Monday, September 21, 2015

truth, values and craftsmanship...

The following is from Richard Sennet's article in the Guardian Labours of Love
....most people have it in them to become good craftsmen. They have the capacities to become better at, and more involved in, what they do - the abilities to localise, question and open up problems that can result, eventually, in good work. Even if society does not reward people who have made this effort as much as it should, in the end, they can achieve a sense of self-worth - which is reward enough.
But is that sense of self-worth enough to fulfill the needs of a society at large? Is it healthy when people are inclined to seek outside their own communities for the things that they most desire? And what is the real price we pay when both truth and the values inherent in craftsmanship are set aside?

Irving, Texas made the news last week when school officials and police arrested and handcuffed a Muslim boy who brought a home-made clock to school. School officials claim they suspected him of making a bomb, and while he made no threat with it, and insisted it was a clock, anyone with any level of practical experience in the world would have seen the truth of what it was, a clock.  They did none of the things that schools would normally do if threatened by a bomb. They simply made a fraudulent arrest in what appeared to be an effort to humiliate a young man who may have seemed different from the rest.

Irving, Texas appears to be a place in which the truth is distorted for profits large and small. Exxon Mobil is also headquartered in Irving, Texas, and they also made the news this week. In the 1970's their researchers were the first to discover and warn of the inevitability of climate change resulting from the use of their product. They then spent millions to distort the facts as is well documented in a new report on what they knew, when they knew it and how they then decided to screw the planet to insure their own corporate gains.

What does this have to do with the hands? It has clearly to do with values, lack of values and those willing to put corporate profits over the health and safety of the planet and its inhabitants. Matti Bergström gave a name to those whose values have been damaged by failure to engage the world in a hands-on creative manner. He called the people suffering such effects, "Finger blind." The consequence of finger blindness is damage to the system of values that have served as the foundation of human culture since before the darkest ages of pre-history. Bergström said, "just as those who are physically blind cannot see the outlines of an object, the finger-blind cannot perceive its intrinsic value." Being thus "values damaged" narrows the scope of values guiding behavior to a single concern. Money, money, money and more of it.

It explains why directors of Exxon Mobil would destroy the planet, know that they were doing so, and then do everything they possibly could to sustain their profits without regard for the rest of mankind or the for the planet. If you are not disgusted, you should be.

Make, fix, create, and  assist others to learn likewise.

No comments:

Post a Comment