Hands as Hands

“It is a tragedy of the first magnitude that millions of people have ceased to use their hands as hands.Nature has bestowed upon us this great gift which is our hands. If the craze for machinery methods continues, it is highly likely that a time will come when we shall be so incapacitated and weak that we shall begin to curse ourselves for having forgotten the use of the living machines given to us by God.”

Mahatma Gandhi

   Gandhi was not a wood worker, though he understood and appreciated the need for a person to express themselves through the use of their hands.  He spun cloth rather than worked wood among other things.

    “One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915), author and teacher

   Hubbard was a bit of an oddball in lots of ways but he is right about the value of the extraordinary man.

   Sadly we have come to a time when people that can make things are becoming not only extraordinary but the exception in Canada.  And those that work with their hands are not valued and that attitude tends to creep into the quality of their work.

Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs has something to say about hand work too.

 This blog is a bit of a rant, using the words of many other people, some older, some wiser and all thinking much like I do.

   thetoolstore.ca is the place for tools for your hands, and the sponsor that enables me to rant.