There’s a lot of intelligence involved in making our own stuff. And perhaps Trump’s tariffs will have a positive effect if they help return our attention toward other matters. When I began my own journey as a maker of things in the mid 1970’s it was obvious that I and others of like labor and mind were swimming against the tides. The US was becoming a “service economy” in an “information age” and it was OK with both political parties to have our things made cheaply, disposable and abroad while landfills where we put all that stuff grew to enormous proportions.
In the meantime, that would allow our rich classes to move into gated communities and be safer from the rabble of urban life. Since they were farther away in the vast fields of America we’d let the large farmers do their own thing as small operators were gradually removed from the land. And we had the tax codes to help. The Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United ruling was designed to assure that the under classes might be kept under control by the political mighty while the rich grew richer. They might have chosen instead to empower us to create.
I would like us to return our attention towards the smarts you get by making things yourself and at the very least, having things made by others in your own communities… the glorious by-product of community growth. Even when making mistakes, large or small, and then admitting them and going to plan B, you’re learning and thus making the world a better place.
You don’t even have to be all that cerebral to see it. When an artisan goes to work, shaping materials into more useful forms, they learn to do things faster, better and smarter as skill creeps into their own hands and minds. They become proud of the things they have made and want to show them to others, not only because they may have value but also use. The making of useful beauty ought to be the clarion call of our times. And if we were to value the rightly made things, we would better value the artisans and their labors, seeing in them the growth of our communities and economic success. For even if you never are required to lift a finger in your own behalf you are indebted to those who have made the many things that occupy your own life and give it greater meaning. Would it not be best to have supported your own community instead of just your own fat ass.
The idea that we’ll have our things made cheaply in by people in China, doesn’t make much sense when we know that we could have an impact on our own neighborhoods and ourselves by making beautiful things and when we begin to think beyond dollars and return to common sense.
It’s not about the money, folks. The real value is in each other, and in our communities and environment. When we act local as though we each matter, tariffs or no tariffs, Trump or no Trump, we begin to take economic matters into our own hands.
Make, fix and create...
Well said!
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