Factory knife with a soul?

First of all, thanks for the chuckle, Steve. I agree with you about both women.

Yes, they can have soul. Every one of my HI khukuris has it. Read some of Ed Fowler's writings, I'll bet a large wad that he would agree also.

For production blades, the soul would be in the design.
 
Looks like we're all talking about soul vs a soul vs character a bit differently, but when I look at my Douk Douk, I'd say it has soul and character. The "soul" is partly design, partly history, partly perceived value -- and the character is mostly the shiny spots and the real uneven etching since I had to buff off all the rust. It had soul when I got it -- and that's probably just as much my doing as the knife's -- but it had to build up the character.

I don't want to get too philosophical about this, but I think the easiest way for me to figure this out is to ask myself two questions:

1) Would I be annoyed if someone took this Douk Douk and replaced it with a brand new one? (Yes. It has character.)

2) Would I be annoyed if someone took my Douk Douk and replaced it with a similar, but not identical knife? (Yes. It has soul. That's half of why I picked it. If I wanted a different knife to fill the same niche, I would've gotten that one.)

Fun thread. Thanks.
 
Any knife that has use on it has the mojo. Safe queens are just sterile, useless hunks of metal.
 
Knives are inanimate. They don't and can't have soul. It's all in your mind, but that's OK as long as you don't take it seriously.

Beauty and art is in the eye of the beholder. A $15000 gold, ivory and pearl knife can be very beutiful and a work of art. It don't got soul. Your first pocket knife brings to mind many memories, but it's still inanimate, when its destroyed, it doesn't go to heaven. Now if it's lost, you could pretent it was found and thus think of it as re-incarnation.

Just don't forget your dreaming if you think your knife is anything other than what it is, steel, wood, bone, G-10, etc. Yes Grandpa gave you the knife, it has a lot of memories in it, but to anyone else its just a beat Buck 110 with a worn lock. If your son uses it and loses it, don't rip him a new one, just close your eyes and remember it as it once was.

In the 21st century, western society is too attached to its objects, it may wind up being our destruction. The only way to set yourself truly free is to realize that objects are in themselves incosequential. Use your knives, enjoy them, allow yourself to carry and risk losing them. They are only objects. You could readily lose it all in a fire or robbery.
 
Brownshoe, I should not have used the word soul.I like quality knives factory and custom.It would be sad indeed if they came before my wife and childern . Knives are not my passion but I sure get excited when a new one comes in the mail.
Chuck
 
Brownshoe,

That's a little bit of what I was referencing in my "soul vs a soul vs character" offhand remark. Yeah, obviously, when a knife is destroyed, there's no cosmic scale measuring good works versus bad works, or whether it accepted Christ. Clearly a knife doesn't have <b>a</b> soul.

But by my way of thinking, saying that something has "soul" is akin to saying something has character, just maybe a bit more universal/jargonish. I don't know about you, but I hear, pretty often, that Miles Davis's music had soul. Again, doesn't mean I'm expecting to see halos over his tunes in the hereafter, and it also doesn't mean I'm expecting that to be a universal trait.

Just some random, possibly ill-formed thoughts,
JamesA
 
a few thoughts:

- Any knife that really gets carried & used, gets scratched up, gets sharpened & resharpened, etc., has a better chance of gaining soul status than a knife that stays in the drawer or a display case.

- this is probably a matter of taste, but to me, trad. fixed blades & folders tend to have a decent soul quotient even if they are factory made. The utilitarian wood- or wood+antler handled Scandinivian fixed blades are good examples of factory knives with high soul potential.

- the little pearwood-handled Opinel #5 that my daughter gave me has soul.

- Even if they aren't master artists or bladesmiths, the people who work hard in quality production knife facilities have to put a lot of care & attention into their products, & any job truly well done has some soul in it.

that's my .02 ;-)

Andrew
 
Ha-haaa!

In it, AlienMind, in it, not on it. :D

Brownshoe: No knives have soul? Dude, is there no romance in your soul? ;)

PWork: Chris Reeve knives have soul? The gray ****? ;) Now there is a true knife romantic.
 
Take a gander over at the Traditional knife forum, and see what some of the threads discuss about this very subject. I think that some are getting hung up on semantics. There is a difference between having soul and having A soul.

Many people have handed down knives from fathers and loved ones, you bet they have soul. The work and sweat that a maker puts into it, the thought of a design, etc. That's possibly why I tend to get upset when I see people cavaliarly abusing knives, cars, whatever. Somewhere along the line, many people put their heart and soul into making something to the best of their ability, and I think it's disrespectful to ignore that and treat things badly. Not to mention wasteful.

We honor our loved ones when we honor the things that meant a lot to them, even if those things don't mean much to us. How many times have you looked at an old knife and wondered if it could talk, what kind of stories would it tell...
 
Knives have baggage. That's what y'all call soul. This baggage is only in the eye of the beholder. You love the Opinel, cause the "apple of your eye" gave it to you, but intrinsically, it's really no different than any other Opinel.

It's great to treat a good piece of machinery right, but don't forget to treat people just as good. I know people who treat their cars better than their friends. It might be ignorant to treat a car badly, but I don't believe it's disrespectful to anyone. A car doesn't have a soul. I know people who work on the line making Fords and Chevies, they beat their personal cars like anyone else. The smart ones like it when you don't take care of your car, it means you'll buy a new one sooner.

Romance and knives for sure. I can go over the deep end with a knife like anyone else here. But I remind myself, it's still a knife, not a talisman from the Gods that will protect me or lift me up. That's kind of why I own a Matriarch instead of a Civilian.

Miles Davis has soul, but then he was a live being. His music, is ephermeral and it touches your soul, but when the notes drift into silence, its gone. Knives touch your soul, they can spark memories and good feelings, but they're still objects.
 
Soul? I dunno...........
If I grab a knife and it grabs me back, well then, it probably has some mojo :D

Now lots of you folks like the Sere 200. I have one, but it doesn't have the mojo I'm looking for.

My ceramic blasted Sebenza got mojo.

My Strider AR is loaded with
mojo

And we'll see about the Buck/mayo thang:cool:

Barry H
 
Originally posted by brownshoe

Use your knives, enjoy them, allow yourself to carry and risk losing them. They are only objects. You could readily lose it all in a fire or robbery.
Click to expand...


Thank you. You just allowed me to make up my mind! :D That little Benchmade 770 Prototype just got dropped into my pocket with my car keys. It is now my EDC! Now I need to just find my Dremel tool and modify that hump where the thumbstud cutout is located! :eek: :D
 
Brownshoe: how can you tell an inanimate object has no soul?
A lot of people believe that lots of inanimate objects have a soul. If a rock can have a soul, a knife can as well.
Anyway, don't want to turn this into a religious debate: just remember that other people have other beliefs wich are worthy of respect as much as yours.


Don't know if my Fox 594 folder had a soul when I bought it, but it surely acquired one in the seven years I owned and used it.
My Saladini folders all have a kind of soul. They have a something other knives don't have.
 
People are worthy of respect until they prove otherwise, but not all beliefs are worthy of respect. Human beliefs created the Italian facsists who sent Italian jews to death...is the belief that a Jew is subhuman worthy of respect? Not to a rational person.

Most cultures define terms like soul to mean some type of life, thus an inanimate object lacks soul since it lacks life. Many cultures have as the pinnacle of human achievement the shedding of worldly cares and objects to achieve a higher state. Putting baggage on inanimate objects is thought by many cultures to hinder man from attaining peace in this life and any future existence.

I respect the feelings someone may have for a treasured possession, but this does not animate the object and give it a soul. It often hinders the person in daily life because they attach too much importance to what is only an object. If you look into your heart, the things you treasure most are not objects. It is my belief that one of the major failings of the "civilized" world is too much emphasis on the intrinsic value of objects, money, etc. which is often reflected here on the forums.

The most famous rock is at Mecca. Does it have soul, or does the beliefs of millions of people and its origin give the rock a lot of value? The rock is the focus of intense spiritual thought and prayer. Is it not these animate thoughts and prayers that give the rock at Mecca what appears to be soul?
 
You are obviously right there, but we are not speaking fascism here. Animist religions are usually quite peaceful and tolerant.
As long as a religion doesn't violate human rights, it is as worthy of respect as any other. Does it sound better? :)
If somebody puts so much care in an object, probably he's got his good reasons, which are not up to me to judge.
I find that fondess on one's belongings is not a hindrance but much more a pleasure.
The fact that these objects can be stolen or that I will eventually die has nothing to do with this, but more on dishonest people and the ways to make them harmless and the accceptance of one's mortality.
Anyway, we are definitely getting religious here, or at least very philosophical, and I didn't intend the debate to go this way. Mind me, it's a very interesting debate and I like philosophy a lot, I'm more or less a pragmatic epicurean, you are more on the lines of a cynic (not in the modern sense of the word, but in the philosophical current sense). It'd be an interesting discussion, but I think we are wildly OT by now :) and fear the moderator will spank us badly if we don't cut it here :D :footinmou
 
I just love it when you guys talk dirty!

Seriously, I don't think that there is any doubt that some "inanimate"(?) objects can elicit different subjective responses in people than other such objects do. What might lead to such responses can be debatable. For example, some "knife soul" might, indeed, be the result of the perceiver's association of the artifact with a person or event that is important to him or her. (E.g., "This was Grandpa's knife" or "This knife was carried at Gettysburg".) At other times the artifact may have, or at least be perceived as having, an "energy" (for the want of a better term) that is either uniquely its own or a residue of a maker or past owner or user. (The Dark and Middle Ages were big on this and who is to say that the people, back then, were always wrong, especially in the light of new developments in physics...which I must confess that I only very imperfectly understand?) Or, who knows, the response in question might be some combination of the above.

In any event, it is no secret that cutting tools have been part and parcel of human spiritual and mystical experience for many centuries and in many places and societies. It would seem,then, that there would almost have to be "something to" the claim that objects like knives might have "soul", either inherently or at least as a result of our human tendency to perceive and to project.
 
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