We will be okay
But how okay are we talking?
On occasion, I’ll receive pushback on what I write here or elsewhere that goes something like, “Society changes. Some things become irrelevant and new things become relevant. Some tools disappear, novel tools or new forms of a tool come into existence. Some jobs and economies disappear, new jobs and economies take their place. We have always survived and we will this time too.” Indeed! It’s a fair reminder and one that, I think, speaks to the Chicken Little mentality that tends to infect the circles I find myself running in (which I could not clearly define for you if I had a gun held to my head, but I’d probably reach for “techno-skeptics” or “manual labor apologists” or “skilled practice enjoyers” or some such descriptor). We need to be reminded that in spite of the changing material culture, the fluctuating markets, and all the accretions and deletions that happen around us moment-by-moment—we’ll be okay.
And yet, true as it is, I can’t escape the sense that “okay” is a spectrum, and that I’d really like the most amount of people possible to come out at the highest rather than the lowest end of this spectrum. Humans can survive all sorts of adverse conditions—famine, drought, war, disease—and reorder their lives as necessary. There is a certain inevitability to it. We are going to suffer and we are going to make it through. I may not. You may not. But we will. And insofar as we have a choice as to what we must suffer (an astonishingly narrow selection, admittedly), I wonder whether we can be a little choosier? Whether we can stack the societal deck such that we come out okayer?
A mutual quote-tweeted this picture on Twitter (sorry Elon, still not calling it “X”):
What he said in the quote-tweet was on the present topic. He wrote, “People complain that technological developments will end certain jobs. I tend to think we’ll be okay.” I’ve thought recently about how people often desire to return to an era, the nostalgic longing for a crystalline, pure Moment that, should we turn the clocks back to it, would restore to us the Way Things Ought to Be. I see this idea come up in conversations ranging from Church denominations to Western Civilization to American history to sports. Even plumbing has its own version of this, often visible in comment sections under a video of someone using press technology or installing PEX. It’s understandable, but not possible. We can never Retvrn. Not really. The proverbial genie is out of the bottle and there’s not unrubbing the lamp and getting him back in. So my response to the quote-tweet was to this effect, that forward is the only way and with varying levels of continuity or discontinuity with what came before.
Then my friend
said this:
And this, dear reader, is my concern. As much as I may like them, I’m not so concerned with particular industries, particular jobs, or particular tools disappearing. I’m not so concerned with whether there is a society on the other side of changes large or small, miniscule or cataclysmic. There will be. I’m concerned with ways of life. I said earlier that “we” will be okay, but how okay will “we” be? Or, what sort of “we” will we then be? Will we be a “we” that we still recognize? When I advocate for manual labor, or when I express skepticism at glass-screened smart devices that create their own centers of gravity designed to draw our thoughts and activities and faculties into their orbit, I am not primarily advocating for a particular economic mode over another or for one color of collar over the other or for no technology over technology. I am attempting to articulate and advocate for a way of life.
Take, for one small example, wool-waulking. Purely in terms of utility, it is a method by which freshly woven woolen tweed is finished. This finishing process, along with the rest of the manufacture, can now be done by automated machines. But what is sacrificed when relinquishing the production of Harris Tweed to the machines of industry? Wool-waulking might be what philosopher Albert Borgmann calls a focal practice, “the decided, regular, and normally communal devotion to a focal thing.” In this case, the focal thing is the tweed, and the communal practice is waulking: a process of soaking, thumping, shrinking, and softening at the hands (and sometimes feet) of Scottish women. As I understand it, when tweed comes off the loom it is still quite stiff and the weave quite loose. Two things help with this: soaking it in household ammonia (i.e. stale urine) and rhythmically pounding the pulp out of it. The ammonia softened and made the fabric amenable to dye, and the pounding would loosen the wool fibers to fill in the weave. This final stage of producing the homespun woolen cloth was infused with song, chatter, and laughter. You can see a clip from YouTube below, recorded in 1941. Wool-waulking can still be found in the Scottish Hebrides, but only in the same way that you’ll often find looms and spinning wheels at Renaissance Festivals—as a preservation of something ancient, like a living museum piece, rather than as a focal practice that still holds wider communal value. Wool-waulking was only the final piece of producing tweed. Elsewhere in a given village or town would be the other stages of manufacture with its techniques and traditions.
This is what is relinquished. Not merely a mode of textile production, but something like a way of life, endemic to which is the personal satisfaction that comes with skill; physical activity that gives the body mobility and health; laughter and song that brings the soul the same; a sense of identity with one’s laboring community, yes, but also with the wider community— “You look lovely, Doris! I helped to make that tweed you’re wearing last week.”
Forms of this still exist, of course. Every time my family passes a fleet vehicle belonging to my employer, my daughter will point at it and say, “Look, daddy, its your company! Are you thrilled?!” It’s a bit of running gag at this point. It’s nice to be able to point to a billboard or a work truck and see represented in the brand identity a partial reflection of my own contributions to the local market. But as any craftsman will tell you, there’s a significant difference between abstractly associating with a brand and being able to point and say, “Yeah, I worked in that neighborhood,” or even better, to put your hand on an item and proclaim, “I built this.” This is to say nothing of the tradition of craft that one learns and lives in, the yardtalk that is exchanged in the workshop and the relationships engendered thereby, the way one develops and uses their body in the execution of the work, the way those skills translate to other domains of human need, the virtue cultivated by the work, and more.
If this still slumps a little too far to the saccharine side for you, consider the following quote. At their new Substack,
, my aforementioned friend Brandon and co-author Grant write,The modern workplace, however, increasingly strips from the worker any ability to exercise agency and develop skill. Think of a worker in an industrial bakery. Their job primarily consists of programming a computer to start a standardized process in which they never touch water, flour, and salt.1
It’s not that bread isn’t getting made. Indeed, more bread is being made than ever. And it’s not that Fred can’t see Tom a station or two away, because they likely can. But what do they have to discuss? What song have they to sing? When will Fred walk into a neighbor’s house and say, “Hey, I made that loaf”? I posted this Note on Substack…
…to which someone responded that their work in industrial automation was at turns equally as frustrating and rewarding as other trade work they have done. I want to make clear that when I critique industrialization, I do not mean to take away the competence of the competent. To my commenter’s point, the work of the technician engaged in the art of diagnostics is deeply satisfying, whatever the industry. Narrowly conceived, this role can be a rewarding one. But what of the wider social ecology that the role is couched in?
Last week I offered my first-ever industry consultation to a fella we’ll call Josh. Josh is looking to leave software behind and, after fifteen years of thinking about it, take the plunge into a blue collar career. Part of the discussion was that as far as software design goes, it has a definite telos; that, like physical machinery, there’s no getting cute with words to reframe the problem as not a problem—what you’ve built/repaired either works or it doesn’t. In that sense, there’s a satisfaction similar to my commenting industrial technician. But something came up that surprised me: his physical posture. “On Zoom calls you’ll see bars and dumbells in the background,” Josh told me, “but I don’t want to have to stop my work to go lift.”
Unlike wool-waulking, Josh’s career skews sedentary. If he wants to be physical? Well, he can choose to be, just not in a way that is natural to his digital labor. If he wants to chat with a coworker? He can reach out to them via video call, but the element of serendipity is largely missing; chance meetings in the shop or the office can’t happen. Fitness and community, endemic to certain kinds of work, are not to be found in what he currently does. Instead there is a fracturing of his faculties, and each one must individually be made (or not) its own priority, given its own weight and due consideration and time on the calendar. It’s exhausting. His choice of work has significantly shaped his way of life, and he’s discovering that he’d quite like a different one if possible. Josh has realized what more and more are realizing, that a different way of life might require a different career entirely, one that better accounts for whole people.
So when I offer critiques of technology or pump up the trades, what I am really advocating for is a way. Not a job taken in isolation, but a kind of comprehensive existence that addresses not only the many facets of a single individual, but the many individuals that constitute a community. Tools come and go; economies rise and fall; communities grow thin and thicken again. The iceman has indeed gone extinct, and Kenmore refrigerators have taken his place. Over night, whaling disappeared and the seaside villages that were home to whalers were forced to pivot. And look: we’re still alive. Displacements and replacements and new placements will continue to happen. We will arrive in time to the other side of every fluctuation and we will be okay. But just how okay are we talking? And by the careful consideration of our tools, our jobs, and the social fabrics that are woven by them, can we tip the scales towards arriving at the higher end of the okay spectrum?
A couple of things come to mind while reading this...first, on icemen. It's not just the job that was lost; it was also the skill at making ice even in the summer without refrigeration. Have you ever seen the cold air dams in the mountains they used to build to funnel the sinking nighttime cold air into a valley, and ultimately to a pond from which the ice that formed was harvested each morning? How many people today would even think of doing that if they didn't have a refrigerator?
On your idea of collective interaction being important even in non-physical tasks, it reminds me of a story my father-in-law told me. He was a Boeing engineer, and in the days of punch-card computing they used to stand in line at the computer, feed in their cards, then go stand in another line to get their cards and print outs. Some manager decided it would be more efficient to have them drop their cars off in a box; an intern would then feed the cards for them, and put the cards and printouts in another box they could pick up later. After they implemented this system productivity went way, way down and they re-instituted the old system. Why? Turns out that while waiting in line all the engineers would discuss what they were working on and help solve each other's problems that they were stuck on! That casual interaction was vital to doing the work!
Efficiency isn't everything.
C. S. Lewis, in his space trilogy makes this very point. Weston and the other "bad guys" are intent on using technology to secure the survival of "our species" at the expense of all other species. Even if "our species" evolves through the technology into something monstrous. The hero Ransom is a philologist, not a tradesman, but he is concerned to preserve, not merely the species, but the human values of courage, love, communication, truth, beauty, respect, and right.