making or breaking skills
do you know how to do or make anything useful?
Do you know any dance hall operators? What about cartoon character designers? No? Ok, how about long distance coach service operators? Boat designers? Management Consultants? Lawyers?
I know some of the latter. Actually quite a few.
I recently went through the process of applying for a personal ABN. It’s fairly simple and the steps are clearly outlined. Where I hit trouble, was in the drop down menu describing things I do.
The Australian business landscape is pretty bamboozled about the design work I do and offered up boat design, pre-paid card and voucher design and well as cricket coaching, dance instruction and designing computer systems. I also noticed Scalp consultation services!!
I had a laugh and then chose something broad and innocuous, all the time wishing I was in fact a cartoon character designer, or a poet, or a boat designer. It got me thinking about all the ways in which people use their skills and the myriad of things people are good at and the skills we need to keep it all ticking along.
In December I mentioned Indy Johar and the Dark Matter Labs website. He talks about collapse and the ways in which we can draw on and nurture our human-ness to navigate that and to come out the other side. Part of that thinking is that the jobs and skills which are now viewed , mainly through the lens of class and remuneration, as lower value are in fact of most value. Things like building and plumbing and fencing and how to care for forests or forage food or birth children or facilitate groups for meaningful outcomes are valued less than investment banking, management consulting or being CEO of something. And yet in a post-collapse world that sees the end ( we can only hope) of late stage capitalism these are the skills which will help us rebuild our societies and communities.
Indy Johar counters the view that we don’t know how to live post collapse by pointing out that many 100s of thousands of humans live exactly that way still; in smaller communities, with close bonds and where people all have a job or skill that offers something to the whole community. Do you know how to do anything useful? I always joke that in an apocalypse I will be an early casualty as I have so few practical skills ( does basket weaving or cooking count? ) but then the Viking reminds me that I have people skills, and will be able to gather people together to share resources, work collectively and problem solve creatively. Meanwhile he will be designing and building perpetual motion power devices, chopping wood for shelter and harnessing drinking water in imaginative ways. Most of you reading this probably fall into the people skills category too, which suggests we need to broaden our friendship groups if we are to survive an apocalypse. Having recently watched Alone, in which people need to demonstrate very fundamental survival skills , all on their own, I realise a couple of things. Firstly, I need others: there is absolutely no way I can keep warm, shelter or feed myself or indeed stay mentally strong all alone. And secondly I need the apocalypse to be warm if I am to have any chance at all.
In the Saturday Paper this week the ever wonderful Rick Morton sheds light on how consulting company Nous follows the same blueprint over and over at our universities; “weaken the academe, centralise power and cut staff.” Having spent time in the world of management consulting myself, I can only say that I hope our future involves less of this kind of skill, which seems to me to be the breaking kind, and more of the making kind. We need more boat designers, more storytellers and maybe more dance instructors…and engineers and builders and nurses and shepherds…and in the meantime I am learning how to make string out of grasses and reeds…no doubt this will be very useful one day.
Thanks Cyndi a lovely read. I am smiling as I finish your article, my work day has already been forgotten.