Thread: Skills and Personal Attributes

1. Cool factor. Yes it does have a strong appeal.
2. Desire to reconnect with history. I wanted to learn an old skill that I could teach to my sons that would hopefully better their lives and teach them to appreciate traditions and family more.

Seems to me it would be important to have a face with no curves and hair that grows only in one direction. I have neither of these traits.

DurhamPiper. 'Nice post. I think you're on to something there. 'Likely deeper than just shaving, but important just the same. The connection w/ the past, especially if there's some person that we remember that did likewise amongst ancestors, is a strong pull, and restores a sense of roots & belonging. It's completely opposed to the wall street domination of telling us if it's not new/improved, it's no good. One friend of Winston Churchill's (C.S. Lewis) wrote about this in an essay called men without chests. He described the loss of men being gentlemen, and the loss made us less masculine, less whole. There's something important to that connection with our own personal pasts that makes us better men (an similarly the women staying connected to what which is noble amongst their ancestors too). 'Can't claim to have it wired, but really support you to stick with that hunger or itch to be part of what's good in your past. There's something important there. 'Don't care if it's connected to great shaving. Thank you for posting.

Pinklather: Oh yeah, it's waaay deeper than just shaving. In my profile here, I describe myself as a Luddite and an antiquarian--partly tongue-in-cheek, but with an underlying seriousness. I do have a reverence and affection for certain aspects of the past, the old ways of doing things, the old songs, old things. It's part of why I persevered with the uilleann pipes. A love of Irish traditional music got me into that, but it's not the easiest instrument in the world to master. As another example, consider this: in 1983, I was a brand-new 2LT in the field artillery, stationed in Germany. I was driving across post one day, listening to the Armed Forces Radio Network, when I heard the story about IBM's announcing that they were going to start producing a line of home computers. Here was my response, word for word, and I'm not making this up: "Oh, come one. Nobody needs a computer in their house!"

Well, of course we have a computer in our house now, but I've never been one to rush out and buy the newest technology. I have to see whether or not it's really useful to me. I didn't get a cell phone, for instance, until I was in consulting and travelling quite a lot--until then, it didn't make sense for me to have one, you know? But being on the road a lot made it necessary for ease of keeping in touch with my family and peace of mind. But I doubt that I will ever own an iPhone. I carry a Blackberry because my employer requires me to, but it's not something I'd have otherwise.

And I agree with you: just because it's new, doesn't mean it's better. I used to tell clients that if the new thing didn't make their jobs easier/more efficient/more streamlined, it wasn't progress.