Would you prefer the world and marketplace remain exactly the same? Do you use a computer? The Internet? Quickly, that machine and innovation don't require hammering nails, really, but for some reason I think they're great. Sometimes the world makes advancements. I don't want to live in a world where everyone uses their hands and disregards science, technology, ideas, thinking, interacting with other people, and a host of respectable pursuits that don't involve -- I guess how you see it -- the most respectable act of working with hands. Without some of the jobs you scoff at, you wouldn't be able to write your public diary.
This just came in as a comment, responding to a post I wrote about Civil War era professions vs what we do now. "Joe" raises good questions and good points, and I want to pull this out so it's not lost in old-post commentland.
To start: The Internet, computers? I'm with you. I think they're great. Email rules. I write here on Tumblr and other places on the web. I'm grateful for that. The interactions I have with people online bring me a lot of joy, and that's not overstating it at all. The connectedness we can find over the web staggers and delights me. I use my computer every day. Sometimes for hours and hours. My computer is as essential a tool to me as anything I use working with wood.
I'm all for progress. I'm glad we can turn on lights. I'm glad I don't have to slaughter my own pigs. I'm glad that if I put a rusty nail through my palm that my tetanus booster will keep me from lockjaw. I hope that what I wrote did not suggest for a second that I was making a case against science, technology, ideas, thinking, interacting with other people. I'm a little baffled that ideas and thinking are in that list. I'm into both those things. Science and technology, I'd never argue they be disregarded. Monitored, paid attention to, used responsibly, sure. But I don't think that pointing out a difference between jobs then and jobs now necessarily means that I look down my nose on what we're up to now.
That said, I do think it's true that there's a big difference between a rope maker and a central quality technician. And the difference is twofold: it lies in action and it lies in what's produced. By action, I mean it in the purely physical sense. A rope maker is using his hands, body, and brain to make ropes. It is an active pursuit. A quality technician is using his mind and fingertips to ensure quality. No better-or-worse here. In terms of what's produced, at the end of the day, what a rope maker yields is immediately quantifiable. Five thirty rolls around, the rope maker dusts fibers off his sleeves and sees a heaping coil of rope on his workshop floor. Five thirty rolls around for the quality technician, he logs out of his database, and the results aren't quite so easy to measure. He's monitored quality maybe, ensured that something somewhere is being done in an all right way. I'm exaggerating a little here, but this is what The Office is about, what Ed Park's Personal Days is about, what Office Space lampoons. The comedy masks the desperate absurdity. What am I actually doing?
I do think working with your hands is respectable. I also think being a lawyer, an accountant, a programmer, or a check-out clerk at the supermarket is respectable.
And finally, the difference ultimately comes down to a matter of language (I wasn't trying to scoff). A rope maker today wouldn't be a rope maker. He'd be a Thread and Fiber Analyst Manufacturer. And that raises a completely different question: why now do we try to obscure what we do with these vague titles? Is it because we don't know what it really is we're doing? Or are we trying to puff ourselves up with words that end up meaning nothing?
