Armchair Speculation

Published on July 19, 2017, credit to Matt for editing

Midway through high school as a 16-year-old, I began reflecting critically on my experiences in the world. To make sense of these experiences, I asked myself important questions. Looking back on the past 16 years, I wondered: are paper towels or electric hand dryers more effective at drying my hands?

After many years of leaving restrooms with hands not fully dry, and thus my soul not fully satisfied, I contemplated which method would more thoroughly dry my hands. To spur my thinking, I posed a thought exercise to myself: “If I used both hand drying methods, one after the other, which combination would leave my hands more dry? A single paper towel first then the hand dryer for 15 seconds, or hand dryer first followed by paper towel?”

 

“Woe is me. Mine hands, they are not dry.”

This thought exercise evoked a variety of responses among friends. Some believed that using a hand dryer first would be more effective, while others felt convinced that paper towel first would win the day. One friend retorted snidely, “Who cares! Just grab ten paper towels!” I stopped talking to him shortly thereafter. (To be fair, we left summer camp and lost touch.)

Surprisingly, this thought exercise has stuck with me throughout the years. While the answer continues to elude me, much as the meaning of Zen stories (koans) elude students of Zen Buddhism, this question has proved fruitful in other ways. Throughout my life, I’ve thought about this question from a variety of new angles. Its longevity in my consciousness provides an example of the continuity of mind.

“Now let’s contemplate the sound of one hand clapping under the electric hand dryer.”

It’s Science!

This question first re-emerged in my early 20’s, when I had a revelation about the pictorial instructions commonly displayed on hand dryers. Prior to my revelation, I had assumed that the primary reason for rubbing my hands together was to create friction, which would provide additional heat to evaporate the water. In a rare moment of clarity, I realized that rubbing one’s hands together while under the hot air would spread the water over a greater surface area, allowing it to evaporate more quickly from the skin. Since that revelation, I’ve stopped rubbing my hands as if to start a friction fire. Now, I rub my hands and arms with purpose under the dryer, daring to disburse the water as far north as my forearms and elbows.

Step 1: Present Holy finger, Step 2: Clap beneath jellyfish

Conservation

As I learned more about conservation in my late 20’s, it dawned on me how wasteful paper towels are. “We’re cutting down the Amazon rainforest, burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, polluting our rivers with chemicals, and filling our trash dumps, just to dry out hands!” I exclaimed. Around that time, I began to glare at people who thoughtlessly took large stacks of napkins at fast food restaurant. I noticed that these people throw most of those napkins away unused. Contemplating this wasteful practice, I began taking only 2 napkins from napkin dispensers. Moreover, I try to use each napkin as thoroughly as possible; I systematically utilize both sides in a grid-like fashion to remove the maximum amount of errant food from my body with a minimum quantity of napkins.

“I may need more than one napkin. I don’t want to walk 5 ft. from my table to get another one. Better empty the entire napkin dispenser!”

After reading a 2008 Wired Magazine article asking whether it’s more environmentally friendly to buy a hybrid car or a used car, I realized that electric hand dryers are no angels, either. The journalist argues that we need to look at the environmental footprint of manufacturing and transporting hybrid cars, which requires the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gasoline. Only after driving a hybrid car for 46,000 miles would you pay off the 1,000 gallon “carbon debt.” The article concluded that buying fuel-efficient used cars is vastly more environmentally friendly than buying new hybrid cars, since their initial carbon debt has already been “paid.” And it pointed out that buying new cars frequently (e.g. every few years) isn’t friendly to the environment, no matter how clever the automakers’ “greenwashing” slogans are.

Most popular feature of hybrids: license to act self-righteous

Where I used to simply see paper towel dispensers and hand dryers attached to bathroom walls, I now saw the vast supply chains behind them. To make a hand dryer, a sprawling global supply chain of companies mines metals out of the earth, refines them with chemicals and high heat, turns the metals into sheet steel and electrical wiring, hammers them into machines, and delivers them to customers, burning huge amounts of fossil fuels along the way. Once electric hand dryers are installed, they draw electricity, which oftentimes is generated using fossil fuels. During transmission from the power plant to the bathroom, a considerable amount of electricity gets lost due to electrical resistance in the power lines.

Energy loss between electricity production and consumption is substantial

With this supply chain in mind, I wondered how many paper towels must be saved by installing a single hand dryer to offset that dryer’s environmental footprint? One journalist who investigated the efficiency of electric hand dryers vs. paper towels found negligible environmental savings.

A recent realization has put this comparison into an even different light for me. In the absence of paper towels after a recent hand washing, I realized that the water would evaporate naturally in a couple minutes … even without the intervention of a precision engineered human artifact. In light of this revelation, I felt dumbstruck that we as a species devote an immense amount of our scarce resources, alongside our human effort and ingenuity, to accelerate the drying of our hands by 2 or 3 minutes. Coming to this realization, I have begun to walk out of public bathrooms with wet hands or wipe off the water on my pants (which will then quickly dry off) when I’m wearing dark jeans where the wetness won’t be noticeable.

Hygiene

In wondering why we spend so much effort drying our hands after washing them, I discovered through some research that the reason is hygiene. We wash our hands to prevent the spread of disease, cleansing them of harmful bacteria and viruses. But good hygiene doesn’t end there. When a person leaves the bathroom, oftentimes they must open the bathroom door. The door handle can contain all sorts of germs from other people who neglected to wash their hands before leaving. Worse, bacteria spreads more easily through contact with water. If, after washing your hands, you touch a door handle with wet hands, you potentially make yourself worse off with the bacteria you pick up. During recent years, I’ve observed more public bathrooms putting wastebaskets next to bathroom doors, so people can use paper towels to open the bathroom doors, or better yet designing doorless bathroom entranceways and exits.

So are paper towels or electric hand dryers more hygienic? Various studies express mixed findings. Paper towels create bacterial-laden waste. Electric hand dryers, however, can potentially spread bacteria through a chain of events, as some studies have found. When toilets flush, they spray some bacteria-laden water into the air. While electric hand dryers circulate air throughout the bathroom, they may spread the bacteria-laden water around the bathroom, as well as blowing some of it onto the hands of whoever is using the dryer. Counteracting this effect, however, the dryer’s hot air may kill some bacteria. While the evidence on dryers is far from conclusive, medical facilities full of sick patients with communicable diseases simply use paper towels.

Based on this recent learning, I have modified my own hand drying practices by using a minimal amount of paper towel as a medium between my hand and the potentially dirty doorknob. If dispensed by an automated paper towel dispenser, I will prematurely tear off a minimal amount of paper towel before the dispenser has fully dispense its programmed length of paper towel, which oftentimes stops the dispenser. While I don’t pat myself on the back for these negligible savings, I consider it part of a broader striving to use no more resources than I need.

Concluding Thoughts on Continuity

More than anything, I’m fascinated by the continual resurfacing of this silly question in my mind over the years. What initially seemed like a funny conversation starter became associated with a variety of more serious topics from science, conservation, and hygiene. This tangled web of association suggests a continuity of the mind. Offhand comments and forgotten bits of knowledge can resurface at unexpected times, with new and unexpected meanings.

The resurfacing of this silly question alongside different topics helped integrate those new topics into my memory. This old question, embedded deep in my memory, provides an existing anchor to which to tie those new topics. Ancient Greek orators took advantage of this feature of the mind, using it as a basis for a mnemonic device that helped them memorize long speeches. When preparing a speech, Greek orators imagined themselves walking through a house, placing objects into each room that remind them of major points they intended to make. During their speech, orators imagined themselves walking through their imagined house, examining rooms and objects one by one as they made their points.

Ancient Greek orator about to deliver speech to esteemed citizens of his polis

Beyond aiding my memory and understanding, the continual resurfacing of this silly question illustrates how we cannot tell what thoughts, experiences or comments will resonate with us. What seems like an offhand comment to one person might make an impact on another. Whenever friends recount a comment I made years ago, which I had long forgotten, I always feel surprised. A comment that I considered a minor point made a salient impression on my friend that they remembered for years. When they tell me what I had said, I always think, “That sounds about right.” Despite having forgotten the conversation, I always feel like my comments are in-character with my thoughts at the time.

Between this silly question, my forgotten comments, and other observations about longtime friends, I believe that people maintain a continuity of themes throughout their lives. These themes can be cultivated consciously or emerge unconsciously, be inspired by major events or chance occurrences. The interpretation of an experience’s significance largely depends on the percipient. In an interview about his writing, humorist Tucker Max describes how his friends recall the events in his essays. After Max’s friends laugh at one of his essays about an event at which they were present, they often tell him that, prior to reading his essay, they originally perceived the event as rather ordinary. As we reexamine our past thoughts and experiences through the lens of changing priorities and shifting perspectives, we sometimes see them in a new light. Some feelings and ideas at the forefront of our minds during one epoch become a minor footnote in another, and vice versa.

Over time, I’ve come to appreciate when old ideas and experiences resurface, triggered by a recent experience or thought. Rather than dismissing them as chaff, I’ve come to savor them as a symbol of the continuity of mind, which links my web of experiences and knowledge across time. These experiences remind me that we bring the “sum total of who we are” to bear on every situation, and ought to savor all of our experiences as essential building blocks, whether pleasurable or painful. Likewise, it reminds me to be present to new experiences as I move through life, since one cannot plan for the serendipitous. Beyond this essay, I hope that my appreciation of these tangled and meandering webs of context comes through in all of my writings.

“4:15pm to 4:35pm: Serendipitous conversation with colleague at water cooler, 7:05pm to 7:40pm: Quality time with family over dinner.”