On making good connections with electric power cords: some comical reflections on ethics and politics

"Do not use excessive force to make connections." This ethical injunction given a metaphysical basis is the final note in a series of instructions for an electrical extension cord I purchased. It seems that household labor is modeled on policing.

A good person on the policing model takes the right stand against evil, but takes care not to use "excessive force." As in the ancient Hippocratic Oath for doctors, and as in Kant's ethics that insists that one must remember, when using people as means, that they are also ends in themselves. Do your work according to the instructions provided, but "first, do no harm." Harms are done sometimes by people pursuing some (work or business) objective. So care must be taken, and policing and sanctions must be available in case of errors. (Sin itself is defined classically as error, the failure to hit the target right or achieve a goal: the good is a technique, so sin is a worker working badly. But things fall apart, and it is their own soul's center that is held accountable; if the machine you are operating fails, maybe it is because you are having a breakdown; it's not the thing, it's you. Everything is the responsibility of the one with the task).

But connections may also be established between people doing things. They are supposed to make the connections with others (as well as information and things) usefully, following the rules, to achieve the objective of the team or company.

But thinking involves making connections autonomously, following the immanent logic of development of the thought. (Following that if anything.) And what about the connections I might make with you, over there, my neighbor, and you with me? Do we make a connection if we are sharing a task or project, and only for that reason? Some connections are joyful and have no purpose outside themselves. (That's why 'love' is more than marriages or sexual encounters. It is in this respect like an autonomous artistic practice. It does not depend on an institution or a given set of practices with a set of rules that pertain to it and that someone in authority can announce.). We also might make connections in a project to end a project, hoping or intending perhaps to establish a new one. Such for example, are some labor strikes.

For now, I make use of the things following the rules of the authorities whom I respect well enough to do so, and like a good doctor, I would do no harm, risk no penalty or sanction, pursuing my practical and economic interests. That's one way to be connected. And then I must check my phone to see who is calling me. Some people call from businesses; they figure they have the right to try by any means necessary to get whatever they want from me.