craftsmen/artisans vs Cheap goods

[DWFII]

I would guess that there are many folks here on XMTS (and many more who are not) who do appreciate quality, who do appreciate the time and skill invested in a particular item, and who would love to own said item, but, because of mortgages and job losses and children's expenses and other limitations, cannot buy the hand-made item and so resort to the mass-produced one....

I agree with you. We all of us have our priorities and eating tends to be high on the list.

But I would observe that...at least as I understand it...this discussion is about "quality." How to perceive it, how to achieve it.

To my mind, once we introduce monetary considerations into the picture we so completely obscure the idea of quality that it becomes meaningless. Money can never, ever, be a modifier or a factor in perceiving or achieving quality.

Money may be a factor in whether we can afford quality but it doesn't make something that we can afford quality...or something we can't afford, trash.

And the same is true for the Tradesman...you cannot punch a clock and create quality. It takes what it takes. You cannot pinch pennies (in raw materials) and create quality. Any made object is only as good as what it is made of.

Once cost and/or money becomes a factor the whole idea of quality becomes moot.

[ronstew]

In these parts, "sustainability" has been a buzzword for ten or fifteen years. One aspect of sustainability is densification - packing more people into land. The more you do that, the fewer people are going to do their own hunting or baking. Densification makes industrial agriculture and massed produced goods absolutely necessary. (I have always felt the sustainability crowd holds conflicting beliefs, but that is perhaps a topic for onother thread.)

DWFII - wrt to hunting your own meat, I have some confessions. If I had to choose one beverage for the rest of my life it would be milk. The fresher the better. But the one day I had a chance to drink milk straight from the bucket, I just couldn't do it. And I am a renowned meat-eater, as long as the meat comes from a butcher or in a plastic wrapper. But when my brother the hunter offers me a fine cut of venison, I cannot stomach it. And then there were the berries that I threw away last week because I found worms in them.

I like mass-produced, impersonal, genetically modified, Monsanto factory food. I shouldn't, but I do.

[tyger]

And I am a renowned meat-eater, as long as the meat comes from a butcher or in a plastic wrapper. But when my brother the hunter offers me a fine cut of venison, I cannot stomach it.

That reminds me of joke about the woman who was giving the hunter the devil because he had a deer in the back of his pickup truck. She said: "Why can't you get your meat at the grocery store like all the rest of us!"


It's fine that you like the packaged product! I do too. That means that it is also fine that men and women can package their own. I like that too!

[DWFII]

DWFII - wrt to hunting your own meat, I have some confessions...

Hey, I don't hunt or milk anymore, either. But I have done. And I think it is essential to have done both to really appreciate what you are consuming.

A person doesn't really know what is involved in eating meat until they have killed an animal and watched the light go out of its eyes. And yes, felt remorse. And if you are any kind of thinking/feeling person that remorse will stay with you for the rest of your life.

And that's really the issue as I see it. Too many people walking around with no remorse; no connection to the processes...the focus, the sweat (and blood), and the often painful growth...that go into a Rab Gordan, for instance; little or no respect for the sensibilities and traditions of cultures that are so blithely adopted and then misconstrued.

And again, I didn't really intend that my remarks be an indictment of anyone in particular or even any particular choice an individual makes. We all have our own priorities...often driven by necessity. [Although indifference does tend to be cumulative--enough disrespect, enough impassivity, and pretty soon "Jack's a dull boy," indeed.]

But the topic, as I understand it is "quality" and what I was getting at was that doing for yourself...producing something tangible, within a hierarchy of self-criticism and "good, better, best"...is probably the only way to understand what quality really is. Even if you've only done it occasionally...there, in those random moments, are the seeds of understanding.

I've spent the better part of my adult life thinking about this issue. Of course that doesn't mean my words are writ in stone. But it is critical to me simply because I want to insure that my Trade, and a certain respect...maybe even reverence...for beauty and quality, endures.

And that's not a given in a predominantly materialistic, consumer driven, society such as ours is...or is becoming.