Why are some skills considered obsolete?

After 15 years in the museum field I've come to recognize many of the skills that used to be a part of our everyday lives are now deemed obsolete. Yet, they're really not.

Before I settled into the museum field, I was a lowly student worker in the archaeology lab getting my B.A. in Anthropology. I was quite excited to acquire skills through various experimental archaeology activities. The activity I remember most was the pottery making... coiling the layers, smoothing the edges with wood, polishing with a round smooth stone, rubbing with bear oil, and firing in a pit. It took us months to finish one set successfully.

The first set cracked horribly in the fire and the next wasn't much better. But the shards proved useful. They provided a barrier from the fire as well as insulation to regulate temperature. The result, third time was the charm. (I'm sure there's some epiphany that can be summarized, such as "using the shards of the past to build the future" or something of the sort.)

However, these activities and skills were more about learning from the past and its people. It had no influence on my present life.

For a variety of reasons, it took 10 years before I realized that homesteading or artisan skills of the past were not restricted to the past. A lot of the realization came from an awareness of various issues associated with "factory made" and "mass production."

There's a mindset that newer is better and for some reason newer is equated with mass produced or factory made. However, the mindset doesn't diminish artisan produced or handmade as less, rather artisan produced and handmade is better, more expensive, higher quality, less convenient.

Herein lies the dilemma with the word "convenience." In a world consumed with amassing things, the mindset of "newer is better" has become entangled with "more for less." The result, artisan and homesteading skills have become inconvenient because they require more.

From the perspective of someone who makes artisan/handmade items, you put forth more effort (planning and implementing) and you put in more time. The result, is high quality good for a nominal cost.

From the perspective of someone who buys artisan/handmade items, you pay more money for the item in return for not putting forth the effort and time.

So the skills are not obsolete... they're just inconvenient.

Since one of my listed goals for my American Dream was financial independence, I decided it was time to reclaim some of these skills and techniques. Part of this journey is to at least try them and decide what's convenient for me.

"All these young folks wanna learn how to do this stuff... its nothing new, but it is new to people who don't do this anymore. So much of this is reclaiming old knowledge..." - Ben Falk