Why it is important to know how to make things
Through Makeweekend, the project that I put my heart and soul into, we want to grow and empower the maker community -- which is basically a community of people who make things and build solutions. We normally told people that making things is cool, it's empowering to be able to create solutions to problems that you or other people face rather than wait around whining for people to solve things for you. A recent conversation with a friend from Ecocentric Transitions and a drive through SS2 in Petaling Jaya made me realise that making things and building solutions isn't just cool and empowering -- it's necessary for survival.
Nisha (from Ecocentric Transitions) and I were talking the other day about how our dependence on modern technology has made us too complacent to develop basic skills that are necessary, skills like using a saw, or sewing or planting and harvesting crops. She was saying something along the lines of how now we're so dependent on technology, one day when all that fails us and we have to go back to basics (think post-apocalyptic situations like in the Hunger Games), we won't even have the basic skills to survive. We talked about how we might think that it's pretty easy to chop up some bamboo and tie it together to make a raft... but until we actually do it, we won't know how difficult it actually is.
That made me stop and think for a bit. In high school they taught us this subject called "Kemahiran Hidup" or "Life Skills" which I thought was a pretty stupid class because they wouldn't let the girls learn carpentry properly. They still let us learn though, and they taught us the basics of carpentry, electronics and wiring, plumbing, sewing and cooking. All of which are pretty basic skills that not many of us have nowadays.
Driving through SS2 in PJ and seeing this guy make furniture made me realise that I don't even remember how to properly use a saw now. If the situation arose where I would need to use a saw to save my life (not by sawing off my foot), I probably would fail at that because of that one skill I don't have. And then I'd be stranded on an island with a stupid saw and a bunch of bamboo that I don't know what to do with, lamenting about how stupid it is that this is how I would die.
So when I think about Makeweekend and when I think about why the maker movement and knowing how to make things it's important, I have to say that it's more than the fact that it's cool and satisfying, and empowering because you can solve your own problems. It's also a lesson in survival, about being self-sufficient in any situation presented to you.