Human Productivity:
In Our Philosophy and About Our Products pages, we allude to the desirability of hand-made as having something “more” over machine-made, conveyor belt things. We also lauded human productivity. What does this actually mean?
Let us say that we are making a gesture to the pyramids, the castles, the cathedrals, Roman ruins, any ruins, to the hand-tool, to the mentality of lasting, to the direct human ingenuity of solving a problem. This is very romantic and ideal and sounds nice but why?
The short answer to this question is that not doing something for a specific reason is usually more fun. Without the pressure of having to perform, the individual is freed from the anxiety of having to do something well (like for a Boss). Presumably, without this anxiety, a person is more likely to do something they like and, as a result, do it well because they want to do it and they have fun.
The nature of the human animal is such that we like varied stimuli and plenty of them; we just need to look at all the things we get up to when we are not working (look at how much money is spent in special effects in movies). This makes sitting down to do anything for eight to twelve hours boring. When we get bored, we no longer want to do it and so, naturally or even unconsciously, we end up doing something “less well than if we were still having fun.” From this it seems natural that doing many varied things for say an hour or two throughout the day, is more likely to produce better quality results than being a slave to a salaried job.
The Real Power of Human Productivity is released when a person discovers the discipline of Perseverance. It allows somebody with it to continue making or doing different things each day and keeps them doing it everyday. Say, for example, if you make a really nice hat out of coconut leaves today, perseverance will let you make another tomorrow and the day after. In just two weeks you would have some stock which you would be able to sell for more money because the stock is much nicer rather than spending two weeks eight-hours a day making 1000 hats and then having to sell them cheap because they look like Made In China. At its most subtle, a craftsman could be visualised that makes one golden flute every month, so twelve for the year but they end up being so good and worth so much that the craftman does not have to make money from anything else.
This is what we are trying to do on our little farm, in the middle of nowhere.