Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Tuesday, January 2. 2018

Many hobbies are the necessities of the past


I was randomly thinking this weekend about how many current-day American hobbies, pastimes, and avocations have their origins in necessities, or near-necessities, of the past. We are all aristocrats now. 


Consider these.  You might think of more examples:


Hunting, fishing, weaponry, and gardening used to be necessary for survival.


Dog-raising and training used to be very helpful for survival 


Weaving, knitting and sewing used to be the only ways to be clothed.


Music-making used to be for story-telling (still is, to some extent)


We used to have to create our own amusements: make plays, have sing-alongs, invent or play games. Now it's the TV and the computer.


We used to write elegant letters to communicate or to stay in contact. Very few do that any more. Fine writing is now a hobby (mostly)


Painting and sculpting (image-making) used to be special ways to worship God or gods 


Golf used to be necessary to prevent deadly boredom for shepherds 


Most sports are refined variants of physical combat 


Cooking of all sorts used to be the only way to have food. Now it's become a hobby. 


Hiking, running, horse-riding, boating, etc used to be the only ways to go places. Now hobbies. 


Physical fitness used to be what you got from your daily labor. Now it's the gym in your spare time. 


Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 16:40 | Comments (15) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I have thought this, but you have thought this through and found better examples, which is better. disagree about the golf, though.

At least one thing goes in the opposite direction, and that is reading, which had practical uses for smaller amounts of text in order to keep records and make proclamations, but in extended texts was more for contemplation and entertainment by the very few educated. Yet now, virtually any type of employment requires some of it.
#1 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2018-01-02 17:41 (Reply)
What a brilliant post by The Barrister and comment by AVI.

It's enough to bring out the inner Aristotelean in me. The beginning of the year is a fine time to reflect on our ends. Once you strip out the utilitarian, instrumental purposes of human actions, what remains?

The answer, from the Nicomachean Ethics:
"Now if you take away from a living being action, and still more production, what is left but contemplation? Therefore the activity of God, which surpasses all others in blessedness, must be contemplative; and of human activities, therefore, that which is most akin to this must be most of the nature of happiness."

However, no luftmensch he, for Aristotle was quick to note:
"But, being a man, one will also need external prosperity; for our nature is not self-sufficient for the purpose of contemplation, but our body also must be healthy and must have food and other attention."

I am stuck in the lower sphere and must get lost in an activity; whatever contemplation I am capable of transpires from that.
#1.1 gpc31 on 2018-01-02 23:51 (Reply)
In addition to some of the ones you mention I take hobby-type enjoyment from woodworking, including furniture & cabinet making, wood turning, the making of cutting boards, wood framed cork trivets, etc. Doing so was necessary to living for our ancestors, for me it is what I do when I'm NOT working. The activity is rather therapeutic - much of my professional work requires focus and determination over a long period of time (9 to 18 months or more) - in that I can start and complete a project in a day or weekend.
#2 steve walsh on 2018-01-02 17:47 (Reply)
"The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, who has no real effect in the world. But craftsmanship must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one's failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away. "

From Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford.

As our work increasingly has little overt objective outcomes but rather are a continuum with few endpoints, people seek toward objective creation of something physical and separate
#2.1 JK Brown on 2018-01-02 19:07 (Reply)
I like that, a lot. Clearly aligns with my experience and motivations
#2.1.1 steve walsh on 2018-01-03 10:51 (Reply)
Don't I wish that cooking was just a hobby! Maintaining an affordable and healthy diet based on nothing but take-out and restaurant foods is an expensive and losing proposition for anyone who doesn't think starch, sugar, and grease are the three main food groups.
#3 Mike Anderson (Link) on 2018-01-02 18:23 (Reply)
Drawing was a way to record observations, transmit information and develop maps, sketch enemy placements, etc.

Coppicing, pollarding and other pruning were methods to increase production of wood products as well as when coupled with training creating fences and barriers.

Canning, preserves, wine/beer making, buttermaking, dehydrating, jerking, etc. were all food preservation activities

We can also throw in auto repair which used to be required just to ensure you could get back home.
#4 JK Brown on 2018-01-02 19:02 (Reply)
I was with you on the activities that used to be mandatory for survival, but now are hobbies. When you got to music making and golf, I think you lose the thread. That's like saying that people used to need relaxation and recreation, and we still do. And look, some of the things are the same.

How about activities that used to be practical, then optional, and now don't make sense to do because there are far better methods to accomplish the same goal. Like HAM radio. Used to be practical, then optional, but with the internet, communicating to faraway lands is trivial. But people still do amateur radio, and when there is a disaster, they are critical.

Or the electronics guys using Raspberry Pi to accomplish something one could easily do with a phone or tablet.

I was just reading about a coder who got Doom to run on a printer. Not at all practical, but a challenge.

You have to pass the time somehow, may as well keep your skills up.
#5 Randomizer on 2018-01-02 22:23 (Reply)
Hams also blend the old and the new. Where there was morse code, there is PSK. Where there was AM, there is digital voice with four channels over one frequency, there are satellite repeaters, antenna experimenters, and so on. At the marathon bombing, we were sending spreadsheets showing which runner was evacuated to where on which bus from the middle of Comm Ave at the top of Heartbreak Hill while the cellular phone network was crashed. A laptop, a VHF radio, and some cable. Turned out to be a very useful thing that hams had mainly worked out for the fun of it. There's lots of really smart guys (and gals) in amateur radio, and lots of them are working on new things.
#5.1 Bruce Anderson on 2018-01-03 09:37 (Reply)
But don't forget that scientific research used to be a hobby for the idle rich or those who could wheedle a patronage from the idle rich. A lot of the technological progress we enjoy today is the result of somebody (literally or metaphorically) piddling around in the garage.
#6 Jerryskids on 2018-01-03 07:37 (Reply)
Pretty much all these things are hobbies only in first world countries
#7 FRP on 2018-01-03 10:54 (Reply)
Hunting, fishing, weaponry, and gardening used to be necessary for survival.
Dog-raising and training used to be very helpful for survival

Not sure about the gardening, but looks like I worked (1st job in 1965) all these years so I could enjoy the rest...not necessary for survival but certainly to keep my sanity--especially the dogs.
#8 rocdoctom on 2018-01-03 11:09 (Reply)
Slaving over a hot printing press (and before that, pot of ink and quill) was once the only way to get your message out to the few masses nearby.
Now, look at ya! Clickety-clickety, POST!
#9 rich whiteman on 2018-01-03 11:10 (Reply)
So, after this one particular dinner, a gathering of unnamed foreign leaders and their unnamed "ministers" huddled together to discuss Donald Trump's sanity and enlisted the help of MSNBC's brave Richard Hass, who does give his name, to sort it all out.

"asking them to expend political capital on behalf of a U.S. that no longer seemed a reliable partner."

Might I suggest these foreign leaders will not only extend political capital on our behalf any time we f@cking nod in their general direction, but, every single one of them, would gladly eat the corn out of Trump's shit when they need what we have.

On that you may rely.
#10 Scullman on 2018-01-03 13:05 (Reply)
Hobbies and Art or Artisan Craft.

Spinning, hand woven cloth, blacksmithing, building horse drawn farm implements.

Generally speaking, the tools and quality have improved. We understand the science better now and it's easer to make better tools that replicate items from a hundred, or even a thousand years ago.

Buying a hand crafted knife may actually get you a much better knife than commercial mass prodcution product. That's only possible becuase of the huge increase in wealth - even royalty could rarely afford things 1000 years ago that would compete with what people buy today becuase they're hand crafted.
#11 Vincent Keith (Link) on 2018-01-03 18:28 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.