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I am in Colonial Williamsburg, where the blacksmiths and silversmiths and bookbinders and milliners (over 20 professions in all) run shops that try to reproduce goods and services using the same tools and techniques used in Colonial times. It is really very interesting, and the "interpreters" are generally well informed. They are not tour guides, but instead operate as dedicated professionals who also explain, in whatever detail you desire, what they do.
But what has struck me about the professions here is how incredibly faithful each person's personality conforms to the stereotypes. The milliners, selling beauty and frippery, are friendly and gregarious. The gunsmiths cannot help but express their love for what they do. The blacksmiths are big and strong, gruff and unwelcoming of even informed feedback. The silversmiths, using tools and techniques that make a single large teapot cost $17,000 (measured in man-hours, this is cheap), are extremely expert and loudly opinionated, the result of countless hours doing by hand what could be done in mere minutes using a Dremel. And the entertainers were quick, delighting in rapier wit and offensive suggestions, much like a Shakespearean fool. I could have spent all day with them, trading ribald insults.
But the most interesting of all was the printer. Every question he asked was loaded - with the assumption that the only correct answer was the one he already had in mind. He urged us to always seek more sources of information - but accept his authority as absolute and beyond question. He knew a lot, but not quite as much as he claimed, expert and informed as he was. It was hard to get past his arrogance and learn from him. In other words, the 18th-century printer, using movable type and hand-powered printing presses, exemplified the attitude and mindset of today's New York Times and Mainstream Media.
It strikes me as amazing that a person's profession really does seem to shape them into the simplest and commonest stereotypes. I had never thought of it this way before. But it also suggests that the work people do leads people into living embodiments of trite stereotypes.
And probably that there is no way to fix some people. Alas.
Discussion (14)
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Your post made me think of this song by Rich Mullins. I think you're on to something.
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I don't know what you're talking about.
Which is odd, because I know everything.
Signed,
DOCTOR Bastiat
CHARTER MEMBER
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Of course, there is a chicken/egg question: are professionals born that way, and they go into a field that suits their mindset?
Or was it working in a given field that turned an inclination into a trait?
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I think the answer is: Yes
The inclination and maybe circumstances lead to the profession, but working reinforces it.
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There is a scene in Taxi Driver where Wizard (Peter Boyle) tells Travis (Robert Deniro) that a man becomes his job. Travis tells him that’s stupid but the scene always stuck with me.
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