An integration between producing and consuming
Nov 18, 2023
As a publisher, I have learned that it's possible to sell hundreds of thousands of books about knitting, brewing beer, and stacking wood. A great many of us have a desire to return to something basic, authentic, and to find peace, to experience a small quiet alternative to the din. There's something slow and sustainable about such pursuits, something meditative. [...] This is not just a new trend, or a fad; it is a reflection of a profound human need. Knitting, brewing beer, felling trees; these are activities that all have something in common. You set yourself a goal and carry it out — not all at once, but over time. You use your hands or your body to create something.
This quote is from Erling Kagge's Silence: In the age of noise, which a friend lent to me. He thought I would get a lot out of reading it.
The author is making the argument that silence, especially meditative internal silence, is valuable. He cites the popularity of books on activities like knitting, brewing beer, or stacking wood (homesteading?) as support for his claim. Of course, in a book centring silence, it makes sense that he interprets the popularity of these activities through their meditative and silent practice.
Reading this passage, though, made me think about something else. As he described the practice of these activities — truly a practice, as he describes, in the sense that you slowly complete your goal over time — I thought about my own joy from knitting a scarf. While I did appreciate the silent, meditative, process of knitting, I think a large part of my joy has been actually wearing the scarf afterwards. The satisfaction you get from using something you made with your own hands is not an uncommon unfeeling.
Thinking more about it, I think there's a fundamental joy in the integration of production and consumption: wearing something that you, yourself, knit; eating bread that you, yourself, kneaded; using something that you, yourself, made. I don't get joy from wearing my scarf predominantly because it's a nice scarf to wear (although it is), but because I am happy that I am wearing something that I made with my own hands. Though I adore all of my clothing items, most of which I did not make myself, and derive joy from wearing them, this joy is mostly about their beauty and functionality. On the other hand, the happiness I get from wearing the scarf I knit myself is unique. If I had bought it rather than knit it myself, I would not wear the scarf with the joy that I do now.
Anticipating that I would eventually wear the scarf also changed the experience of knitting it. It turned the practice into a labour of love. If I had instead knit that scarf knowing that I would sell it, I would not have enjoyed knitting it as much. Just as having crafted the scarf heightens the experience of wearing it, knowing that I would ultimately wear the scarf similarly enriched the experience of knitting it. The two acts of knitting and wearing are more than the sum of its parts: it's their integration that creates a new totally new satisfaction. We also generally can derive this pleasure if we gift our creations, since we know the person who ultimately uses them.
Today's economy does not encourage this integration. To the contrary, it is built around specialisation. Everyone focuses on the creation or provision of one good or service (or a small number of them), which we trade for the productions of other people. While specialisation is more efficient, it divorces the two acts of production and consumption. We commonly do not consume the outputs of our labour, and in the same way our consumption is not directly produced with our own labour. A baker doesn't eat most, if any, of what they bake; instead, the baker buys from other producers a majority of they actually consume, from food to clothing to services. I wonder if this separation (partially) explains why "job-ifying" our passions seemingly paradoxically sucks the joy out of them, or why people can seem unfulfilled with their purchases even as consumer goods get cheaper over time and people can largely afford more than before.
I don't think specialisation is a bad thing. I think we are much better off with it — imagine a world where everyone had to farm their own food, build their own houses, and make their own clothing. But I do think that, in our rush for efficient specialisation, we have lost this special joy that we derive from the integration of production and consumption. I hope we can rediscover this joy in small ways: me with my scarf, others with their breads, and still others with their beers. The popularity Erling observes of books about crafting is encouraging. Dear reader, I hope you are enjoying your own craft, both the process and the output, whatever it is.