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claire_58
There is a pressing need for people with many kinds of practical skill in society as a whole. This list was partly inspired by Quy Ma’s post The Eight Load-Bearing Humans Every Civilization Needs (https://quyma.substack.com/p/the-eight-load-bearing-humans-every).
Ma points out that when a civilization becomes top heavy, as ours has, there is an inevitable period of “correction” where the “derivative” sector starts shrinking because the “load bearing” foundation isn’t there to support it. This is certainly where we find ourselves. His point and mine is that we all need to start developing skills that are “load bearing.”
Switching perspective to write a list of load bearing skills for the individual or household inevitably brings some roles into focus and erases others. For example Ma includes Farmer but not Cook. (I’ve written about growing food here, here, and here so we’ll leave Gardener out of it for now.) He includes Builder but not Tinker.
A Tinker repairs equipment, or tools. Tinkering is improv and bricolage. Tinkering keeps things going when replacement isn’t an option. Tinkering is an expression of the same basic human curiosity about how things work that has driven scientific discoveries and technological advances since the technology was about knowing which rocks to bang together.
Being willing to tinker with stuff, to take it apart, see how it works, and try to figure out if it’s repairable2 isn’t a marketable job skill. It isn’t something that will keep a civilization going. But it can save you money, keep things out of the landfill, and may turn out to be valuable to your friends and neighbours.
Some of the roles on Ma’s list remain but are almost unrecognizable at this smaller scale. The Judge, an official with years of training in a civilization, becomes the informal mediator or arbitrator. It’s similar function with an almost completely different skill set. A mediator doesn’t need years of study devoted to jurisprudence and case law. Doesn’t even need to be a professional.3
Gardening. (turns out I could leave it out after all.) Gardening may not be a must for every household but it gets maximum points for increasing resilience.
Cooking and food processing. Cooking is the most visible load bearing role at the household level. It’s something everyone should be able to do to some extent. Cooking is the quintessential human skill.4 It’s another one that gets maximum points for saving money and increasing resilience.
It gets extra points because it also includes brewing and baking, both of which have excellent potential for micro-enterprises or neighbourhood exchange networks.
Primary health care and first aid. Using tools and working with your hands makes occasional bumps and bruises and cuts and scrapes unavoidable. Everyone one should be able to deal with simple injuries, know a few remedies for minor ailments, and be to take care of someone who is under the weather.
Someone who has real skills in this area is an invaluable addition to any household or group. This one gets major points for being useful in all kinds of circumstances and irreplaceable in emergencies.
Mediator, arbitrator, negotiator. Building real skills is not just about working with your hands. These are the invisible skills of helping people work things out. Working together is one of our most important superpowers. The basic skills, the willingness to listen to others and consider their ideas, values, interests, and needs, seem to be in short supply right now.
The mediator is essential for maintaining a harmonious household. These skills become even more valuable as the social circle gets bigger. Major points, and extra points too, because being able to mediate, to help people settle disputes, or to negotiate agreements is also likely to become even more valuable as things unravel.
Tinker, as described above, may not be an essential role in every household but it is certainly a domestic art not a job. Repairing, and restoring the tools and equipment needed to keep the household functioning and following a “make do and mend” ethic gets points for saving money, reducing consumption, and increasing resilience.
Bonus points because being able to gather the component parts or pieces of equipment and reassemble them to create a functional item is something that will become more valuable as scarcity industrialism gives way to the salvage economy.5 And more points because it scales up from household to your larger social circle. It’s a skill can be traded for goods or services you aren’t able to provide for yourself.
Teacher/Storyteller. I’ve combined these because storytelling is one of the main teaching skills. Even in households where there are no children sharing information, ideas, and methods of doing things is a normal part of making things work. Teaching gets extra, extra bonus points because many of the skills on this list aren’t common anymore. Teaching and spreading them is super important.
You don’t have to be an expert to share your skill with someone else. Sometimes the people who have only recently acquired a skill are the best teachers. Trying to teach someone else is also the best way to anchor a new skill and make sure you’ve really got it.
Looking at the three types of capital might be useful here.
Human Capital is the complete collection of skills available in a group people. Your current skills are your own personal human capital. Any new skill you add adds to your personal skill set. If more people in the group acquire these skills the collective human capital increases and the group becomes more resilient.
Social Capital is a measure of the bonds of trust and mutual aid that build up in a group over time. It is the willingness of the people in the group to help each other without any immediate pay back. The give and take between people who know and trust each other. Your personal human capital, your existing skill set, can be used to build up both the collective human capital and the social capital.5
The first step is, of course, learning to do these things for yourself and your family. They all give you more flexibility and contribute to your ability to thrive in a contracting economy. Ideally any skill that saves you money now and remains useful as your circumstances change should be on this list.
These same skills may be useful to the folks around you. You can’t do everything and interdependence is strength. A skill you can share, or something you can produce that people actually need or want, gives you a basis for building networks of exchange and mutual support with your friends and neighbours.
Social Capital is important and will become more important as political and economic instability increases. A future worth having includes strong social bonds and thriving communities. That means being able to offer help when someone needs it and having people you can call on when it’s your turn.
Skill sharing has been a proven strategy for human groups since the dawn of time. These skills, the same ones that have been used by individuals, households, and groups since we first started to become human, are the very ones we’ve let slip away over the last 2 or 3 generations.
They need to be revived and shared if we are to thrive in a contracting economy.
1 According to David Holmgren our current pattern of very small households is one of the biggest obstacles to creating self reliant systems of production. https://holmgren.com.au/
2 Much of our stuff isn’t repairable or requires extensively trained experts to do the repairs. The stop gap is to have back-up systems and redundancies that allow work arounds if needed.
3 I’m well aware that Mediator is a real “load bearing” job. Hiring a mediator is a great alternative to going through the courts for the big problems. I’m talking about the skill of defusing ordinary minor conflicts and easing the friction that comes about when people are trying to live and work together.
4 In the book “Catching Fire: how cooking made us human” the Richard Wrangham makes a compelling case that learning to cook and eating cooked food actually drove the physical changes that split us apart from Chimps and Bonobos close to three million years ago. (Wrangham RW. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Basic Books; 2009.)
5 The third category are skills that build your eco-literacy, specifically the knowledge and awareness of the ecosystem around you and skills needed to make the restoration of our Natural Capital possible.
