Scooter of Theseus

Though I realise the Scootering Feedback page is not usually a forum for deep philosophical thought, please bear with me for a moment. Theseus, a wandering adventurer of Greek myth, one day asked his followers to repair his ship which he was very fond of, but which had seen better days due to years of use. So repair it they did, by painstakingly replacing, one by one, the planks of wood from which it was made. However, upon viewing the finished boat, which now looked as good as new, Theseus was less than pleased. Something was troubling him. “This isn’t my ship,” said he. “This is an entirely new ship, which has no material in common with my old beloved vessel.”

The philosophical problem raised by the ‘ship of Theseus’ is this: If an object is replaced, part by part, until it is composed of a majority of new parts, is it still the same object? Not, I realise, a question occupying your average scooter boy or girl as they are on the rally dancefloor doing the skinhead moonstomp while simultaneously trying not spill their pint of lager but bear with me a little longer. What has all this got to do with scootering, you might be asking yourself? Well it’s that old chestnut again – restoration or conservation? Do you retain the original history and components of your classic scooter, or do you ‘soup it up’ with shiny new aftermarket adjustable levers, carbon cowlings, and tubeless wheel rims, etc. etc. etc. until you’ve got a hare instead of a rabbit?

It is down to personal choice, obviously, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to start using dirty words here like ‘sacrilege’ and ‘desecration’. The reason for that is this: It seems to me, purist that I obviously am, that a lot of this extensive tweaking, replacing and rebuilding is completely unnecessary, and I do often find myself thinking, as I gaze at some ostentatiously airbrushed, meticulously engraved masterpiece in the custom room at the various rallies I attend, ‘What a bloody rotten shame! What did they do that for?’

For sure, many of these (usually) pristine scooters are very impressive indeed, and one can only marvel at the care and attention, not to mention money that’s been thrown at them. Some, I cannot deny, are impressive to the point of being works of art. But still, there’s that niggling thought again – ‘What a real bloody terrible shame!’ Okay that Serveta I saw earlier had those weird and wrong looking stalked indicators and illconceived rear light lens, but hey – at least it’s original! And okay that 150 Super I saw outside 10 minutes ago has seen better days, what with all those stone chips, those bent, rusty leg shields and all them dead flies splattered on it. But at least it’s honest! At least it was ridden here, not wheeled out of the back of a van! What’s the point in that? That’s not what scootering’s about – is it? Or maybe I’m missing the point.

Which brings me right back to philosophy and the ‘ship of Theseus,’ or should I say, in this case, the ‘scooter of Theseus’. Ask yourself this. Is that really a 1966 Li you own? Could that really be a 1976 Primavera ET3 you’re riding? Think about it. From A. Halbard, of Morecambe

Thank you for your interesting letter. Two words: Trigger’s broom! Dan