Lennon said it, some died for it and some smoked pot for it. Other people came up with really cool ideas and spoofs trying to spread the message of peace. Trying to achieve peace and harmony in society seems to be off the agenda for almost everyone. It has been taken for granted by most of us that peaceful coexistence is a utopian goal. We’ve come to accept everything and just walk along with a bag in hand to our respective workplaces and just mock at every obnoxious politician that feeds off the country’s money. We’re entertained, the cycle of day and night continues, there is still oxygen in the air for us to breathe – what more might we want?
Personally, I’ve always been fascinated with this, that and other such small things. Collecting little things, Swiss Army Knives especially (one of which is staring at me from my table), and stare at them hard in fascination trying to fathom their beauty. I’ve never been able to get enough of them, I guess. Almost all of us remember those red Swiss army clasp knives that were popular enough some time ago. The group of designers consisting of Qian Jiang, Yiying Wu and Carolina Flores tried to take the cutting edge and negative connotations away from the words "army" and "knife" and replaced it with the message of love and care – "Swiss Peace knife, thus combining the message of peace with this fascinating miniature tool kit.
Thus they managed to reinterpret this army icon of multi-functionality into a handy pocket tool. The Swiss Peace Knife is a useful, but harmless, device that includes: a pill box, bandages, disinfectant spray and whistle. Definitely not as popular as its predecessor, it ends up doing more than selling as a commodity. In my view, gadgets such as these are of great importance not because of the features they possess, but due to the fact that they carry an important message. I guess one of the reasons I loved this device was because it is small and says something of unfathomable content. Probably the really small things in life actually matter, in terms of happiness?
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