Philosophical

Essays concerning concepts and thoughts regarding metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics

Soliloquy on Shortcuts

I’m not sure about this, but it would be my guess that human beings have been looking for easier ways to do things since the dawning of human intelligence. I can almost imagine the ideas trickling into the head of Homo habilis’ as they foraged and hunted.However, I’m not sure that our early ancestors looked for shortcuts per say to their daily required chores and tasks. There is a difference between making life easier and taking shortcuts, that is. Again, I’m not sure about this, this is an informal blog after all, but it seems that making life easier transformed into taking shortcuts some time in the recent past.

The differences between making life easier and taking shortcuts at first glance seems little. But consider it for a while. First, taking a shortcut to make your life easier implies the loss of something integral to who you are, what you can be, your integrity, perhaps your honesty. Secondly, a shortcut is negative and does not help and actually hinders in the long run. Lastly, taking shortcuts by no means makes your life easier. Making your life easier, on the other hand, by taking a shortcut does not necessarily imply the loss of anything, but actually can add to knowledge, add to who you are, what you can be, is not negative, and finally does not hinder you in the long run.

Often we take shortcuts because we think they will lead us more quickly to ease and comfort. Consider what acting on the belief that ease and comfort are innately good has gotten us today: industrial food, global economies, degrees for jobs, divorce, employment rather than careers, luxury but empty moralities, and the latest and greatest (fill in the blank). On the other hand growing your own food, buying locally, going to school to really learn something, sticking out hard times with someone you love, starting up a business based upon something you love to do, not supporting businesses that you know to be immoral, and bucking fads are all very difficult to do but they are well worth the effort; these are not shortcuts but complications. Sometimes comfort is your enemy and easy is not best; it is important to know the difference.

Shortcuts are either realizations or illusions. Taking a shortcut in order to make your life easier is creating something imaginary, something that really does not exist; making your life easier by taking a short cut is noticing reality and using it to your advantage. The first asks nothing of you and gives you nothing in return. The latter asks that you notice your surroundings and understand them. The first is motivated by ease and comfort for their own sakes, the latter is motivated by intelligence, curiosity and efficiency. The first tries to cheat reality while the latter tries to understand it.

There is an old moral adage that states that once we have knowledge of our wrong-doing then we also have the duty to change how we act. Taking a shortcut to make your life easier is somewhat different than this old adage. It, in essence, states: once we have knowledge, disregard what we know and act in any way we see fit. But I do not believe that is possible without lying to ourselves.

Unfortunately, lying to ourselves is precisely what most of us are doing as a society. We all do it and we all take shortcuts to make our lives easier. This is short-term gain at the cost of long-term happiness. I believe we know this too, and yet we continue hoping that somehow this short-cut that we have created will lead us back to the original path, the path that we ought to have never left. It will not I am afraid lead us anywhere until we being to realize that making our lives easier is really not what we want at all but rather we want to make our lives more meaningful; and there is no shortcut to that.

Buddhist Bees

I worry about bees these days. I know that I don’t need to, but I do. I enjoy watching them move about the Nanking Cherry bush; I enjoy listening to them and trying to pick the Italians from the Carniolans. The day that I am doing this is sunny and the clouds are lingering. The bees are busy doing bee things and I am busy brewing beer and…worrying about tomorrow. That’s how we humans are: we worry about things that we have no control over. The bees cannot worry about tomorrow and I wonder if they would even if they could.

You see I am told that the next day will bring snow, a cold snap that is normal for this time of year in Colorado. I also know that temperatures below app. Fifty degrees become problematic for bees. They cannot move, forage, and must huddle together in their hive keeping their brood and each other warm. The difference, I realize, is that I am busy worrying about the future and the bees are busy doing what needs to be done at this very moment. There is a religious irony here somewhere. The Buddhist religion’s basic claim is that there is no other reality than the present. The bees act like Buddhists while we think about Buddhism.

While I’m watching the bees I hear my wort (unfermented beer) begin to boil over: a watched pot will never boil, but one that is forgotten, well that’s another story. I am not minding my own business while the bees mind theirs. I am worried about the bee’s future while the bees are busy with their present business. Somehow none of it makes sense, but that is Buddhism, and the bees being the Buddhists that they are, are not aware. I am aware and run back to the pot.

There are other ironies involves but the whole business gets complicated. I complicate my life by worrying about the future; the bees simplify theirs by doing what needs to be done in the present. I’ve seen a whole hive dead from starvation which is not a pretty sight, “butts in the air” as beekeepers say, the abdomens of the bees sticking out from the honeycombs as the bees searched for food in the bottoms of the combs. My heart drops and I get a twist in my gut. However, I’m pretty sure that even at death’s door, the dead bees lived in the present.

That’s how all of nature is and I begin to wonder if it is the idea, the concept of the future that separates we humans from nature more than anything else? Nature has no future, in fact the future doesn’t exist, but we create the future and then (what else?) worry about it. There is a philosophical argument here: we are free but the bees are not: driven by genetics the bees act accordingly. But I’m not sure that the payoff is worth it. We are not as free as we believe ourselves to be. Do we choose to worry about the future, or are we preprogrammed to do so? What would you do if you could?

The bees have no such thoughts and they are beautiful because of it. I get my wort under control and wander back to the cherry bush. I look at my empty garden, and the fruit bushes getting ready to bloom, the birdhouse I built still empty, and notice the robins in the juniper bush in the back corner; I see the bucket of water left out for the fox and my eyes glance at the new garlic plants, and I remember that I need to water the seedlings in the workshop. All the while, the bees move methodically from flower to flower, gathering pollen, being a bee.

Garden Variety Philosophy

I’m relatively new to gardening, and like most people the idea of gardening conjures up numerous images. First of course is the image of an overflowing abundance of plants popping with vegetables, fruits and flowers. Secondly, tools come to mind: the shovel, the rake, the hoe, the tiller. And perhaps the shape and color of the garden: should it be square, circular, and what about the soil? What is humus? Gardeners such as myself probably spend hours contemplating odd things such as these and the seeds…the seeds. The spacing of the seeds seems to be all-important according to some books, and in others it is the soil that the seeds are planted in; raised beds, rows, grouping: the list goes on. Both the questions and the answers seem endless, but all I want to do is to plant a garden.

One of the activities of gardening that I simply do not like is the pulling up of seedlings that are un-needed, or deemed lesser. Somehow it seems that I am killing an innocent, but gardening is like that. Gardening seems like an innocent endeavor, but the details prove it to be otherwise. To be a gardener, one must be ruthless in a sense. But this ruthlessness seems out of place in an activity that seems so peaceful. To be a gardener one must be both a mother and a warlord.

I look at the garden in the winter, covered in leaves, mulch and manure with its light brown, dusky color and imagine its future. Then I remember the aphids and the beetles that I fought valiantly with the year before, losing battles while hoping to win the war. I like to think of the garden as a way of giving, of helping the world, and the earth itself; planting and eating my own food. But, I also demand of the soil to produce and tear at the earth with the tools of the trade leaving it brown and uncovered, only to cover it again with remnants of what I previously took from it.

Then Spring comes and a renewed belief that what I do is good. Watching the seeds germinate under the plant light, the warming mat keeping the tomatoes and peppers warm on cool nights. The plans are laid and the seeds bought, I feel the heavy load of work to come which is the love and loathing of gardening. Such a simple task gardening and one that is directly related to being human. The garden represents change and consistency, husbandry and freedom.

And so the garden is a dichotomy of terms and ideas. But there is an underlying foundation to all gardens and this has much to do with why we garden. People garden for different reasons, but somehow those different reasons are more similar than not: curiosity, the desire for independence, love of nature. One is not a gardener for long if one is not curious about the plants, the earth that they are planted in, and the correlations between all life including the garden itself. Most of us speak of our independence, but until you can feed yourself, your independence is an illusion. Also, while gardening seems to be a process that brings order to an otherwise un-orderly natural environment, gardening puts us in touch with that very nature: we get our hands dirty and learn what our precious plants need in order to give us what we desire.

There is so much in a garden, philosophically, physically, and psychologically. A garden can be conceptual, representing a form of beauty or utility; maybe both. Gardening is most definitely a physical thing that demands physical work. And a garden demands of the garden a certain presence of mind and a drive to perhaps complicate your life. A garden can also be poetic with running rhymes strewn throughout with symbols of pleasure.

I think that in the end what truly defines a gardener is the reason that we each do it. A garden symbolizes what we want from life and our willingness to work to get it. But in the end, to garden is to realize that we are part of the nature that unfortunately we have spent much time and energy alienated ourselves from. The reason, I believe, that we garden is that it gives us a sense of belonging to a world that is far greater than ourselves. Just like our civilizations and societies, a garden gives us the illusion of control. But, just like the plants in the garden, we grow, live and we die. The garden reminds us that that is life, and that we are simply part of that thing that we so often take for granted, all started from a seed and some soil.

Local Globalism

Globalism is a word that I’ve never been comfortable with. Like the new age term “holism” it seems to be an umbrella term for unproven methods and wishful thinking. In the end, globalism becomes meaningless as well as dangerous because it can be defined and used as justification for anything and everything. We cannot be individuals in such a context, but must give ourselves over to the whole, and we do so at our own peril.

For most of us, life comes in bits and pieces, but we are told that we live in global communities and are a part of a global economy. Paradoxically, we have come to rely upon a global network to define us as individuals through paradigms such as Facebook, Twitter and a host of other virtual, global “communities”. We act globally while believing that we are part of individual communities. We have come to understand the whole in the contexts in which we live, but the context in which we live is defined by the whole. We cannot continue thinking locally while acting globally. We must do the opposite: think globally and act locally.

Communities that are defined by global economies seem separate from one another, but are in fact a part of a holistic phenomenon; they have a global effect. The consequent of realizing that our actions as a community have direct consequences on the communities that surround us and eventually on those that only seem disconnected from our own will eventually force us to act locally. Oddly enough, I do not believe that there is disconnect between the idea of a global community and individual support of our own communities. We must act on a local level for the sake of global health of the planet.

The irony of this of course is that the continued globalization of our individual communities is the very thing that keeps us from supporting those individual communities. There is an understanding between two people that barter, buy or support each other’s community, that eat food grown or raised locally, that is not only missing but is utterly destroyed when bartering and buying and eating on a global scale. Globalization of these traditionally local and often intimate acts has the detrimental consequence of disassociating us from the tools we use, the homes we live in, the economies we support, the food we eat and the communities that we are all a part of. The relationship between these things, the people who make them, and those who we buy them from is a necessary and important one that define who we are as individuals; it gives us purpose and meaning outside of simply pure consumption.

The cost of globalization has been studied and analyzed from many different angles, but I believe that one angle is oddly missing: does the globalization of our lives and the communities that we live in make us happier? I would argue that globalization most certainly makes our lives easier, but happier? Perhaps the highest cost of thinking and acting globally has not been the quantity of our happiness (the ease of living life), but the quality of our happiness (living life). The globalization of our communities continues to take a toll on our planet, our food and our communities but perhaps the greatest toll for humanity is the universal loss of understanding that there is a difference between the quantity of happiness that we have and the quality of happiness that we all desire as individuals.

The Garden

This time of year is difficult for the gardener. It is that time when the first seeds are put into trays and put under lights to “extend the season” as we say around here. I am no different. I have my onion sets, my kale, hyssop and lemon mint (for the bees) already going. I just put up trays of peppers and tomatoes in my workshop where they are protected from the cold-swings outside. This time of year reminds me of something that I typically don’t like to be reminded of: that I have no patience.

But patience is what it takes to succeed. Patience to remember because “All good human work remembers its history” as Wendell Berry writes, and patience to realize that all that we desire will not be fulfilled. Gardening, and all that it stands for is a pleasant but often stern reminder that we lack the very thing that we need the most; that is, the patience to truly understand that it is not necessary to always get what we want. Philosophy is an endeavor that is very closely related to gardening.

Philosophy is directly translated as “ philo-sophia: the love of wisdom”, and wisdom takes patience just as growing food takes patience. There are those that understand this such as John Seymour, Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry and others. But in doing philosophy, one soon comes to understand that the first step in being a philosopher is to recognize one’s own limitations, called ignorance. The gardener soon comes to realize their ignorance by recognizing microclimates, soil and the plants themselves among many other things. This process of recognizing and further more accepting one’s own ignorance takes patience whether that is with regard to gardening or to understanding philosophical concepts. The trick is to recognize our limitations, overcome our ignorance and have the curiosity to realize that doing so is important. That takes patience.

To become patient takes discipline. Berry writes, “Correct discipline cannot be hurried, for it is both the knowledge of what ought [italics mine] to be done, and the willingness to do it.” (People, Land, and Community) There is an “ought” to the correct discipline, and it is in this aspect that we have lost our way. We “ought” not take advantage of each other and we “ought” not treat the environment as a source of raw material and a place to cast our trash. We can and we do, but we ought not to.

We have lost our way but in doing so, we become aware that we have lost our way. From this point it will take time, and with that cost comes the necessity of correct discipline and patience to adjust ourselves to the ignorance that has engrossed us. Our curiosity has led us down paths unimaginable. We have created environments and introduced changes that were far beyond most people’s wildest dreams a mere fifty years ago. Our curiosity alone, however, has proven to be problematic because we have not had the patience to learn how to use it. A garden can put your curiosity back on track; it can teach us what we ought to do with the time that we have.

Rather than a philosopher that happens to garden, my garden has become a simple reminder of what it takes to be a philosopher: correct discipline, correct curiosity and the patience to tell the difference. It reminds me that I have limitations that I must live within or pay the price for not doing so. It reminds me that I am dependent upon people that I do not know and processes that I am not aware of nor have control over, and that I have a choice to change these problematic realities. My garden reminds me that I have yet to gain the patience that I need in order to gain the knowledge that I must have. My garden reminds me that I have time that I must take, that I must be patient to do so, and that I must take the time to realize that.

The Freedom of Bread

I bake bread most every weekend. The smell of fresh baked bread in the house is one of those pleasures that can only truly be experienced if you’ve had your own hands in the dough, rolling it out, kneading it, feeling its warmth. I don’t use a bread machine, but a big mixer and my own hands. I use my own vegetables (squash mostly) in the dough as well as the spent grain from the beer I brew. I do this for many reasons, but mostly the bread feeds me, but also and perhaps most importantly, my curiosity.

Baking bread is one of the human endeavors that separate us from other animals and bread is one of those few cooking endeavors that brings to life rather than takes life from the things that we cook (to paraphrase Michael Pollan [Cooked]). I’m not quite sure why, but bread-making is not only useful, educational and fun, but it is also as addicting as it is necessary. That first mouthful of warm, wheaty bread is a luxury; the taste is exquisite. But, it is not in the eating of the bread that the imagination takes flight, but rather in the making of the bread that mind finds solace.

There are hundreds if not thousands of recipes for bread that can be easily found, and I’ve tried a few, but the bread I bake is best when I simply poke my fingers in the dough before letting it rise the first time, adding flour or water as I see fit. The best bread I bake is that bread that I scoop out of the bowl and watch the filaments of gluten and protein strands stretch and break. Life from water, yeast and flour somehow gives life to mind, body and imagination. This is, realize, all symbolic for something greater than bread. I do bake bread, but I also garden, and am about to embark on beekeeping. These all symbolize the same concept: freedom.

I am often reminded by many that I tell these things to that “it doesn’t pay”, and that “why do it when it is so easy to ‘just go buy it’.” But to me, their words ring empty. I answer, “Why just go buy it when you can just do it yourself?” Their only answer seems to be that “It is easier.” But, I ask, why is “easier” better? Is it better bread? Do you learn from it? Are you freer? For a while I couldn’t understand why it seemed that so many people became defensive when I talked about doing things rather than buying things, but then it dawned on me: baking bread, keeping bees, gardening, brewing beer; doing things symbolizes what we all believe that we have, but also reminds us that we often don’t actually have it and how difficult it is to achieve.

Baking bread comes at a cost. Now that I bake bread, I want to make my own yeast strains, grow and thrash my own wheat; in short, become self-sufficient. I have learned that while “easy” comes at a cost, so does freedom. There are limits to what we can do, and there are limits to how free we can become. Aristotle defines a virtuous life as one lived intellectually with intention. This, he claimed, will lead the virtuous man to Happiness (Eudamonia), but in order to achieve this Happiness one must realize one’s limitations. In other words, the road to freedom is paved with many un-risen loaves, but of course you can always compost them!

The Mediocre World

I don’t believe anyone makes it a goal to be mediocre, but somehow it seems that so many people have accepted mediocrity as the norm. If none of us make mediocrity a goal, then how is mediocrity a norm? There are some possible answers to this somewhat rhetorical question. First, mediocrity is not the norm. Secondly, mediocrity is the norm because most people lower their expectations of themselves and then others. Lastly, we are simply defining the normal state of affairs as mediocre. I am a philosopher at heart, but I also realize that philosophical analysis (a love of mine) is not necessarily a love of others. Therefore, I will use an analogy (is this the entrance to mediocrity?) of beer to make my point.

First, perhaps mediocrity is not the norm. For most of this nation’s (USA) history, micro brewing was the norm until the likes of Adolphus Busch created Budweiser in 1876. When beer-making met with the industrial revolution, mediocre beer was born. But what is mediocre beer? If Budweiser is mediocre beer, then mediocrity is the lack of local specialty, a high level of consistency at the cost of special considerations, and a product made for a reason other than the reason for the product; this last one is interesting: Budweiser (it can be argued) is not made for the love of beer, but for the love of profit as its sell to In-Bev has proven. If this is truly the definition of mediocrity, than it is a hard argument to make that mediocrity is not the norm. All, including Sam Adams (the largest of microbreweries) microbreweries make up a whopping 5% (app.) of all beer sales. It would seem that most people are being sold a bill of goods called mediocrity.

Secondly, perhaps mediocrity is the norm but only because people have lowered the expectations they have of themselves and others. This is sad, but seems to be more often true than not. However, back to beer! Budweiser has outsold its nearest competitor by a long shot until recently. This could have two implications: that people have raised their expectations of themselves, or that mediocrity (in beer at least) is shifting from Budweiser to something else; that something else being microbreweries since they are they only growing beer-market currently. But beer snobs consistent point to all of the mediocre beer drinkers (translated as Bud, Coors etc…) as mediocre and themselves as having higher standards of beer tastes. This has serious implications for us beer snobs! This reason seems to fail as more and more micro and nano-breweries pop up across the nation. Both drinkers and brewers seem to be expecting more and more from themselves and others. However, this may not be the whole story.

Lastly, maybe we are simply defining normality in a way that lends itself to mediocrity? Budweiser was the most “normal” choice of beer drinkers for decades, and now it seems that as a nation we are beginning to define “normal” choices of beers as micro brewed concoctions. There is a caveat to this line of thinking… PBR. Pabst seems to have made a comeback with those “in the know”, but let’s face it: Pabst is not a good beer. Bland, unmistakably lacking in any special characteristic, highly consistent and certainly not brewed for the love of beer Pabst is a staple at most bars that make it their business to cater to the “in” crowd, a crowd that consistently does not deem themselves as the “norm”.

So where does this leave us? With beer? With mediocrity? Well… I don’t believe anyone makes it a goal to be mediocre, but somehow it seems that when enough people accept something as normal, that thing becomes mediocre, and those that accept it become mediocre. I think that this is the fault of those people that accept the thing as well as the fault of those people who try to fill that desire. I define “Truth” as a relationship between the idea of a thing and the thing itself (sorry for the philosophy?). In that case, perhaps mediocrity is simply a low-quality relationship or understanding? I’m sure that Budweiser didn’t start out as a mediocre, bland tasting concoction, but as Adolphus realized the riches to be had brewing his beer, his reasons for brewing Budweiser changed and with it the quality of the relationship between the idea of Budweiser and the beer itself? Maybe he gave up on his ideal of beer in order to make a buck or a billion? Maybe to be a true beer snob and not just another snob, one must truly love, study, taste and understand beer, and when we brew (or drink) for a reason other than that, we become mediocre? If that is the case, then even us mediocre home brewers are making nothing but amazing, love-filled bottles of bliss. Cheers!

The Roadmap of a Face

A man’s face is the roadmap of his life. Following the lines that crease his skin and furrow his features, anyone can see the effects of events and situations that he has visited, that he has lived through, endured and enjoyed. They come with time because it takes time to make such trips, such maps. Time drips upon him slowly. He looks at himself in a mirror and then his face, mocked with signposts of his life, becomes his past as he worries about, as he looks forward to his future; and the lines are drawn. Pain and pleasure, resentment and contentment, fear and folly draw the map. It continuously gets drawn and each line and mark is different, they are never the same. The map left on each our faces, and there is one in each moment of our lives that is drawn however subtle, however deep is the map of our future. The young face is like a moon-pie, smooth and devoid of life that has not yet touched it.

Truth changes, foundations falter; importance turns to triviality, happiness and disappointment share the same bed. Life teaches us these things and maps are drawn so we know how to get back in order to have the chance to learn the lessons that living has taught us, however way we choose to live. We many times call these lines the ravages of time but they are really the roadmaps of our faces. Roads that we have taken, that we have chosen with the time that we have, that we think we might still have are all carefully drawn with the knives of each of our decisions.

If we could hover over our own lives we would perhaps see the landscape, some parts cracked and dry and some parts lush and green. Some ways cross, some don’t but there is always room for more until the horizon. Life is a verb, not a noun. Look in a mirror and see where you have been. Look in a mirror and see who you are. Follow the roads you have built and look for new ones to build or wait for what comes.

The map will be drawn regardless of what we do or do not do; regardless of what we choose or do not choose; regardless if we desire it to be, or fight the inevitable: change, the cartographer, is the only consistent. The unknown to the cartographer is nothing more than a blank page awaiting the legend, orientation, neat-line and title; the topography unknown because the landscape is yet to be drawn; places not envisioned or visited. The crow’s feet around the eyes remind us of past perspectives, the wrinkles in the forehead of contemplative comings. The smile lines around the corners of our mouths bring back periods of pleasure, of happiness, of joy.

Bitterness, sadness and anger are all there as well; part of the landscape; islands of ire, flows of frustration, mountains of madness. They too are part of the map and deserve a place, a path-line on the compass. The fear, the doubt, the joy, the love, the bitter and sweet are all there. What will be the next road you draw? What will be the topography of your face; the roadmap of your past?

The Power of Empowerment

Two discussions that I had this last week sparked me to consider the difference between the concept of power and the concept of empowerment; the first being dependent upon someone or something, the latter being independent of anything other than self. In one discussion I came to realize or perhaps believe that the person that I was talking to was fearful of losing power and seemed to perceive me as desiring to, and capable of, taking it. I realized that the problem with her premise was that I did not desire what she and I both perceived as power, and so this left her powerless. The second discussion, happening afterwards, concerned my desire for self-reliance and realizing that such a life is not possible through being powerful, but of being empowered. That is, willing to be and realizing the capacity in yourself of being self-sufficient.

This differentiation of empowerment from power led me to several conclusions. First, the two terms are not interchangeable, but are related. Secondly, that the two terms are often misused. Also that empowerment, rather than power, is what most of us want perhaps without knowing it. This is all well and good, but what does it matter? The explanation as to why these questions are important (as the importance most often does lay in the question rather than the answer) is happiness in the Greek “eudemonia” sense of the word. I’ll take each point in its turn, with an example to boot.

First, power and empowerment are not interchangeable but are related. To empower yourself can be as simple as learning how to cook or fix something, or being capable of biking 50 or 100 miles, or running 25 miles: self-respect and responsibility for self no matter what. Empowerment is a realization of both your limits and capacity. Power, on the other hand, is the realization of capacity alone; to realize that you can decide for others, over others, and sometimes without having to consider others and do so without limits simply because you can. Power is the acquisition of capacity without realizing your limits; the typical Hegelian master-slave dichotomy.

So empowerment is self-contained and self-willed power while power is relative to and other-willed perception. Empowerment and power are not interchangeable, but are often misused, and so an example. I have often discussed my disdain for the feminist movement, and have been met with female irritation and ire. I explain, however, that my disdain is not for the movement of equal rights for everyone including women (rights being a form of power), but with the belief that with being given rights anyone is empowered or for that matter equal: they are not. Feminism is not about empowerment (the realization of limitations and capacities), as those in the movement often claim, but about power (capacities alone). If the movement was about empowering people (not just women), then there would not be a movement at all, but rather a wholesale move towards educating, learning and becoming independent of any movements at all no matter gender (using this example) by all in society. Of course, there are numerous examples and objections: maybe such movements are simply a process to help empower those involved? Some people are not interested in equal rights for all; but my point is made here.

While people of all colors, genders, stations and cultures seem to demand the power to change society’s claims on them, I believe that they are barking up the wrong tree so to speak. Their demand from others is a form of power rather than empowerment. However, I do not believe that the demand is for power; unfortunately many of us look to others for acknowledgement, respect and embrace. The demand from those that seek social and cultural changes are demands of empowerment, but asking society to “give” empowerment to you is akin to the belief that simply signing up for a class in college makes you smarter: it does not, and empowerment cannot be given by anyone other than yourself.

While power-struggles continue around the world, I would argue that the struggle for empowerment is to continuously transpire in each of us rather than the whole. While lobbyist and special-interest groups vie for political and social positions, we each of us ought to learn self-respect and self-reliance as much as those things are possible at all. We live in a world where power is esteemed and empowerment is often disparaged by whomever the “others” are. But for those who strive for empowerment to revere and strive for power is to enslave yourself to the very thing that you are rallying against: a master.

It is not the Knowing that is Difficult, but the Doing

There is something about physical labor that is freeing to the mind. It puts us in contact with the reality, that which does not bend to our will, and forces us to accept it as it is: there is no religion of real work. Physical labor is a process of learning: about one’s self and the reality in which we live; nothing else. Nothing else can do the trick.

Physical labor is often thought to be mindless, but only if the laborer does not take the time to think about what his hands are doing and perhaps more importantly: why. It is then that thinking becomes a physical act. It is one thing to wake up in the morning tired and sore from a day’s work only to add to your weekly paycheck by doing yet more labor; it is another thing altogether to wake up from a day’s work tired and sore in order to solve a puzzle that your mind has spent the night pondering and your hands have awaited to begin, to finish a task, an objective, or to do a job better because of what you’ve learned the last time you’ve tried.

Having the right tool for the task is of utmost importance and with experience the laborer learns that money spent for good tools is an imperative. Many days have been spent doing something “the hard way” only to save a dollar or two. That saw stand or speed square is well worth the money spent! But so is the time spent understanding why, why we are doing the work, and how it works. There are old aphorisms having to do with the right tool such as “Measure twice, and cut once.” My favorite is, “It is not the knowing that is difficult, but the doing.” Both of these sayings refer to the same tool.

Unfortunately in our society physical labor seems to be almost scorned (contractors will evidently spend eternity together with lawyers in one of Dante’s lower circles of hell), but I believe this scorn is wrongly placed. As with any quarter, there are good and bad: there are good and bad teachers, housewives, businessmen, and of course contractors: physical laborers. I believe the frustration felt by many with regard to contractors is not because they are physical laborers, but because they are injudicious with the most important tool that anyone, especially a physical laborer can use: their mind.

Physical labor is not a blind allegiance to a paycheck or to a client or to one’s body. Physical labor is not an act of mindlessness, but of “doing” with the mind. If there is scorn to be had, it is for any act done mindlessly. Physical labor in its highest form is craftsmanship and craftsmanship demands intellect. In The Republic, Plato writes that of the philosopher king that physical and mental agility is equally important. This is something that our societies have seemingly forgotten.

Waxing philosophically… To work physically, frees the body from the confines of physical ineptness and to work mindfully, the mind from mental conformity. To envision an object and watch it as it becomes reality honed from the mind is truly a human endeavor; to be free and capable of doing such an act is to be truly human: the transfiguration from thought to truth.

There is no metaphysic in physical labor, and therefore no excuses: no fideistic approaches. Even if you cannot understand the underlying aspects of a quality house, a goodly built barn or a well-tended garden, you have the capacity to understand that these things are important. There is something wrong about accepting less, about expecting less from our fellow human beings and ourselves. Even when we do not understand what it took to build a thing, we know a quality when we see it; we almost feel it in our bones.

Even in an age when a thing such as the so-called “McMansion” (which is not a product of physical labor, but of profit and employment: a product) is accepted as a quality by the many, the craftsmanship of physical labor will live on in that itching feeling of discontent that fills our hearts as we watch our land fill with the consequences: suburban sprawl and when we surround ourselves with McThings; it is the lack of craftsmanship that reminds us that the physical labor that we see and live in is mindless and lacking any quality. But, it is the physical labor of craftsmanship that reminds us that we are human, able to think and choose to be better rather than simply more.

The Armchair Philosopher

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