our previous generations

[zeeprogrammer]

In reading various posts tonight, it struck me just how much experience and knowledge a particular person has...that only comes with years of living (and doing).
It reminded me of a project my wife and her friend did years ago on mid-western farmers (I live in the US).
They recorded interviews with them and so much of what they said and experienced is something to remember as well.
They're all gone now.

I don't remember much of the interviews...but here's a couple of  highlights...

1) If they needed a bolt..they bought a bolt. Not a package of bolts where you had to throw away all the packaging and didn't know what to do with the bolts they didn't need.
2) They didn't need trash pickup. Everything was recycled and the little that couldn't be recycled was in a small hole that lasted their lifetime.
You get my drift.
3) If you needed to know/experience the notion of 'practical'...these guys had it.

I wished they had interviewed the wives as well. They also have a very interesting perspective.

I still remember the days when we saved Christmas paper, used bits of colored lead (no pencil)...pretty much kept anything and everything because you didn't know when it might be useful.

What I'm really getting to...I have issues with today's technology with respect to society, social norms, people and people (if you get my drift)...but...this forum, as many other forums, is a means for our elders (if I may) to impart their knowledge and experience. For that I'm grateful.

It's often little things. Just today, on this forum, I learned the meaning of two words as well as three methods.

That's a big deal considering I'm 65 and know everything...(according to my grand-daughter). 

[b.lindsey]

Well said Zee. The amount of waste we gererate these day is incredible, just to touch on one of your points. When I take the trash out (a daily event) we often joke that trashy people live here.

Would love to have heard those interviews, so much we can still learn from previous generations.

Bill

[Gas_mantle]

I think nowadays far more is thrown away than needs to be because things generally speaking aren't designed for repair and there is a lack of skilled people to diagnose a fault then carryout a repair.

I don't know what the USA is like but in the UK if your TV breaks most people will simply buy another one. My microwave packed up a few days ago. they only cost about £50 over here, I'd struggle to find anyone to repair it and if I did the repair would likely cost as much as a new item. I kind of object to throwing it away but the harsh reality is that is the most sensible (and possibly the cheapest) thing to do.

Mass advertising and constant updates of perfectly adequate products must also play its part. It seems like everyday we get pressurised in to buying a new sooper dooper phone or computer etc because the latest model is so much better. In a lot of cases we end up buying upgrades that in reality offer little improvement and end up throwing away perfectly good items just to keep up with market pressure.

The world has gone mad 

[mklotz]

...
What I'm really getting to...I have issues with today's technology with respect to society, social norms, people and people (if you get my drift)...but...this forum, as many other forums, is a means for our elders (if I may) to impart their knowledge and experience. For that I'm grateful.
...

Ok, here's a bit of elder "knowledge and experience" for you...

Learn to pick your battles.  There's no point in agonizing over conditions you have no chance of changing.  The quality of life decreases monotonically;  life is like entropy.

Do what you can personally to stem the flow and make yourself feel good and not a part of the slide, always remembering that nothing you do matters in the greater scheme of things.

And remember - no matter how cynical you get, you just can't keep up.

[Lew Hartswick]

I don't know what the USA is like but in the UK if your TV breaks most people will simply buy another one.
The world has gone mad 

I can tell you why this is the case. :-)  From a personal lifetime of electronics experience.
I began my working life as a TV repairman in 1950, so if you know what TVs were like then you'd know how they were repaired. Vacuum tubes and many individual components that could fail and be replaced.  Over the years components shrunk and tubes gave way to transistors and then to integrated circuits so things shrunk to the point that a microscope is needed  to even see the parts. :-) So "REPAIR" has become, if not impossible , so difficult as to make it impractical.  The rest of my working life went on in the field to senior engineer and RPE (registered professional engineer) so all the other things of a similar nature can be seen to be related to the advances in miniaturization and automation of assembly methods. For a manufacturer, you have to remember, profit (it's not a nasty word) is what the goal is and all those advancements in those fields results in the situation you have seen. :-) 
   ...lew...

[Jo]

I don't remember much of the interviews...but here's a couple of  highlights...

1) If they needed a bolt..they bought a bolt. Not a package of bolts where you had to throw away all the packaging and didn't know what to do with the bolts they didn't need.

  I normally make one, that's if I don't find that Dave has off loaded some on me previously 

2) They didn't need trash pickup. Everything was recycled and the little that couldn't be recycled was in a small hole that lasted their lifetime.
You get my drift.

  You get your trash collected. I haven't had mine collected for over 5 years there was so little to go that I find it easier to drop it off at the dump rather than find it unemptied or thrown all over my drive when I come home 

3) If you needed to know/experience the notion of 'practical'...these guys had it.

Sounds like a model engine maker 

I still remember the days when we saved Christmas paper, ...pretty much kept anything and everything because you didn't know when it might be useful.

Some of us still do   


Guys you have missed the point we live in a consumer society: if things don't break and need replacing, they can't sell things and there would be no jobs to go round. New technology allows us to make new things that do things differently and people feel a need to own one, they break/are upgraded and the consuming goes on. Some of us know that resources are limited and can project forward for a few centuries and see that things will be very different. I just hope they come up with a 3D printed material that can do everything before then or world economics will be very different...

Jo

[zeeprogrammer]

Some of us know that resources are limited and can project forward for a few centuries and see that things will be very different.

That touches on part of where I was going. When people talk about 'cost to repair' versus 'cost to replace', they usually don't consider that much of the cost is yet to be realized.
Future costs will include cleaning up, moving waste to make space, finding new (willing or not) neighbors to use as waste depots, etc.

And, today's 'waste' may be tomorrow's resource and it will be costly to recover (albeit used to make a profit).

[Tennessee Whiskey]

I’m gonna jump in and start babbling. I understand the “throw away and replace” world because it makes good overall economic sense in terms of advancing technology and keeping a healthy workforce. What kinda ticks me off is when you are “forced” into a new purchase on what should be considered “serviceable items” . Point in case: big commercial confection oven burns out a heating element and although working, the contactor was probably a bit over stressed. $728 for the element and $272 for the contactor for a grand total of $1000 for parts, no labor included: I bought a new oven for $1800. If they can sell a new one for that price, the replacement parts shouldn’t be that high. Now on a separate “generational” angle. I’m really trying to learn more about how they did things when a lot of them had very little. The old canning recipes, how they cured their hams, how they spent the evening as a family and listen to the stories they can tell; cause once they are gone, the stories are also. I just returned from a very emotional auction for me. The guy was a couple of years older than Dad (82) when he past away and the kids had to have the chancery court settle the crap for them because they kept butting heads. The stuff in the auction was very much in the same as what Dad and I have still poked and stashed here on the farm. I just left because it was all just stuff: Mr. Hoge wasn’t there to tell the story that went with it. Ok, I’ll shut up now. Hope you know what I’m trying to say.

Eric

[zeeprogrammer]

The old canning recipes, how they cured their hams, how they spent the evening as a family and listen to the stories they can tell; cause once they are gone, the stories are also.

Years ago I'd asked my grandmother to write her autobiography. Unfortunately it was more of a lineage record, copies of wills, and the like. Very short on stories but it was something. There were certainly some interesting things that went back to the revolution and through the Civil War.

That helped me convince my Mom and Dad to write theirs. Good stories that helped me understand who they were/are, the choices they faced, and the reasons for their decisions. They were born in the late 1920's. Mom is German and Dad was career military who had been stationed in various parts of the world.

So now I'm working on mine. It's a great exercise and fun way to relive my past.

Online stuff is fine but getting it printed into a book (which is not very expensive) makes for a nice gift for the kids.

It needn't be a linear record of time either. I have some of that...mainly for context. But I've been including chapters on various subjects like...

"My Favorite Foods" (which includes a mayo and sweet pickle sandwich)
"Not A Darwin Winner" (stories of dumb things I did like trying to open a golf ball with an ice pick)
"My List of Embarrassments" (More of a discourse on what scares me rather than actual events)
"This Chapter Left Intentionally Blank" (Currently the last chapter in the book)
"Notable Minor Achievements" (Like when I learned how to open a bag of chips or, as some of you are aware, being runner-up in the Miss Snowflake Contest)
"Fruit Issues" (I stuffed raisins up my nose or the day Mom gave my a box of prunes for a day long train ride and didn't tell me not to eat them all)
"Likes and Dislikes"....you get the picture.

It's fun.

I need to add a chapter "Why I'm Right and You're Wrong" 

[Admiral_dk]

A lot of really good comments and insight here 

And remember - no matter how cynical you get, you just can't keep up.

OK - guilty as charged milord ...  (sorry Marv).

[10KPete]

Use it up, wear it out. Make it do or do without.

Pete

[Mike Bondarczuk]

Hi all,

I had just composed a reasonable repose but due to the vagaries of the system was interrupted and am having to write it again.

Jo had hit the nail squarely on the head and we should all realise that we are living in a mass product consumer market place where the onus is on replacement  and not repair.

I started my engineering on Germanium based transistors, then Silicon Planar technology followed by LSI, VLSI and VVLSI platforms but during all that time, which was the late 60's and early to mid 70's, the focus was on board and component level repairs and not random board replacements, which appears to have given away to complete platform replacements.

Without the ready market for replacements the whole global economy would falter, at least according to the government spinners, and hence the in-built redundancy and readily available replacements item market.

Technology drives the product efficiency upwards and marketing maintains the price, so in theory we a have a win-win situation, albeit at the possible expense of the plant we live on.

Mike

[zeeprogrammer]

so in theory we a have a win-win situation, albeit at the possible expense of the plan[e]t we live on.

 

While I think we can all agree that resources are being used up (i.e. expense of the planet)...it's the rate and common good (or fairness to all) that concerns me.

But I can't say I'm doing much about it.

[steamer]

"When a man (woman) dies,  the library closes.

Pass on to your kids or loved ones what you can, they won't take it all, but they'll take away some understanding of who you are.

Had one of those conversations with my son today....did him some good.

Dave

[Art K]

I could respond to a lot of this but Dave your comment on the library closing hits a chord with me. My wife and I have a very good friend who's father passed away a few years ago. Being from the Sheboygan area and a farmer all his life, our friend related to his dad as a library, standing at the fence with a neighbor reminding him of his wife's birthday or anniversary, a fount of knowledge. But now that library is closed. Where is the teary eyed emoticon when you need it?
Art