Recently I had a dream. A very beautiful dream, one that came somewhat out of the left field and I have no idea why I had it or why I had it just in this moment. But recently I had been thinking about what jobs and skills truly made people happy and contributed meaning to the human condition. That helped to develop us further. A traditional Japanese House
I was standing in an open field that was surrounded by forests. The sun was shining and a mild breeze was blowing. There was a stone foundation on which I was building a wooden house. Wooden houses are numerous and they are not that special, but this house was special. Because it was build according to traditional Japanese wood working techniques. A house that would neither need nails nor screw but would be erected entirely from interlocking intricate joinery all manufactured to tight tolerances. By hand. Wood is just a fantastic and beautiful material for superior to everything we humans have concocted over the centuries in our research facilities. Wood is organic, wood makes you feel more connected to nature and studies have shown that living in such a building improves mental health drastically. When being connected to nature makes us feel alive, a wooden house is the closest we can come to being isolated from it. That is also why we have found a new interest in such buildings in recent years but of course as always the old is not good enough it needs to be more complex and over engineered. Buildings today are build using complex wood composites like CLT (cross laminated timber) or similar that are produced in industrial settings and are as far removed from nature as concrete or glass. It is engineered, perfected and every bit of character beaten out of it. The human still cannot relate to it because the trees went into a black box and out came these pre cut precise panels from wood.
The beauty in my dream was the traditional Japanese method. A craft that has been practiced in Japan for centuries and is still being used today to build modern houses two or three stories tall. The benefits are clear. A wooden building made by a highly skilled craftsmen can last hundreds of years with the proper maintenance. Such a building is a living organism and needs looking after, the set and forget method that is applied today does not work here. Which I think it shouldn’t. If this is your house, your home, something that means something to you, you should care for it. Should any part of this construct break or need replacing it is cheap and easy. It is wood, and trees are available. Making a spare part for a house that is ten years old requires the same level of effort as for one that is a thousand years old and little have tools or methods changed. The craftsman only needs a few tools that when used properly and treaded with respect can last many generations. Compared to our modern tools like computer or phones these tools seem rather crude and simple, costs less than an overpriced piece of electronic waste and to the simple observer seem like rather boring objects. A chisel, a hammer, a saw. But a perfectly skilled person can see an entire universe in them, infinite possibilities. It is not the tool but the skill.
The best photographer can use the worst camera to make the picture while the best phone or camera does not help the lay person to even take a bad photo. It is not about the tools but the skills.
Such a wooden building is democratic, it can be fixed by a skilled person with materials and tools that are simple and ubiquitous and promise high quality long lasting quality in a world where this becomes rarer by the day.
This goes for every skill. Where I see a piano and some strange notes fall out when I touch the keys a musicians only sees the possibilities to make his imagination come true. The tool is not as important as the skill, again. What is a Skill
I myself sit here and ask myself, “What is a skill?” Because I consider myself and my generation as mostly skill-less. We have all studied some fancy sounding things that do not represent any skill whatsoever. All the people I know have done this. The theoretical idea is more important than the physical action of doing it. I know about precision but it is not the same as making something precise. A skill requires dedication, a lot of it. It is suffering, it is pain, it is the will to give up, but because deep down the person knows that he can be better, he can overcome the obstacles and reach his goal he keeps going. A skill is years and decades of sweat and tears before things become a bit easier. Complete perfection is something unachievable but not something that should not be inspired to. A real master knows he knows almost nothing but more than most people. And he will never stop chasing the improvement in craft.
But now, years or decades of pain and suffering to become good and not great sounds rather tedious and hard. Most people would surrender before that and most people do. This is why I have the highest respect for crafts people that can actually make something as precise, but more beautiful and more unique than a machine. This is why I consider myself unskilled because I had never the pain going through such a time and added to this might not have found my calling in life because hard things are hard and most comfortable people tend to avoid them. What is not a Skill
Not a skill are all these things that are sold to you on the internet, the companies that blow millions in advertising to tell you how, fast easy and cheap it is to learn a new skills. I am really sorry but even a fifty hour course on any topic is not a skill. It is a niche spotlight on something much much larger that is not covered. But no one would subscribe to such a service if it told you the truth, that it takes many years and anguish to learn a real skill and that the courses offered on such a platform do nothing to help you with this. These companies make money by counting on you to give up before the end of the course, the fault is with you and not with them. The comfort and laziness of the modern human takes care of it. A bigger Responsibility
A lifelong journey to become a master in something, to be so good at something that every problem that is thrown to you is easy, you can just glide on your skill. A skill that has value not because of the current industrial needs or the political climate but something that is true no matter what day it is and time it is. A universally applicable skill that can generate benefits that are not monetary. Coming back to the crafts person building a house, this person can build shelter and people always want shelter, it is not a highly complex skill that is completely worthless. A skill allows you to be self sufficient and to challenge the status quo.
Most of today’s modern so called “highly skilled” jobs would be completely useless the moment the company fails or the government topples because in this regard highly skilled only speaks of a person who know almost anything about nothing, that has no grasp what his work does and how it is being used. A truely skilled person knows all these things and can work alone or in small teams to make it a reality. And because a skill allows someone to provide a non monetary benefit to society the responsibility is much bigger than just earning a pay check. It is providing help to people who need it, it is teaching people your skills and guiding apprentices on their way to becoming a master, it is being part of the local community that require your skill and contribute not just product but also participation in it. The Japanese have a word that encapsulates this all, it is called shokunin. A craftsmen that not just tries to achieve mastery in its profession but also applies the same candour and perseverance to the people around him to not just improve himself but to also improve the other. To further the development of society.
Thinking about all this in this way makes me realise how unskilled I am. But I suppose it is never too late to inspire to be a shokunin. The learn a skill that has value besides the current market value in a skewed economy.