1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
|
I dislike upgrading things. This is why I have, at the age of, ahem, forty plus let's say, owned only 4 cars (two of which I still own), have more than a few t-shirts that are over a decade old and am typing this on an eight year old laptop.
This is less a testament to my frugality than my deep-seated belief that if it ain't broke, there's no need to change anything.
Some of my dislike for new things does lie in frugality, which is to say that it takes time, which a yardstick of life energy, to earn money to obtain things and I prefer to have more time and less things. A lot of it comes from my worry that all these things are implicated in a web of destruction that shatters lives and destroy the planet so I can [have a nice rug](/jrnl/2015/04/the-poison-youve-been-dreaming-of).
A lot of my dislike for stuff is nicely summarized by Moxie Marlinspike, who wrote a great ode to a concept he calls "[The Worst](http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/the-worst/)." Instead of the current culturally idealized notion that you can simplify your life by spending tons of money to get the best of everything, which then purportedly frees you from needing to think about it again, Marlinspike argues that in fact, "we don't simplify by getting the very best of everything, **we simplify by arranging our lives so that those things don't matter one way or the other**" (emphasis mine).
Marlinspike's whole post is wonderful and you should go read it not just because it in turn links to a P.O.S. video, though it does, as you do, but because it gets so little air time in this culture.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately for two reasons: rebuilding the bus and testing the brand new Fujifilm X-Pro2 for Wired.
Rebuilding the bus has required some deep research and thinking about what stuff we actually need. Refrigerator? Well, really we need a way to keep a few things cold for a week at a time. An icebox and a 12V freezer that only needs to run when making ice or freezing food uses far less energy than a 2 way fridge that's always running.
> Partisans of the worst won't give a shit if someone drops a dish while people are hanging out in the kitchen. They can push their crappy bicycle to the limit without worrying if it gets scratched — without even being too concerned about it getting stolen. They can play a spontaneous game of tag in the park without worrying about their clothes getting messed up, or go for an impromptu hike without worrying about their shoes getting scuffed or dirty.
Similarly I don't think most people are greedy, it's just that our culture only offers one real collectively accepted measure of "success", which is earning more money. Do well in your job and your principle reward will be an increase in salary; do well with your business and you will earn more money. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just that it's not, ultimately, a very personally satifying metric by which to measure success. What does one do with more money except buy more stuff? Or horde it and live off the interest? Neither of these things is particularly appealing to me.
When I do decided to finally upgrade it's either because something is broken beyond repair or something new is so amazingly better than what I have that the trade of life energy for that object seems worth it.
In the case of Fuji XPro2 it's the latter.
I prefer to restore. more than
There is no such thing as just a tool. There is always and forever everything, all the choices external and personal that led you to that tool.
The best way to sharpen knives with a ceramic stone. It will take some practice. Even if you once knew what you were doing you might end up struggling, with bloody thumbs the first time through. But keep doing it until you get it right. Try it. Just for a while. Forget the knives; there is value in learning for its own sake. There is value in practice. It teaches you about yourself. You practice, you learn, you grow a little. You practice more.
We no longer value these types of skills very much though. It's easier to hire someone to do manual things for us. We don't mow the lawn; we don't rake the leaves; we don't press the clothes; we don't change the oil; we don't even clean the house. We definitely don't sharpen knives.
We no longer value these types of skills very much though. It's easier to hire someone to do manual things for us. We don't mow the lawn; we don't rake the leaves; we don't press the clothes; we don't change the oil; we don't even clean the house. We definitely don't sharpen knives.
Just fifty years ago we did these things. Now we do not.
Worlds change, the skills we value change. Our current world does not value the skills of manual labor or craftsmanship very much. We are no longer impressed by people that do these things. In some cases it's increasingly hard to find anyone that can do these things at all let alone do them well. Tried have your shoes repaired lately? How about fixing a broken appliance? Skills that are no longer valued are no longer honed. They disappear. Even those of us who used to be chefs forget how to sharpen knives when we don't practice.
[^1]: That's not to say that higher quality items aren't sometimes the better option, nor is it to imply that cheap, disposable items are the answer (Marlinspike's examples are all about buying used items), but simply that if you want to stop spending your time and effort on stuff, the best way to do that is to arrange your life in such a way that stuff is unimportant.
|
