The Mismeasure of Craftsmen

Yesterday, sitting at my desk reading The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (I’m always reading something different, usually before I finish a previous book; I’m afraid I have something like academic ADD) I came across an interesting story by Socrates. He was recounting a myth he wished to tell his people of their place within the world. He says,

“Some of you have the power to command, and in the composition of these he [the Creator] has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children”

It wasn’t the first time I’d come across the idea of the categorization and subsequent hierarchical value determination of humans; after all, I was in high school during the hey-day of The Bell Curve. But what I did find new life in was the idea of craftsmen—the people who shape the symbols and objects of a culture—being somehow subordinate to those who “rule”.

This morning on the radio I heard a report of the owner of a Chinese toy factory committing suicide after his toys were recalled for containing lead paint. I missed the beginning of the story, and thought it was an American who committed suicide. “Well, he must have been culpable,” I said to my husband, “or he wouldn’t have killed himself.”

“No,” my husband replied, “he was Chinese.”

“Ohhh. Then it was a face thing. He might not have done anything wrong at all.”

Upon saying these words, I started thinking about how something seemingly so universal—suicide—could imply such different histories and personalities depending on culture. But where does culture come from? How is it shaped? How does it evolve? Who is responsible for the values and mythologies of a culture?

I don’t pretend to be able to answer that definitively, for I am no anthropologist. But I do know that the people that determine how we live lend a great deal to how we view the world and each other, and I know that craftsmen determine to a large extent how we live for they create the spaces we live in work in, the chairs we sit upon, the utensils we use, the typefaces we communicate with etc.

Consider the difference between how traditional Asian meals are served versus how Westerns eat. We sit on chairs, we serve ourselves, and we eat in any order we fancy. The Japanese dine kneeling on the floor, and the Chinese have a specific etiquette concerning who eats first, and how much, and when.

I think about the crafts involved in these processes: the different kind of tables required for the different cultures, the different bowls and utensils, different cushions, etc. And I think about the people who made these items, and how they allow us to live our respective cultural paradigms. How different would we be as a society, even as individual people, without the craftsmen who design our way of life?

I recognize that the relationship between objects and culture is reflexive: culture determines how we make and use things, and the things in turn change our culture. Even so, its seems remarkable to me that anyone place the craftsmen beneath the rulers—the policymakers, the kings, the legislators—since the “people of brass and iron” are the people that take our internal dreams and project them into external space.

Years ago, I studied the Kabbalistic Tree of Life with a Jewish friend of mine. The tree of life is a pictograph of God’s creation of the universe, and subsequently of human creation as well (to oversimplify). Embedded within the tree is this idea of “the four worlds”, and material objects only exist in the final world. The way I describe the four worlds is thusly:

1. “I need a place to sit down!” (Problem identified)
2. “I know! I could make something to sit on!” (Abstract solution)
3. “I’ll start drafting the actual requirements for my sitting object! It’ll have three legs…no four!..” (Abstract creation)
4. “Tada! My Lay-Z-Boy is awesome! Next time maybe I’ll make a bench…” (physical creation)

This process of creation is the domain of the craftsman, the designer, the eternal problem-solver, the creator of the things that make my life delightful and easy. And yet someone dares suggest he is beneath the guy that decreed that alcohol shall not be served on Sunday before noon?

I don’t think so.

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