And Everything Shall Be Made, Badly, Out Of Wool And Bamboo
I paraphrase, of course:
In his 2017 book Prosperity Without Growth, Tim Jackson, an ecological economist at the University of Surrey, called on advanced countries to shift their economies towards local services, such as nursing and teaching, and the development of more rewarding and less resource intensive professions like handicrafts.
I’ll give you a moment to process that one.
“People can flourish without endlessly accumulating more stuff,” Jackson wrote. “Another world is possible.” Yet proposals to abandon economic growth have also been met with scepticism.
Why, yes, I am reading the Guardian. Why do you ask?
Via Mr Worstall.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
“professions”
Well, indeed.
Other words that are bearing loads for which they aren’t entirely suited include rewarding and yet.
A return to the Dark Ages is always possible. You just have to put people who write for The Guardian in charge of everything.
[ Slides ashtray of peanuts to Rafi. ]
Ah, the old “uncooked macaroni pieces glued onto an old cigar box and spray-painted gold” arts and crafts project.
Except I haven’t seen a cigar box in ages.
Related: based on my sparse attendance at Knoxville’s First Fridays art scene (the galleries on south Gay Street are open and put out some cheap box wine), any “mixed media” piece is just a bunch of shit thrown together. Equally bad is any art that uses the term “conceptual.”
[ Rummages under bar, emerges with yarn, needle, pile of ratty, threadbare socks. ]
Get crafting, madam.
I DON’T HEAR CRAFTING.
So… Why is John Cassidy writing for the Guardian instead of cutting out paper dolls or applying glitter and glue to paper plates? Surely some gallery would snatch that up in a heartbeat.
I’m guessing the knitting and gluing and basket weaving is meant for other, less important people. Someone has to be in charge, you know. Leading us to that utopia, where all the flourishing is going to happen.
[ Fetches stick, pushes pile of tatty socks closer to Stephanie. ]
Whereas this would have fit the last thread, it is not entirely inappropriate here, it is OK to steal because “Target enslaved my ancestors…”* also, we don’t need Target because we have Mom and Pop stores and we never steal from them.
*(little known, Colonel Jefferson Beauregard Target IV was founder of the Natchez Mercantile and Plantations, the only Mercantile and Plantations to have survived Reconstruction)
Because cleaning horseshit from the streets and stables is the logical and much nicer descendant of electric vehicles.
Who knew that decades of actively propagating pretentious racial victimhood might have suboptimal consequences?
So he wants the whole economy to look like Etsy?
Handicrafts.
Some years ago, during a car journey, a friend of mine mentioned that a friend of hers had set up an Etsy shop. Due to traffic noise and my ignorance of the website in question, I misheard her. I spent several seconds pondering the items that might be for sale in a Nazi shop.
#TrueStory
Cue Father Ted sketch.
Given the extensive literature and historical record one would think the supposedly well-educated would have some understanding of the expense and drudgery day to day living in a non-industrial society entails.
Coming soon.
Fear not, for when we are living in Full Luxury Communism™ in the Glorious World of Next Tuesday™ not only will handicrafts sustain us, but also statues to inspire and give models to which we should aspire.
Already they sprout. Behold the majesty and uplifting inspirational upliftingness.
You lot over in Blighty have not been forgotten.
Coming soon.
Related…
Yeah, I guess when you get right down to it … all one really needs to survive is a wool blanket and an apple.
Who needs anything more?
This other chap does better statues of black women. Those brass ones are pedestrian and enervating to the soul.
[ Schedules tomorrow’s Ephemera, braces self for impending haircut. ]
[ Gathers mirrors, lighting. ]
[ Gathers mirrors, lighting. ]
25 yrs ago or so, the US came out with the Northwest Forest Plan to govern land management on federal lands in OR and WA in order to save some endangered species such as N. spotted owl. This shut down logging on millions of acres and paper and saw mills shut down. Enviros claimed that jobs could be restored by everyone learning to make furniture and crafts out of smaller trees. hahaha idiot. As if carving owls out of wood paid like a real job.
Another great example is backyard gardening. My daughter has a very nice veg garden with good soil and sun. Maybe 20ft x 100 ft, fenced. It is a great hobby and her kids are involved. It is a money loser compared to the grocery store.
From the comments over at Tim’s place:
Not wrong.
That depends on one’s financial situation, of course. It was a huge help to my grandparents.
I’m just going to leave this here.
I have long wondered what fraction of public defenders are far-left fanatics bent on destroying our society.
I once saw a show – think it was Anthony Bourdain in Haiti – talking about the abundance of creativity and craftsmen over there. Seems that everyone is making jewelry and knickknacks from assorted trash and bits and bobs and they all want to be artists etc, but there’s no one to buy the things that do get made. There also seemed to be a production problem – quantity, quality, reliability, etc etc.
Er… didn’t Trump just get excoriated for saying something about having 2 Barbie dolls instead of 30? And secondly, isn’t the whole points of arts and crafts to make stuff?? Why does this person advocate for building a society on the making of stuff and then say people don’t need it? Does this Guardian person envision the government paying people to weave and paste and paint and then …what? warehouse whatever crap gets made? Do they think that the provision and maintenance of essential civilizational things such as garbage and sewage disposal, clean drinking water, fuel for heating and cooking, electricity and internet that people can’t seem to live without these days – all just happen by magic?
And yet still not nearly as bad as The Great Turd Born Aloft.
Kentucky man. No further comment. For now anyway.
My next folk group will be called Wool and Bamboo. Unless the flute player is really sloppy, in which case it’s Woollen Bamboo.
Do they think that the provision and maintenance of essential civilizational things such as ….all just happen by magic?
yes, yes they do. Lots and lots of magical thinking. See also “patriarchy” and saving whales by ending plastic straws and wind power and and…
Africans have cargo cults. Leftists have Marxism and postmodernism.
John Reilly, 48, is charged with first-degree assault.
Why not with attempted murder in the first degree?
Those racist po-lice won’t let a brother do anything.
Crazy Crafts with Molly Earl
Well, he is a Chicago Pope, also any Catholic putting ketchup on a hot dog will be excommunicated.
Chicago deep dish pizza will become mandatory.
Every form of corruption, including the selling of indulgences.
Isn’t that the goal of every Guardian person?
Melanesians, not Africans.
Chicago deep dish pizza will become mandatory.
The Eucharist will be changed to a slice and a shot of Malört.
Damn. Yes. But I vaguely recall African examples of magical invocations of lost Western stuff. Is my memory faulty and they were all Melanesians?
Heh. Curious if any of the faithful, or even quasi-faithful here have had this communal experience?