The trades are then a natural home for anyone who would live by his own powers, free not only of deadening abstraction, but also of the insidious hopes and rising insecurities that seem to be endemic in our current economic life. This is the stoic ideal.
So what advice should one give to a young person? By all means, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. In the summers, learn a manual trade. You’re likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems. To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable.
I wish I had seen this a few years ago, like before entering co-op.
4 comments:
there's still time. i wish i'd seen it before 2003. I met a plumber this weekend who already makes more than I ever will, sets his own hours and enjoys a work wardrobe of plaid flannel and jumpsuits. hot!
The issue is not money or anything like that. It is a slight feeling of deficiency that I cannot make anything with my hands and the fact thta, if the war destroys all technological things, I would be hard pressed to survive.
Of course, it may be a bit naive to assume that a plumber or a carpenter would be better suited to a bleak desolate wasteland, but it is what I believe.
Also, if I could create something tangible, I would not have to have kids. I could pass on my legacy in the form of a really nice desk. With which I would have to have sex.
good call mat.
sex with your own children -- one of the worst things you could possibly do
sex with a desk you made -- nobody's business but yours
i more meant in the form of passing on my genetic code - inpregnating the desk with my DNA, but I can see how that paragraph might seem more dirty than it is ... assuming that it is not very dirty to have sex with your desk.
Post a Comment