As I’ve never really fully articulated this concept before, this is very likely going to be a multi-part posting, so I’ll give you the synopsis first and go into more explicit detail after the page break. This concept ties in with an entire “Mature Mindset” philosophy I’m playing with… the Theory of Tools bit helps with the epistemological underpinnings. Part 1 really will be an introduction to a complete system of thought that I will hopefully be fleshing out soon.
The Theory of Tools is both a procedural and an ethical theory; it involves holding a particular moral mindset towards both one’s own ideas and the ideas of others, that mindset being one of moral neutrality towards the idea itself, reserving ethical judgments for the uses to which that idea is placed. An idea is nothing more than a tool, neither evil nor good in and of itself in exactly the same way in which a hatchet (the greatest tool evar) is neither good nor evil. Whether the tool in question is a hatchet, a bible, fire or Democracy or a thermonuclear MIRV, the moral and ethical connotations surrounding that tool can only be responsibly applied to the use to which that tool is placed.
With any luck AT ALL I’ll be moving to somewhere in the Southern California region around mid-2010.