Tramontina or Forjas Taurus? The dilemma of purpose

Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash

How the word purpose has been destroyed. Its semantics stretched until it became a motivational cliché of the lowest order. Let us then attempt a metaphorical dialectic to restore its importance within the cognition of language.

What is semantics? It is the science that studies meaning. Not the sugar-coated sense of coaching lectures, but the sense that orders language, that distinguishes knife from revolver, tool from threat. Semantics is the filter that prevents us from calling refuse a purpose.

What is purpose? Once it was direction, once it was Aristotelian telos, once it was intention. Today it is a corporate mantra of human resources. In its essence it is the meaning of existence or of action, but its character depends on context: it may be pragmatic objective, it may be intimate motivation, it may be public cause.

What is Tramontina? Far beyond a company, it is a metonym. It has become synonymous with knife in Brazilian culture. Whoever says Tramontina does not speak of brand, but of blade. A neutral object, which cuts bread, tomato, or throat, depending on the hand that wields it.

What is Forjas Taurus? It is the factory that forges weapons and in Brazilian culture it is associated immediately with the revolver. It is not household utensil, it is not culinary metaphor. It is symbol of power, of violence, and in its most elegant version of fear justified beneath the rubric of self-defense.

Here lies the dilemma. Whoever produces knives produces dangerous artifacts, yet essentially neutral ones. Violence is external, attributed to the subject who holds them. Whoever produces revolvers already knows there is no neutrality. Even when disguised as protection, the weapon is violence in latent state.

It is the same dilemma of those who produce gasoline and cannot be accused of producing arson, against those who produce cigarettes, who manufacture directly social and personal harm.

I, a convinced capitalist, despise the marketers who pretend to ignore this difference. They are the ones who subvert semantics, who transform purpose into farce, who gamble upon the poverty of cognition and of repertoire in order to sell as mission what is no more than merchandise.

A sledgehammer may possess the same purpose as a Glock. The ladder of Wittgenstein that elevates them both into significance.

Photo by Jay Rembert on Unsplash