It was the dawn of the technological society. Transistor pocket radios and electric shavers were readily available from huge department stores or from the corner druggist. Cable TV was reaching out to every suburb. FM was still considered "underground radio". Small appliances had become disposable items, cheaper to replace than repair. The same could be said for clothing. We were quickly becoming a disposable society, far more interested in convenience than quality or conservation.

Marcel Bich was at the leading edge of this technology. As the founder of the Bic Company he had pioneered the disposable pen and the disposable razor. Plentiful natural resources and cheap Asian labor now allowed complex items to be manufactured as cheaply as toothpicks. The disposable lighter was a natural progression in this evolution. Americans demanded convenience and had the money to purchase items that filled that demand.

Today's disposable lighters are quite elegant items. They come in almost any style and color imaginable, and often they include a built-in flashlight or cheap sounding digital music. They are small, easy to handle and even child safe. They are adorned with thousands of different graphics and pictures and logos designed by small armies of graphic designers. They are reliable, durable and when they are empty they can be thrown away and for a couple of bucks we can buy another one just like it. We can express our lifestyles, personal tastes and even our moods by the type of disposable lighter we buy. We can buy a lighter to match our nail polish or our entire ensemble. We can express our individuality with the lighter we buy, just like a million other people are expressing their individuality with an identical lighter.

The disposable lighter is typical of the consumption habits of modern American society. We want everything now, we want it convenient and we want it cheap. We are the society of use, waste and consume. We never worry about running out of a commodity because there's always more at the store. We collect useless junk and call it a hobby. We throw away functional items because the newest one at the store has more features and knobs than the one we have, and we consider ourselves environmentally correct because we put our old newspapers and milk cartons in the recycle can. Viewed in this light we seem to be a society of selfish, usurious hypocrites.

Yet the history of mankind is a record of similar actions. Every culture in every society in history has taken as much from the environment as it could to make their own lives as comfortable and convenient as possible. The environment has always taken second place to the wants of humans, and the only time this has ever changed is when the destruction of nature has had negative effects on its human inhabitants and they were forced to change. From the filth in the early cities of Europe spawning the plague to the environmental destruction of Easter Island by its native inhabitants causing mass starvation, this has held true. The industrial revolution gave man the ability to exploit the environment on a global scale and we embraced each new technology to feed our habits of consumption. This is normal for humans, just as birds need to fly or fish need to swim.

We must realize that it is this need to better our lives that sets humans above the base animal instincts of survival and procreation. It is this need that has led us to cure disease, build civilizations and prolong and enrich our lives. It allows the wealthy societies of the world to share the great bounty this planet has to offer with the poor through advanced production and transportation abilities, and it causes us to adapt the best parts of other cultures into our own. Humans evolved with very large brains and it is perfectly normal for us to use our advanced thought process to make our lives better.

Before we had disposable lighters we had Zippos, and we refilled these with lighter fluid when they ran dry. When they broke or wore out we would throw them away and buy a new one. What is a match except a primitive disposable lighter that only lights once? When early man started fires with flint and stone he would use a piece of flint until it was too small to use , then he would discard it and find a new piece. Man has gone from the stone age to the bronze age the iron age and now to the age of steel and plastic. Through this evolution we have taken everything we've needed from the environment to advance ourselves and our species to a dominant position on earth.

We have always had disposable lighters, we just called them by other names. We will always take from the earth, this is in our nature. We will use our large brains much like the lion uses his claws or the shark uses his teeth. We are the ultimate predator, for our selection of pray is not limited to what we can catch with our speed or kill with our strength. We will always depend on our superior intellect to maintain a balance between our environment and what we extract from it. We know we must do this because our survival depends on it, and we will forever embrace the convenience and comforts of technology.

- Johnny

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