being productive
I've noticed a set of people I find intriguing - I am thinking of them as "industrious" people. I think of them as being post-post industrial revolution, in a sense.
Before the industrial revolution which centralised labour at the location of large machinery, many more kinds of work was done in the same space where the workers lived. The industrial revolution permitted the better paid workers to effectively separate home and work, increasingly permitting a working man to support a wife and children in a home designed for the purposes of family and leisure.
Given the stigma of poverty in a class society, it's easy to see why any who could afford it had homes with space. Space and idleness were indicators of wealth and status. Given that it was shameful for a wealthy family to be 'reduced' to working with their hands, if work had to be done in the home, it was highly desirable to be able to hide any trace of it of from visitors.
Class aspiration is still reflected by the way people strive to keep a house dedicated to empty space and impractical decorating choices. It's as though people are still running scared from the stigma of working in the home - or verily, working at all. We are permitted to display the machinery of our entertainment. In conventional homes, home cinemas and billiard tables are shown off, but sewing rooms are kept tidily concealed. Hobbies are to stay in a hobby room whilst so called living areas are kept free from clutter so that they look right.
The "industrious" people I have observed have either failed to acquire, or have cast off, these constraints of correctness regarding their homes. Their homes are given over to industriousness. The equipment is set up where it is most practical; Sewing on the kitchen table. Loom in the middle of the lounge room. Vegetables in the front yard. Solar panels on the roof.
These things do not sit comfortably with the 'idle rich' aesthetic, but industrial people don't notice or care.
I love that industrious people spend their resources being productive, rather than creating the illusion that they are not.
Before the industrial revolution which centralised labour at the location of large machinery, many more kinds of work was done in the same space where the workers lived. The industrial revolution permitted the better paid workers to effectively separate home and work, increasingly permitting a working man to support a wife and children in a home designed for the purposes of family and leisure.
Given the stigma of poverty in a class society, it's easy to see why any who could afford it had homes with space. Space and idleness were indicators of wealth and status. Given that it was shameful for a wealthy family to be 'reduced' to working with their hands, if work had to be done in the home, it was highly desirable to be able to hide any trace of it of from visitors.
Class aspiration is still reflected by the way people strive to keep a house dedicated to empty space and impractical decorating choices. It's as though people are still running scared from the stigma of working in the home - or verily, working at all. We are permitted to display the machinery of our entertainment. In conventional homes, home cinemas and billiard tables are shown off, but sewing rooms are kept tidily concealed. Hobbies are to stay in a hobby room whilst so called living areas are kept free from clutter so that they look right.
The "industrious" people I have observed have either failed to acquire, or have cast off, these constraints of correctness regarding their homes. Their homes are given over to industriousness. The equipment is set up where it is most practical; Sewing on the kitchen table. Loom in the middle of the lounge room. Vegetables in the front yard. Solar panels on the roof.
These things do not sit comfortably with the 'idle rich' aesthetic, but industrial people don't notice or care.
I love that industrious people spend their resources being productive, rather than creating the illusion that they are not.
posted by Jac | 8:44 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home