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STEPHEN A BLOCH's avatar

On being minimally competent at a bunch of things...

When I was a child, I read Lloyd Alexander's <i>Chronicles of Prydain</i> fantasy series. I enjoyed all five books, but the one that especially spoke to me was Book Four, <i>Taran Wanderer</i>, in which the adopted protagonist goes looking for his birth parents. Along the way, he apprentices briefly to a weaver, and learns enough to make himself a blanket -- with some flaws, not the best quality, but it works and he made it with his own hands. He apprentices briefly to a potter, and learns enough to make himself a cooking-pot -- not beautiful, but it works and he made it with his own hands. He apprentices briefly to a smith, and learns enough to make himself a sword -- not the best, but it works and he made it with his own hands. (He also invents Fair Division Theory, in mediating a dispute over horses.) And I thought "That's what I want to be!" And in the decades since I have, in fact, done not-very-good weaving, not-very-good pottery, not-very-good blacksmithing, not-very-good bronze-casting, not-very-good carpentry, not-very-good baking, not-very-good knitting, and so on, because it's fulfilling to learn new skills and make things that are more truly "mine" because I made them with my own hands.

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STEPHEN A BLOCH's avatar

On "symbolic frugality"...

My wife recently encountered (in some online article) the statement "In the Midwest, when a person compliments another person on a physical possession, it is customary for the owner to explain that the possession was acquired at a significant discount."

In many cultures, ostentatious spending is seen as a socially hostile act, a way of "one-upping" your neighbors and denigrating them. Buying things "at a significant discount" or making them yourself, even when you _could_ have bought them for full price, can be a tactic to avoid being accused of such social hostility.

My wife and I have sometimes discussed hiring someone to help clean the house, which we could easily afford, but we've never done so, partly because we were both brought up in households in which that would have been considered profligate and "that's what rich people do". My 81-year-old mother has recently hired a house-cleaner, and justifies it to herself in several ways: not only is she older and less physically able than ten years ago, but it gives the cleaner a job, and it obligates my mother to tidy and declutter before the cleaner arrives. That last point is symbolically important: my mother is still doing _some_ of the work, just not all of it.

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