Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Tara K. Shepersky's avatar

You're reminding me of something I think about a lot, with regret and without much in the way of solutions: when I'm learning a craft (or any physical skill, maybe?), the ideal is to learn it FROM someone, preferably in person. So I can see what they do, do what they do, ask questions, argue, change things, get feedback from someone who can see what I am doing in turn.

And there's more than seeing to it; if there wasn't, we could learn how to build tables and pickle vegetables and make our moms' best recipes over video calls.

We CAN learn that way — you just did! And it's often enough to pick up a skill or refine one, after which our own persistence or aptitude does the rest. But that kind of learning is still a distant second-best for me. It's also what's available to me, almost all the time. So better to do it and learn, even if that learning isn't optimal. The perfect is the enemy of the done — or something like that.

The physical skills I remember, viscerally, are those I learned from a human in real time and space together. Community-based skills, in the sense that I learned them in community. The way they were transmitted was at least partially the relationship itself. I wish I had a lot more of this type of learning, in my past and in my present and future. We don't really build for it, though.

All of this makes me think about distance learning and covid. From a public health standpoint, I believe distance learning is and has been a necessary safety precaution. And also: wow, I really get why it sucks when it's the ONLY method available. It's doable. It just isn't the optimal way humans do.

As a people who got very used to believing the personally optimal is what we deserve, at any cost, it's rough for us to rub up against some of the natural consequences of that assumption.

Expand full comment
Chris La Tray's avatar

I remember reading a Daniel Boone biography years ago and one of the most fascinating parts of it was how important, and dangerous, the job of making salt was for the folks living out on the "frontier." I probably remember that more than anything else.

Expand full comment
18 more comments...

No posts