Very profound

[Aussie]

 I was reading a very cool book entitled "The Forgotten Arts and Crafts" by John Seymour.  In the Foreword he said something which I thought was very true, and needed to be heard. Please read this slowly, and think about it hard.



The older craftsman still has that ancient attitude to the reward for work that used to be universal but is, alas, now seldom found. And that is the attitude that there should be a fair reward for good work. Nowadays the predominating attitude is ""I charge what the market will bear." I will never forget the time I finally presuaded that great craftsman Mr. Harry King, the boatbuilder of Pin Mill in Suffolk, to build me a 14-foot dinghy. This was just after the Second World War when it was hard to find craftsman to make such an item. For a long time he refused and I looked elsewhere. Finally he relented.

  "How much will you charge for her?" I asked. Later I learned that you do not ask such people how much they will charge, at least not in Suffolk.

"Three pun' a foot," he snapped.

"But Mr. King, everyone I have been to charge four pounds a foot! You must have made a mistake?"
"Three pun' a foot's my price. If you don't like it you can go somewhere else!" he replied. "I don't hev to build ye a dinghy!"

The real craftsman does not need more than enough. In our times of social mobility, everyone is after more than enough. We no longer ask, "How much is our product worth?" or "How much do I need?" but "How much can I get?"

I have known many young people who have tried a craft and given it up because they found that,  although they could make enough, it was not more than enough. And that was what they felt they require. A planet on which every inhabitant tries to get more than enough is a planet that is in for a hard time. And in the final reckoning I am sure that having more than enough does not make us happy. You can definitely have too much of a good thing. What makes a person happy is doing work that he or she loves doing and is superbly good at, being fairly paid for it, and having it properly appreciated.




Thank for taking the time to read this. I hope it has the same impact on your perspective of life as it did mine

[Nith Batoxx]

 Quite true... I had a fairly long reply but the ... window didn't work so I had to shut it down and go on again.

Mabye we shouldn't focus on beating everyone else in the rat race.  That's what I see as the overwhelming drive that tells people to make more cash and own more stuff than anyone else... :huh:  

[General Austin]

 Yup. Greed an' selfishness, I suppose makes us want to get ahead. (Bump.)