Monday evening, standing in my kitchen, mixing almonds, sugar, wheat, spices, and nearly two whole pieces of butter.

It's a messy process trying to mend these individual ingredients into a cohesive whole that sticks together. Sure, there are kneading machines, but I'm not rich enough, nor does my once-a-year heavy baking commitment warrant it.

It's the season I'm fully committed to handwork.

Apparently, Heidegger was a big hand guy, he loved writing about the importance of using them, already criticizing using typewriters instead of pen and paper, as they abstract us from the movements that form our letters.

Or so I deduce based on my secondary readings of Heidegger (I just read his essay about technology first-hand), thrown at me by Byung-Chul Han, who treats Heidegger's hand fetish in an essay that's been living in my head rent-free for years now. To learn the grammatical rules and quirks of a language, the best way is to write. For languages like Japanese with lots of Kanji, this is even more true.

And yet, in pursuit of efficiency (and or convenience and laziness) keyboards are more often becoming the prime way even for kids to write. I'm not saying this is the main reason for the literacy crisis, but it sure doesn't help.

All of us, we're guilty of this too. Who here is still writing their notes on paper? In the supermarket, most shopping lists are in note-taking apps, letters replaced by lengthy WhatsApp voice messages when even the process of typing has become too arduous.

Do you remember the things you typed this way?

I mostly don't. I've gone back a few years to write down my notes on actual paper notebooks, among other things, to get away from screens in my leisure time, and for the sense of accomplishment and the occasional flow state thus triggered.

Leuchtturm 1917's slogan is "Thinking with the hand".

They even have a dedicated section on their website explaining this, quoting Immanuel Kant, who said that the hand was the window to the soul.

For Heidegger too, thinking was handwork, the work we're constantly nudged to do less of.

Not sure how to start an email? Just ask the suggest feature.

Not sure what to do with the leftovers in the fridge?

Just ask ChatGPT... When really the answer is usually throwing them all in the oven + cheese, a soup, or a variety of fried noodles/rice.

No personality? No problem. Claude can write your Hinge bio.

You create ever more bits and pieces this way, but what's missing is the sense of having had an impact, of having actually contributed.

For me, this is a constant struggle as a remote worker, where nearly 100% of outcomes come in abstracts, rarely tangible in my surroundings.

That's why getting a short excerpt of my writing printed in a CD booklet was a very happy moment. Seeing my name in print, on paper, next to a recording of two violin concerts I quite like... that's the dream, right?

When writing on paper, there's a physical sensation, a sort of feedback, the pen pressing against my middle finger, the empty page filling with words, the ink slowly moving from cartridge to paper, turning neuron impulses into blue on white-ish eco paper.

It's a sense of self-efficacy I'm missing in digital work. Sure, there are ways that a great essay does numbers and sparks conversations, a shitpost that gets lots of engagement... still, it feels flat.

Meanwhile, when trying to channel the warmth of my hands to get the ingredients of my baking endeavors to stick, I'm fully there. I feel the consistency changing, the butter doing its job as the adhesive... maybe even when I'm lucky, what Hartmut Rosa calls resonance, after an initial phase of despair over how proceeding according to the recipe didn't work - when finally I realize, I can just follow my intuition and form the half moon shapes one by one right between my hands, not on the table.

A lot of handwork when you've made nearly 1kg of dough. A dough that easily falls apart, only held together by butter and my manifestations, so that later it'll melt on the tongue.

This work requires what we call "Fingerspitzengefühl": finger tip feeling.

A great German word which slightly increases my sympathy towards Heidegger's view that it's the perfect language for philosophizing. You need Fingerspitzengefühl for handling delicate tasks from Christmas cookies, playing an instrument, or mediating heated discussions.

Funny enough, the finger tips are probably the body part getting the most action in modern man's life: swiping, typing, unlocking.

20th-century German philosophers did not see that coming, I bet. Chances are, neither did they consider cookies as a work for the modern remote worker to reassert a sense of self. After all, they lived in a time when the household remained firmly in the women's domain.

Certain household chores sure are better mechanized, from laundry to heating. Yet, when it comes to baking, I find a weird sense of solace in it. It's a nice way to bring something into the world that wasn't there before.

With just a few ingredients, some finger tip feeling, and contribution by the oven from a random assortment to eventual delightful smiles as the cookies melt on the tongues of their recipients. A lil brightness in this dark season.

It ain't much, but it's honest work.

A little sphere of influence I latch my sanity onto. Each cookie is shaped differently, by my fingers, a testament to my humanness, my individuality, my imperfection.

My kitchen: a mess. My fingernails are sticky from the dough and sugar I bathed the cookies in.

But not just the external has changed. It's also me. I've become a bit of a different person than who I was before this process. A bit fulfilled, a bit more energized, a bit less alienated.

What tech bros who tell us to just generate everything at the press of a button with our fingertips forget is: the reward from a task can only be reaped when we spend time and attention with it.

The empty space generated when my hands were occupied with the dough gave my mind room to think, and later on, as the cookies were in the oven, I started writing down in my notebook what would become this short essay. I understood something new.

Another way to say it in English is: comprehend... and guess what the root of this word is? It's Latin for "grasping," an act we usually perform with our hands. In German, it's even more obvious: begreifen (comprehend), greifen (grasp).

It's seemingly inefficient, and yet, it really is not.

If you think about it, most of the things that make life worthwhile are inefficient.

So screw that efficiency maximalism, and take the time to create something with your own hands, the mess, the path, the breaking out of the constant accelerationism..that's the point.

You might be surprised by how you feel afterwards.

Thanks for reading 💚

In case you too want to bake the cookies in question, here's the recipe. I used normal butter and was more generous with the spices as prescribed. Recipes are just a guideline after all.

They turned out quite delicious.

For why doing stuff with your hands is good for your brain, here's a nice video essay on that. In case you need more reasons.

Monday evening, standing in my kitchen, mixing almonds, sugar, wheat, spices, and nearly two whole pieces of butter.

It's a messy process trying to mend these individual ingredients into a cohesive whole that sticks together. Sure, there are kneading machines, but I'm not rich enough, nor does my once-a-year heavy baking commitment warrant it.

It's the season I'm fully committed to handwork.

Apparently, Heidegger was a big hand guy, he loved writing about the importance of using them, already criticizing using typewriters instead of pen and paper, as they abstract us from the movements that form our letters.

Or so I deduce based on my secondary readings of Heidegger (I just read his essay about technology first-hand), thrown at me by Byung-Chul Han, who treats Heidegger's hand fetish in an essay that's been living in my head rent-free for years now. To learn the grammatical rules and quirks of a language, the best way is to write. For languages like Japanese with lots of Kanji, this is even more true.

And yet, in pursuit of efficiency (and or convenience and laziness) keyboards are more often becoming the prime way even for kids to write. I'm not saying this is the main reason for the literacy crisis, but it sure doesn't help.

All of us, we're guilty of this too. Who here is still writing their notes on paper? In the supermarket, most shopping lists are in note-taking apps, letters replaced by lengthy WhatsApp voice messages when even the process of typing has become too arduous.

Do you remember the things you typed this way?

I mostly don't. I've gone back a few years to write down my notes on actual paper notebooks, among other things, to get away from screens in my leisure time, and for the sense of accomplishment and the occasional flow state thus triggered.

Leuchtturm 1917's slogan is "Thinking with the hand".

They even have a dedicated section on their website explaining this, quoting Immanuel Kant, who said that the hand was the window to the soul.

For Heidegger too, thinking was handwork, the work we're constantly nudged to do less of.

Not sure how to start an email? Just ask the suggest feature.

Not sure what to do with the leftovers in the fridge?

Just ask ChatGPT... When really the answer is usually throwing them all in the oven + cheese, a soup, or a variety of fried noodles/rice.

No personality? No problem. Claude can write your Hinge bio.

You create ever more bits and pieces this way, but what's missing is the sense of having had an impact, of having actually contributed.

For me, this is a constant struggle as a remote worker, where nearly 100% of outcomes come in abstracts, rarely tangible in my surroundings.

That's why getting a short excerpt of my writing printed in a CD booklet was a very happy moment. Seeing my name in print, on paper, next to a recording of two violin concerts I quite like... that's the dream, right?

When writing on paper, there's a physical sensation, a sort of feedback, the pen pressing against my middle finger, the empty page filling with words, the ink slowly moving from cartridge to paper, turning neuron impulses into blue on white-ish eco paper.

It's a sense of self-efficacy I'm missing in digital work. Sure, there are ways that a great essay does numbers and sparks conversations, a shitpost that gets lots of engagement... still, it feels flat.

Meanwhile, when trying to channel the warmth of my hands to get the ingredients of my baking endeavors to stick, I'm fully there. I feel the consistency changing, the butter doing its job as the adhesive... maybe even when I'm lucky, what Hartmut Rosa calls resonance, after an initial phase of despair over how proceeding according to the recipe didn't work - when finally I realize, I can just follow my intuition and form the half moon shapes one by one right between my hands, not on the table.

A lot of handwork when you've made nearly 1kg of dough. A dough that easily falls apart, only held together by butter and my manifestations, so that later it'll melt on the tongue.

This work requires what we call "Fingerspitzengefühl": finger tip feeling.

A great German word which slightly increases my sympathy towards Heidegger's view that it's the perfect language for philosophizing. You need Fingerspitzengefühl for handling delicate tasks from Christmas cookies, playing an instrument, or mediating heated discussions.

Funny enough, the finger tips are probably the body part getting the most action in modern man's life: swiping, typing, unlocking.

20th-century German philosophers did not see that coming, I bet. Chances are, neither did they consider cookies as a work for the modern remote worker to reassert a sense of self. After all, they lived in a time when the household remained firmly in the women's domain.

Certain household chores sure are better mechanized, from laundry to heating. Yet, when it comes to baking, I find a weird sense of solace in it. It's a nice way to bring something into the world that wasn't there before.

With just a few ingredients, some finger tip feeling, and contribution by the oven from a random assortment to eventual delightful smiles as the cookies melt on the tongues of their recipients. A lil brightness in this dark season.

It ain't much, but it's honest work.

A little sphere of influence I latch my sanity onto. Each cookie is shaped differently, by my fingers, a testament to my humanness, my individuality, my imperfection.

My kitchen: a mess. My fingernails are sticky from the dough and sugar I bathed the cookies in.

But not just the external has changed. It's also me. I've become a bit of a different person than who I was before this process. A bit fulfilled, a bit more energized, a bit less alienated.

What tech bros who tell us to just generate everything at the press of a button with our fingertips forget is: the reward from a task can only be reaped when we spend time and attention with it.

The empty space generated when my hands were occupied with the dough gave my mind room to think, and later on, as the cookies were in the oven, I started writing down in my notebook what would become this short essay. I understood something new.

Another way to say it in English is: comprehend... and guess what the root of this word is? It's Latin for "grasping," an act we usually perform with our hands. In German, it's even more obvious: begreifen (comprehend), greifen (grasp).

It's seemingly inefficient, and yet, it really is not.

If you think about it, most of the things that make life worthwhile are inefficient.

So screw that efficiency maximalism, and take the time to create something with your own hands, the mess, the path, the breaking out of the constant accelerationism..that's the point.

You might be surprised by how you feel afterwards.

Thanks for reading 💚

In case you too want to bake the cookies in question, here's the recipe. I used normal butter and was more generous with the spices as prescribed. Recipes are just a guideline after all.

They turned out quite delicious.

For why doing stuff with your hands is good for your brain, here's a nice video essay on that. In case you need more reasons.