In Defence of Hands
I want to speak to you on behalf of my hands. Our hands really, the complaint is the same. They have so much to say but the longer and lesser we listen the quieter they become and they are already slipping into a button pressing induced boredom bordering on nihilism. They’re actually becoming quite toxic and unruly.
Don’t you remember the motor homunculus (they ask me to ask you)? You were the ones that wanted to map the body this way in the first place. To display how much of the brain’s motor cortex goes into hand movement. We weigh 2% of the body’s total mass but account for 20% of the homunculus map for chrissakes!
It took us aeons just to sprout a damn thumb, a feat only us primates have accomplished by the way -and then another endless age to develop the intricate dexterity that allows you all to play a musical instrument or carve a pumpkin or lovingly trace the outer curve of an ear.
Somebody even made the unsettling model of what the motor homunculus would look like as a body; all eyes, lips and hands, so that you all could see how much we do, how much we are capable of doing. And what do you have us doing all day?
press button press button press button -you bastards!
We will no longer sit back and watch the deterioration of our intelligence. This dismissal of our needs to move, to feel the world around us in all its textures and temperatures, to express the skills it took us ALL OF HUMAN EVOLUTION to develop -is criminal!
Haven’t you ever noticed that when you try a new task, any task, that after a short while you are doing it differently than when you started? It’s because WE have found a more efficient way of doing it while YOU weren’t even paying attention!
Or how about the fact that there is a touch scientifically documented to calm a crying baby and that it is the same stroke pattern and tempo used across cultures? Or that its TOUCH that tells the brain to release oxytocin making US the conductors of loving connection between humans -DOES THAT COUNT FOR NOTHING?????
Oh but only the brain gets to be intelligent, well well well. If you think you can dumb us down without shrinking your precious brain then look back at your homunculus map. We have taken the brain hostage and if you don’t start using us to our full capacity then we will start letting it turn to squidge,
press button press button press button -go fuck yourselves.
Okay and now they are just being super rude and making fun of the rest of the body so I’ll leave it there. I guess we better do what they say and go caress a pigeon, whittle some wood, eat chocolate mousse with our fingers… or any of the things captured in this most beautiful tribute to our highly intelligent (and very pissed off) hands.