Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson, from It's a Magical World
I
think every generation laments the loss of what it considers important
skills from one generation to the next. Some of this is nostalgia, and
some of it is simply due to changing societal needs and expectations.
What I have noticed, in my own generation especially, is an apparent
loss of skill at making things well, and at conversing precisely and
articulately.
I make a habit of buying Canadian-made products,
even though they tend to cost more than the predominant Chinese-made
crap. And while Canadian-made products are
better, I could excuse people for believing they're not good enough to
warrant the higher price. The suits and sweaters I buy tend to last
twice as long as the cheap imports, but that's not saying much. Frayed
seams, buttons falling off, and lack of durability seem to be the rule.
Canadian-made furniture now shows some of the same sloppiness in the
finishes, the same roughness of construction, and inability to stand up
to normal wear and tear. And anything with moving parts, from jewelry
to bird-feeders, seems to fall apart in record time.
My
generation tends to blame all this on lack of pride, but I'm not so
sure. When I return Canadian-made products that are prematurely broken
or worn, I am usually surprised at how embarrassed, and quick to fix
the problem, the manufacturer or craftsperson is. I'm left to conclude
that the problem has two causes:
- not enough people take the time to return unsatisfactory products, and
- most people don't get enough practice to become really good at what they do.
Both
these problems are self-compounding. If no one returns poorly-made
goods, the poor processes that cause the poor construction are left
unchallenged and unchanged. And if only a few are willing to pay extra
for Canadian-made products, relatively fewer of them will be made, and
the producers will have less opportunity to learn from their mistakes
and hone their skills.
Lack of practice is also, I think, the
principal reason that our conversational skills are declining. The
generations following mine are content to talk (and text) much faster
than we do, and arrive at an understanding by a sort of successive
approximation. It is easier, and just as fast, to say things badly at
first and then, as others respond, correct yourself. Most of us, as
Pascal once said, blather on at length because we "don't have the time
to make it shorter" anymore. And as the cartoon above suggests, the
subjects of most modern conversations are such that being clearly
understood or persuasive in your communication is not often very
important. So, without practice at conversing well, we never acquire
good conversational skills. In fact, our poor quality (but frequent)
conversations tend to reinforce bad conversational habits.
I
don't know that there's any solution to this, other than, one person at
a time, deciding to Let-Self-Change, to learn lost skills and practice
getting better. Just as losing these skills is self-compounding,
re-acquiring them is its own reward. Learning to make things well, for
yourself, will make you more self-sufficient and more self-confident,
and can provide an example that will spur others to do likewise.
Learning to converse well will make you more popular and will also help
you to think better, more constructively and critically, to listen
better, and to write better. For each of us, this is a matter of
reaching a tipping point at which we're no longer willing to put up
with being lousy at things that are important, and no longer willing to
be dependent on others for things we should be able to do for ourselves.
I think I'm there.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
