecessary obstacles
still stand in its way. Let us start by asking ourselves, what would the
standardized person look like? He would
be interchangeable. Since today all beautiful people are thin here, but fat in
the orient, the submission of nature to uncertain diameter can be settled. The
same thing can be said of the standardization of specific degrees of height,
which the ready-to-wear industry will demand from parents; the Japanese already
breed large oily wrestling types alongside the dry-broad-small jujitsu types
with special diets. Man will change by
his clothes every quarter of a year, but will always look the same; even that has
almost been attained today; the need for luxury can easily be stereotyped by
determined levels of workmanship, just like the tax rates, and in a very
refined society one’s rank can be symbolized (satisfactorily) by a price tag
that reveals that one paid three times as much for one’s suit, even though it
is the same suit.
These are simple problems. But
aren’t the good person, the moral, the normal, the useful person, are not the
ideal patriot, the disciplined ideal party member, the perfect citizen already
standardized people? Visions of the
future are herewith opened up for all standardizing institutions. What they
already have always done, they will now do with the aid and the unquestioned
authority of science and technology. The
current of the times is taking a direction that serves their purposes, the
remains of the individual are polished away. Love, this ancient forest of eccentricity,
will become an utter embarrassment. Who today can still say “you, only you,”
with a good conscience? Everyone knows that the correct formulation is “you,
you typical”.
