Hello there fellas. Davey, I hope our Mother is treating you well. I have had something on my mind for a while. It’s finally developing into thoughts that can be discussed. Strangely enough, it was provoked into discussion by watching “Julie and Julia” last night. That is a fine movie, it provoked alot of thought and then discussion between Kristen and I. So here I am to open it up on a larger forum.
I am a contractor. By that I mean I make a contract with people to build something for them, then I build it, and they pay me. If I am to be a successful contractor, I will find ways to increase my profit margins by getting faster, paying less for materials, paying less for labor, and offering a service that customers are willing to pay more for. My only problem is that I don’t want to be a businessman, I want to build houses.
I want to get better at the processes that mark out foundations, set grade, frame structures, set windows, wire outlets, plumb supply and waste systems, install trim, set doors etc. I want to invest myself in learning and perfecting a craft that I enjoy. I want to be an old crotchety guy who can get more done with a hammer in a half an hour than a crew of young bucks can with all their fancy new tools. I want to be a craftsman. My tools, materials, customers, and the transformation of something that isn’t into something that is. That is plenty enough to keep me busy and challenged for at least a couple more years.
But I can’t, I have to be a successful businessman. I have to focus on writing tight contracts, performance agreements, realistic schedules, marketing, overhead, and a host of other things that have no more to do with building than Priuses have to do with saving the ozone. If I don’t do those things I will not get much business, I will not have anybody to work with me, and my customers will not trust me.
Surely this was not the way they used to do it? Craftsmen cannot be businessmen, or they would be poor craftsmen. Is this why the craftsman is a dying breed? Why must there be a middleman, a manager between the guy who wants something built and the guy who builds stuff? It seem that mostly the answer to that last question has to do with people seeing an opportunity to fill a gap and make some money. But why the gap? Why must a homeowner hire a guy to manage the guy who can do what he (the homeowner) wants done? Are people that detached and incapable of managing their own project? Can’t the average Joe who has or can get enough money to remodel his house also hack it enough to get a guy who knows how to use wood, metal and tools to make him a new set of rooms?
The heart of the issue for me is that this “business” model we operate on hijacks the other business that people used to do. I’m not mad at corporate America, I’m not taking the artist’s “me and my paintbrush” reclusion, I just want to pursue what I love doing. Sometimes I’d genuinely rather be driving a dump truck than being a carpenter, because I like driving trucks and if you are a truck driver that is exactly what you do.
The other side of it is the money. Everything is about success, about survival, about making enough money to then go do something else. What about the product? What about being successful at framing? The guy who manages the guys who drive trucks probably doesn’t even have a CDL, much less any idea what to do when the brakes go out on a 60,000 lb truck. But he is there, getting paidto tell drivers to haul gravel by people who want gravel hauled. I know, I know, division of labor. But there is an end to that road too, packed with people who get no fullfillment out of what they do. But hey, whatever makes the $$$, right? People do not care what they do anymore. They just want a job. They just want the security of a paycheck. This is no way to live. Yetwe have to have a paycheck so that we can buy from the myriad of vendors we get our food, clothes, and stuffs from–and so we can make enough to regularly and one day finally get away from the thing that gets you a paycheck.
Frank, you can probably relate directly to this since you work in a construction company now. Davey, you are interested in political theology and you love talking about capitalism. Austin, you have read some of the weirdest stuff I have never heard of. Chris, you are well aquainted with the business world and businessmen. Brian, you know me pretty well, you know the direction we are headed as a family. Help me out here. I don’t really have a handle on this thing yet, I need to know what to read, what topics to look up. What is the history on this topic? Where did we get this model and why is it so dominant? Is this one of the downsides of capitalism? Where and when did we get locked into this paycheck system?
This may sound like I’m dissatisfied or disillusioned with my job, like I’m having a mid-life crisis when I’m 25. I am not, I just do not want to carve grooves now that I will run in for the rest of my career or life. I’m starting to run up against things in the Christian business world that don’t jive with the direction we are taking as a family. I also care very much about my profession. I do not want it to get shaken up and emptied out by some god.
I realize I have not stumbled upon anything necessarily new or insightful, but that’s just the trouble. I don’t really know what I’m running into here. I have been rambling on now for over a page, and I’m not sure I’ve actually talked about what I’m trying to get at. So help me out.
-Gabriel
Gabe,
Wonderful post. I’m sure that I’m the farthest removed from your questions of everyone — still 5-7 years out from gainful employment.
Before I saw Austin’s post, I was also going to suggest Crawford’s Shop Class book. Although, I’ve only read a long excerpt that appeared in the NYT. I’m in complete sympathy with your basic conflict. (Frank: I don’t think Gabe was expressing discontent about having to keep good business records; I think he was expressing a fundamental dissatisfaction with the impersonal, profit-is-king ways that many businesses are run.)
As much as I’d hope otherwise, I know I’m going to run into the same dilemmas in academia (should I ever find one of those mystical associate professorships at some weird liberal arts school). Vocations have become jobs. Lifetime callings turn into career ladders. You play the system and forget the people. Or at least, you can. I’m glad I had the stellar examples of student-centered profs at NSA.
In many ways, I envy your individual calling, perhaps because I’ve never been good with my hands. But also because I can see that you know, and love, your place and calling. And there’s something special about ownership, especially when your work consists of your own hands and tools, and not some ephemeral software “made” of binary numerals — which is pretty much all I’ve ever done. But you have a chance to make your work a service to your community. In essence, your business can be a two-way charity, merciful to those who need you, and grace to your wife and fat son, who will be very expensive to feed, I imagine.
There are some really insightful books on all this out there. Some are more readable than others. You might enjoy: “Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.” There’s also the pope’s latest encyclical…
I’ve often wondered what our community would think of Small is Beautiful. I didn’t realize you liked it, Davey – highly recommended from me, too. Do you know of anyone locally who sympathizes?
I can’t tell you how much I appreciated your post, Gabe. My intellectual pursuits have always been pretty frivolous, for my own amusement. But there’s a gravity and a practicality to these questions, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about their cultural ramifications. It’s very encouraging to know there are other people thinking about them, too.
Gaberull,
This warrants a beer. Seriously, too much to cover here. The book recommendation from Davey and Austin is certainly dead-on, and I’d encourage you to read it. However, it’s also one of a growing chorus of laments about how much modern society sucks. In it you will find commiseration, an excellent articulation of the problem; what you may not find are any satisfying answers.
I’d like to add something rather personal here. I was very privileged to spend some time with your family a few years ago, and I still reflect frequently on it: that month was one of the more significant months of my life. It taught me for the first time that home is something meaningful, that death is profound and solemn but a necessary and conquerable thing, that friendships can be mended through the chopping of wood, and it taught me the utter humiliation of sucking mightily at something yet also the sweet grace of being paid to do it anyways.
Your ties to your home – and your father’s profession – may have at one time seemed adorably wholesome or even quaint to me. To a city boy like me, a “damned Yankee” as one fellow put it, that quiet country life seems to small, too mundane, too full of “Goat Ladies” and too empty of places to get coffee on the way to work. But one night, when we were chopping wood, you said these words to me and I have never forgotten them, because they are as wise as anything the city ever taught me: a worthless worker is worth his wages.
Your father is a wise man, and a good employer; I assume he passed this wisdom down to you. At the time you were explaining to me why I had so loathed the job that expected so much of me but paid so little. I think, though, that this wisdom speaks to you now as well. If all you are working for is Mammon, Gabe, that is all you will receive. And it will truly be worthless. This is why all of the “wealth” in our society has evaporated almost overnight; that work was not done in love, and was utterly useless, and we our now receiving our wages. Put another way, we all eat by the sweat of our brows, and not the blood of our brothers; sweat and profit are not the same thing. In all of this, God is not mocked, and is certainly just. Our work has been worthless, and God has given us our reward in full.
I think your post comes from the very obvious fact that you understand this principle. You know that there is more to what you do than just sticks and nails; it is your art, and while doing it you nakedly exert the imago dei in which you were created, and with it you love the world and make it good. That is worth more than money. To somehow make profit the goal of this utterly sublime work of yours is, as you suspect, utterly depraved.
I have a suggestion, something that might relieve this tension. Look to your father. He is not a businessman, though he runs a business. He is not a capitalist, though men depend on him for his paycheck. He is a steward. He has skills and equipment and relationships and a reputation that he must manage well. He must manage all of this well because men and his families rely on him to do so.
Your father is not a profit-hungry man. Yet he must look to profit as a tool to understand whether or not he is managing his company properly. If the business is not providing for its customers and also sufficiently for its workers, it is not turning sufficient profit, and it will fail. A farmer in a primitive society without markets must work on much the same principle: he must grow enough to feed his family and have surplus with which to barter; if he cannot, he is not working hard enough, or perhaps he is growing something ill-suited to the environment, or perhaps he actually sucks at farming. Here sustenance and surplus should not be called “profit” or “success,” but rather hard work, provision, frugality, shrewdness, and stewardship. “Division of labor” becomes “Doing what you are good at,” which can also be considered humility, or submission, or even just common sense. You can divide labor because of profit, or because you recognize that a company – just like the Church or any other community of people – is like a body, and nobody wants to meet a guy made out of pinky toes.
We have gone astray as a society because we have put profit – the accumulation and propagation of capital – at the center of our economic lives. But you needn’t do that. Just as mastering the family budget doesn’t take away from the mystery of your marriage, so keeping a business ledger won’t cheapen the work you do. You are free to be a craftsman, Gabe. Of course, such things are hard. You may never be rich, and you may never even be comfortable. When you’re not making a living by standing on the throats of others, some years can be hard – as I’m sure you know from growing up as you did. But hard years are still blessed years, and the salary is more than just bread on your table. It is mana for your soul. Remember the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the Fortune 500″ didn’t even make the first round of edits.
Lest what I said earlier be forgotten: Let us beer.
Beer. Yes.
Speaking of beer: Gosh, I miss you Davey. Living in this town is traumatic.
Living without Pacific NW microbrews is traumatic, too. And yeah, I was telling Justin how much I miss having docuMonday with you guys. I may start a surrogate group with a bunch of Cat’lics to hold me over till January.