Has anyone else noticed the rapid decline in basic ability of people to do anything? It's starting to be a perfectly logical and valid question to see how many people it's going to take to change that light bulb. Who else but the hired light-bulb-changer?
But really, society has decided for some reason that specialization is the coolest thing since ice cream. It worked great for assembly lines and cars and factories, so that means, logically, that it should work for all of America. Yeah, or not.
Since people have been around, it's just been a nice steady decline. Cavemen all made their own clubs and stuff (or so I'm gonna guess... I wasn't there or anything) and killed food for their family/clan/whatever. I'll skip up a bit to people that did the whole Little House on the Prairie bit. They had no store to go buy stuff from, and if they did, it was pretty limited stuff. If something went wrong, they fixed it. Same thing even in the early through the mid 1900s. If something broke, you knew how to fix it, or at least Mr. Husband tried to fix it. Like in A Christmas Story... the battle of the beast in the basement - whatever it was...I can't remember right now... hot water heater or something - never really ended, but Dad was at war. He could fix a flat tire too, given that his idiot kid didn't loose all the parts. So what happened?
These days, what isn't hired off? Lots of people have their yards done. They have someone to fix their plumbing, someone or a bunch of different someones that fix every other aspect of their house, a service that can come fix your car if it breaks, someone to change your oil, someone to fix your computer, someone to set up your email, someone to set up your cable, a guy for your whole entertainment system, a guy for your garden, for your pool, for your Christmas lights, for everything.
I'm not saying its everyone. I certainly wasn't raised in that environment. Right now, though, my dad is unemployed in all technicality. He doesn't have a job that he goes to the same building every day and receives paychecks and gets medical insurance. But he has a job. He's the guy people call when Thing X breaks. Need new paint for that room? Entertainment monstrosity set up? Door knobs replaced? Sink fixed? Shower redone? Floor tiled? My dad'll do it. And I'm glad he knows how, because that means he can teach me.
Personally, I would hate to be that dependent on all the specialized people and their 'talents'. I want to be as independent as possible. If something in my house breaks, I don't want to have to make a phone call. I want to know what's wrong and how to fix it, be it car or house or whatever. I want to mow my own yard and clean my own pool (which I will have. fingers crossed here).
This didn't come out of no where, I promise. It got mentioned somehow in philosophy today and it got me thinking about how dumb some people are getting. It's as easy as tightening a screw sometimes, and someone is willing to pay $40 bucks for a guy to come fix it. People need to realize what's going and stop letting the world decide specialization can apply to life in this extreme. Putting together a car is one thing. Maintaining a life is another.
As an after thought, this applies to my major too. I'm majoring in finance first and foremost because it's one of the major aspects of my life I couldn't stand to be dependent on some guy to take care of it. I want to know about stocks and bonds and investments and not give my money to Mr. Broker and say "ok go!"
ReplyDeleteSame thing goes with Taxes. I bet they aren't really that hard to do on your own if you have your stuff together.. people are just lazy.