1 Response to Open Strong-Minutmen

1. davidbdale says:

   November 8, 2021 at 7:49 am

   Opening #1

   The human pursuit to make life as effortless as possible, has deemed the human body as the equivalent of a utilitarian piece of junk. What once was building railroads and large ocean liners to improve transportation, we now start our cars at the push of a button. When our families needed food we plowed fields, shoveled dirt and grew it ourselves. Now, we simply go to the grocery store and have our pick of thousands of items. Communication had many moving parts for it to be successful which took time and now it is at the click of a button or the split second of a call. We’re industrializing ourselves to the point where the human body will not have any function, but to direct the technology it has created.

   You’re working really hard here, Minutemen, and the effort shows. I appreciate it very much. Putting in the time and energy is the first step to good writing. The second step is making the result sound effortless.

   Would you mind if I deconstruct your #1 line by line?

   The human pursuit to make life as effortless as possible, has deemed the human body as the equivalent of a utilitarian piece of junk.

   “pursuit to make life effortless” is bad syntax. You can have a “desire to make life effortless” or describe the “pursuit of an effortless life.” To “deem” something is the same thing as declaring it to be “the equivalent of” something, so your phrase is redundant. A piece of anything that has utility is not junk. It’s not junk until it’s no longer utilitarian. Then it’s disposable. We can’t tell if you mean to emphasize the utility or the uselessness. Let’s try both.

   Result: Our pursuit of an effortless life has deemed the human body a disposable tool. OR Our pursuit of an effortless life has deemed the human body useless, like any obsolete machine.

   What once was building railroads and large ocean liners to improve transportation, we now start our cars at the push of a button.

   Parallelism is hard, especially with clauses, but you can’t mix “What once was” with “we now start.” You have to choose. What once was blue is now red. Or. What we used to paint blue, we now paint red.

   Result: Whereas we once built railroads and ocean liners to improve transportation, we now start our cars with the push of a button.
   This of course ignores that we still have to build automobiles and highways, bridges, overpasses, etc. There’s a categorical difference between the crews that do that work and the driver who push-starts his car.

   When our families needed food we plowed fields, shoveled dirt and grew it ourselves.

   Nice. It’s simple and right. The only quibble I have is with “it,” which means food, of course, but could seem to mean “dirt.” That’s how I read it the first time.

   Result: When our families needed food, we plowed fields, shoveled dirt, grew our own vegetables, raised our own livestock.

   Now, we simply go to the grocery store and have our pick of thousands of items.

   Terrific.

   Communication had many moving parts for it to be successful which took time and now it is at the click of a button or the split second of a call.

   You spend two clauses and a five-word phrase to say communication used to be slow. Your last two phrases are not parallel. The “click of a button” is a hand action, the “split second of a call” is a time measurement. We can try both ways.

   Result: Communication at one time required buying stamps, writing letters, and walking to the post office; now it requires just clicking a button. OR Communication by mail used to take days, even weeks, for hand delivery; now we videocall around the globe in seconds.

   We’re industrializing ourselves to the point where the human body will not have any function, but to direct the technology it has created.

   Nice. Lose the comma.

   Result: We have industrialized ourselves so completely that the human body’s last function is to set technology in motion. We’re button-pushers, mouse-clickers. We exercise our index fingers, and that’s about it.

   That was likely overkill, and I’m sure you didn’t need all of it, Minutemen, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back to you for more feedback, so, please let me know how helpful it was and whether it’s the sort of interaction you want.

   Your turn. This is a conversation. Thanks!

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