of late

reading for fun.

"Today the distinction between draft and harness horses is arcane knowledge, and no image may come to mind for a blue roan or a claybank horse. The loss of such refinement in everyday conversation leaves me unsettled. People praise the Eskimo's ability to distinguish among forty types of snow but forget the skill of others who routinely differentiate between overo and tobiano pintos. Such distinctions are made for the same reason. You have to do it to be able to talk clearly about the world."

--Barry Lopez, in Crossing Open Ground

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thinking a lot.

it's nice to have the time to think, and not have it orbit around scheduling or homework or other tasks. instead, i am finding myself dwelling on things that seem to be more important. here are a few snippets of late

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skills and mastery.

lately i have been thinking a lot about the knowledge that i (we) lack, but that generations preceding ours just, well, had. for example: a hundred years ago, an individual probably knew the names of the plants they ate. and i mean varieties, not "corn" or "carrot." they probably knew who grew it too. they probably knew how many steps it was to their neighbor's front porch, and knew how long it would take to get to town and thus planned accordingly. women had (for the most part) intuitive knowledge of how to achieve basic household tasks like cooking or baking bread because they had been around it their whole lives. men had that same intuition about how to fix things, or how much hay they would need to haul to feel their animals for the winter. they knew that in february in oregon, there would be two weeks of nice weather when they could get ahead of the onslaught of spring work. they could tell the weather was changing by looking at the sky and noting the behavior of animals.

today, we have different sorts of knowledge. we know how to drive cars, microwave meals, and look things up on the internet. we know how to use ATM machines. we know how to text message. i know that because our knowledge is shaped differently doesn't mean that there isn't mastery present in our lives anymore... but i can't help but feel like all of these things we do, anyone can.

there seems to be so little variation in our knowledge and skills today. we all have these same things, and all learn how to do the same things. sure, someone might be really good at excel or at photoshop, but i feel like even the less technically savvy of us (me for example) could "get" that, given enough time. but there is something different about being able to cook a meal for others, and time it right so all of the dishes land on the table still warm. there is some sense of mastery about that--something more than following protocols or directions on a recipe card. there is feeling in that kind of knowledge, there is intuition; something extra that must be learned, must be earned. i suppose it was the same one hundred years ago: everyone knew how to watch for weather changes and tell when a loaf of bread was baked just to perfection. but i don't know. there is a difference between being "skilled" and "masterful." maybe the reason that distinction has faded today is because we move on so quickly. a new cell phone after a year. a new computer every two or three; software updates every month. can you ever master something like that? i want to master something--to be artful, not just proficient.

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precision and understanding.

the quote that opens this entry resonated with me. in particular, the idea of there being a special precision in knowledge that is important to maintain: an overo versus a tobiano, for example. or hard white wheat versus hard red. or marjoram versus thyme. it is not just a horse, or a flour, or a spice that is denoted by these words, but a whole world of distinctions: of things that make each unique, characteristics that the other cannot achieve. i think our ability to differentiate, to make these meaningful distinctions is greatly diminished today. take for example those commercials on t.v. that equate changing a light bulb to changing the world, or buying a new reusable shopping bag to responsibility. i'm sorry, but those are not the same thing.

when will we move beyond the "i changed this thing by replacing it with another, and therefore have done my part" mentality? someday we have to realize that a different item consumed is not the same thing as changing your consumption, and that changing a light bulb is not the same thing as not turning it on in the daytime when you don't need it anyway. a while ago i listened to a radio show on n.p.r. where the guest speaker was diagnosing what he saw as the real crisis in the climate change "crisis." he argued that the whole global warming hullabaloo has nothing to do with CO2 emissions or hybrid cars or cap and trade. if anything, all of that is distracting us from the real crisis. the real crisis, he argued, is a crisis of lifestyle: global warming isn't about cutting out the use of fossil fuels--it's about realizing that we live in a finite world and cannot live as if it were infinite. replacing petroleum with hydrogen or LNG or what have you is not going to solve this problem. only changing the way we live will. not living 50 miles from your place of work is one step; not participating in conspicuous consumption is another; replacing money spent on entertainment with time spent with loved ones is another; simplifying your lifestyle to live on a single income instead of two is yet another.

the problem with these changes is that they are hard. way harder than buying a different sort of light bulb or car. they require a more precise understanding of the way things are in our world, and they require that we differentiate between "action," and real, active change. as barry lopez wrote, "you have to do it to be able to talk clearly about the world." without talking clearly about the world, how can we ever do better by it?

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no real conclusion(s).

so i've been thinking a lot. who knows if it makes sense. but i do know that i want to differentiate. i want to be more discerning in how i speak, make decisions, and live my life. i want to be masterful, not just skilled. i want to make these important distinctions. i feel like they will help somehow. how that is, i don't quite know.

b