In praise of craft part one: Humans are tool makers
~This is a guest blog by Karl von Memerty
Growing up in the 90’s there was a strong strain of anti-corporate feeling in the youth culture. It was in the music and the films and in the air. The environmental movement back then was about saving the environment. About blocking bulldozers. Protecting nature. Going into the wild.
It looks like we got the wrong Amazon. Those aspirations seem a little quaint now. Capitalism will have its way. It has been getting its way since it set sail out of Europe, having demolished the traditions and lands of its own inhabitants thoroughly first. It has been accelerating, not slowing down, since the 90’s.
Is there a way out? Has the system turned us into its prey? Will we soon cut ourselves off from our true natures and from the natural world completely? Will our own ingenuity create machines that have no need for our human ingenuity? No need for us?
Perhaps all we can do is fight back in our own small ways. Put down your phone for a second. For an hour. For a day. Walk barefoot on the grass. Admire the sky. Plant a garden. Make something with your own hands. We are a species of tool makers after all. As children we learn through touch and play. We all have a need to create meaning and beauty in the world.
Could you go to the market and pay for more expensive but actually nutritious organic food? Learn to prepare some inexpensive dishes from scratch? Why not try to spend the day in the fields or forests or parks that remain accessible to you – without your phone? Why not forego that gadget on Amazon and buy something someone made with their own hands. And by doing so, by paying a bit more for something that is actually beautiful, in a small but meaningful way, you would be supporting those in the last line of defenders fighting back the great machine. The greatest machine that ever existed, that wants our souls.
Consume less produce more
In our constant pursuit of more and faster we consume 100 million barrels of oil globally. A day. We are obsessed with shiny new things, we throw away the old ones, ‘away’ is not a place we care to think about. We are being lured into becoming dopamine addicted mass consumers. We need to consume less, produce more. Or support the producers that work on a human scale. Support those when we can who live in lands ravaged by colonialism and extractivism. Buy things we treasure and want to keep.
Gandhi once said we don’t need mass production, but we need production by masses. By supporting craft workers we will at least be making steps in the right direction, the direction home.
We live in a world where the advertising industry is constantly trying to manipulate us into wanting things we don’t need and turning every human expression into a trend that can be co-opted and commodified and then sold back to us. While a craftsman needs to get his work to the public, needs to be heard through the corporate noise, a work of beauty can then sell itself. It doesn’t need a conjured up brand story to differentiate itself from the competition and distract us from its crappy quality. It won’t need to be thrown out when the next sexier version is released.
10 000 hours in your hands
With true craft the object is also a story, just not one brainstormed in a boardroom. It is a testament to the man or women that made it. In it is the story of 10 000 hours spent honing their skills and mastering their craft. Humans are tool makers, but we also have a deep desire to strive for mastery. In so many ways the modern world has taken this from us. It has turned us into passive consumers. Yet we admire, nay worship, people who go beyond limits and achieve greatness. We watch and follow and cheer. In doing so, we feed the machine. But we can feed ourselves too. We all desire meaningful work and self-expression. Not Many of us have this.
We have become reliant on the vast impersonal forces of modern consumerism. Perhaps we could all learn a lot about ourselves if we learned to make stuff. It is well known that we highly value things we have a part in making ourselves. It is like a small vindication of our self-worth in the face of the globe-spanning superorganism. Practicing craft can take this to a whole new level. We can get feedback from the real world, not just give feedback in a customer review. We can make something that is real. Something we can touch. Something beautiful. We can give ourselves five stars.
Finding your flow
There is value of course in the process. In the doing. We can get in the zone, lose track of time, disconnect from reality and all its stresses, forget ourselves, find the flow state. The flow state is the mental state where we are completely focused on a single task and all space and time disap
pear for a while. We are focused and challenged, not overwhelmed just persisting and enjoying. The little kid in you with crayons and tongue stuck out enraptured in the process of creation. It has been closely linked to happiness. The more time you spend in the flow state, whether it be a sport, a game, gardening or a hobby, the more you experience well-being. The more meaning you have in life. Not the same as the hyperfocus state for a hypercharged world of over-ambitious sociopaths. Sorry to all the good CEO’s out there. A state of being at one with the world. At one with all the crafts people that have given us so much. At one with the primal human in us, making tools to survive and thrive, out in nature, out in the real world.
~ By Karl von Memerty
