On A Fine Work

I'm in a pensive mood.  The basement project is going well and is in the trim stage.  Everything now is progress of the best possible type: the type that isn't prologued.  It is, however, chronically consuming.  Hence my abject lack of postings.  Still, I've been consequently thinking of work in its more philisophical manifestations. 

The philosophy of which I speak is most evident in the vanity aisle at Lowes.  Rather, it comes from the vanity aisle for it was there that I bought a cabinet for the bathroom in a moment of desperation brought on by a poverty of funds and time.  What a piece of ^%*.  It wasn't cheap but wasn't expensive.  It looks nice enough though it isn't plum, square, or true.  I had to clamp the top together to pull the staples in and plumb it up.  This was egregious workmanship but I'm in a tough spot there because I'd rather do it myself but I don't have the time nor do I have the money to pay a craftsman to do it because, for god's sake they're a specialty class we refer to as artisans.  They've taken on a luxury role in our society.  The sad thing is it would cost less and look better and be better If I'd do it myself but I don't have the time so I'm forced to buy crap from China.  How does this happen?  Perhaps, may I propose, the old farmer take a crack at this. 

We know, too, that these mechanical substitutions are part of a long established process.  The industrial economy has made its way among us by a process of division, degredation, and then replacement.  It is only after we have been divided against each other that work and the products of work can be degraded; it is only after work and its products have been degraded that workers can be replaced by machines.  Only when thought has been degraded can a mind be replaced by a machine, or a society of experts, or a government.

Men and Women in Search of Common Ground

And the work of the tradesman or laborer or factory worker, though it deals with material things, tends to be as mind-dominated and abstract as that of the executive.  The industrial laborer subserves an economic idea instituted in machines and in mechanized procedures.  This is as far as possible from the work of the traditional craftsman or artist, whose making has never resembled what we now call "manufacture," but is a cooperation and conversation of mind and body and idea and material.  The true craftsman does not waste materials because his or her art involves respect for materials.  And the craftsman's products are not wasted because by their quality and durability they earn respect. 

Racism and the Economy

Always, when I think of work and its true nature I think of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's A Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich.  When Shukhov builds his wall, he does it well for no other reason than the craft and joy of it.  There are no other considerations.  Even threat of death does not deter him from doing something well and admiring it as such.  Even in the inhuman confines of a gulag there is craftsmanship. What does that say about the vanity aisle of Lowes.  Worse than a Soviet Gulag?  Perhaps it is.  Perhaps it is. 

And Shukhov no longer had eyes for the distant view, the glare of the sun on snow, the laborers struggling back from their warm hiding places to finish digging holes started that morning, or to strengthen the wire mesh for concrete, or put up trusses in the workshops. Shukhov saw only the wall in front of him, from the left-hand corner, where the brickwork rose in steps waist-high, to the right corner, where Kildigs's wall began. He showed Senka where to clear away the ice, and hacked away zealously himself, using blade and shaft by turns, so that ice splinters flew in all directions, sometimes hitting him in the face. He worked fast and skillfully, but without thinking about it. His mind and his eyes were studying the wall, the facade of the Power Station, two cinder blocks thick, as it showed from under the ice. Whoever had been laying there before was either a bungler or a slacker. Shukhov would get to know every inch of that wall as if he owned it. That dent there — it would take three courses to make the wall flush, with a thicker layer of mortar every time. That bulge couldn't be straightened out in less than two courses. He ran an invisible ruler over the wall, deciding how far he would lay from the stepped brickwork in the corner, and where Senka would start working toward Kildigs on his right. Kildigs wouldn't hold back at the corner, he decided, but would lay a few blocks for Senka to help him out. While they were tinkering in the corner, Shukhov would rush more than half the wall up, so he and Senka wouldn't be left behind. He sized up how many blocks he should have ready, and where.

...Slap on the mortar! Slap on a block! Press it down a bit. Make sure it's straight. Mortar. Block. Mortar. Block.

The foreman had ordered them not to worry about wasting mortar, to chuck it over the wall and take off. But Shukhov was the sort of fool who couldn't let anything or anybody's work go to waste, and nobody would ever teach him better.

Mortar! Block! Mortar! Block!

"Enough, damn it!" Senka shouted. "Time to be off!"

He grabbed a handbarrow and was away down the ramp.

If the guards had set their dogs on him, it wouldn't have stopped Shukhov. He moved quickly back from the wall to take a good look. All right. Then quickly up to the wall to look over the top from left to right. Outside straight as could be. Hands weren't past it yet. Eye as good as any spirit level.

He ran down the ramp.