If the old thing were new

In a supermarket aisle in Banha, a metal safety razor sits beside the packs of disposable ones. Most shoppers walk past it.

Ask them why and the case comes quickly. It is heavy. You have to change the blade yourself. It looks easy to cut yourself with. It costs more on the day. The plastic ones are right there and everyone already knows how they work.

All true, as far as it goes. But notice how the argument is built. The familiar product is taken as given, its costs left out of the conversation. The new one has to answer for every flaw and every possible risk.

Run it the other way. Imagine the metal razor were what everyone's father used, and a company arrived selling one made of plastic, to be thrown away after a few uses, a new handle every time, a little pile of them in the bin each month. Defending the old metal one would suddenly be easy. It lasts a lifetime. The blades are cheap. Nothing goes in the bin but a thin strip of steel.

The enthusiast for the metal razor is no fairer. He lists every saving and every blade that never reaches a landfill, and forgets that the plastic one is light, cheap on the day and has never asked anyone to learn a new skill at six in the morning.

None of these speeches is fair. Each starts from a side already chosen and works backwards to the reasons.

I do this too, and it is very hard to catch while it is happening. Once a view starts forming, the arguments line up behind it and begin to feel like evidence. We describe ourselves as balanced while we argue for the side we already chose.

The honest move is to say out loud that we are taking a side, and then to take it on what each option actually does, for the person, over time, not on which one we grew up with or which one feels like the future.

Familiarity is not a feature.