What does 'Men have become tools of their tools' mean?

Answer 1

This idea comes from Thoreau's Walden. Thoreau, as outlined in this work, went to the woods to live life deliberately. Like many transcendentalists, he was big into reconnecting with nature and wanted to pare his life down to the bare essentials.

Of course, even Thoreau admitted that he did not do this entirely when he moved into his cabin on Emerson's property, but the idea was to reduce some of the extraneous details that we as humans often find ourselves wrapped up in.

His argument in this quote was basically that we end up serving those things that we have to serve us. The modern example would be the time and money that we put into our vehicles so that they look and run well. Every time I have to crawl under my truck to replace the starter that continually works itself loose from the stripped bolt hole, I am working harder for the truck than it is working for me. Using the same idea with a new vehicle... how much time do I spend working in order to pay for gas and the car payment?

The more complex our tools become, the more complex our lives become.