A Glass of Lemonade for Humanity

Industriousness and Improvement

My grandfather built his mountain retirement home, as the saying goes, with his bare hands. From what I understand, my great-grandfather (on the other side) did the same with his farm house – the very same house I grew up in. I’m sure many families have very similar histories. The interesting thing, however, is that one doesn’t hear very much of the same thing happening in the present. Sure, more and more people are buying homes, but that doesn’t mean that more are designing and building them. In fact, the opposite is probably true.

There are many factors that go into this societal change. The first is that housing is cheaper when mass-produced, and a corollary we are seeing is that houses can be more commonly made “custom enough” on the cheap, as well. Now, don’t get me wrong – not only is the trend a positive function of the free market, but it is also a distinctly democratic trend in home ownership that speaks great volumes to our excellent standard of living. Additionally, it may even hint to an increasing trend in the fulfillment of the dream of our Republic – the exercising of the rights to life, liberty, and property, and therefore a greater accessibility to the pursuit of happiness.

But, then, I’m an optimist. A pessimist might say that hiring out construction work to contractors is part of a disturbing larger trend in trading the pride of building a self-made life for finding a simple, cheap, cookie-cutter solution instead; a trend that is seen also in simple oil changes, simple frozen dinners, simple clothes shopping, simple interstate travel into simple catch-all truck stops or simple chain hotels, and all along keeping the back seat quiet with simple in-seat DVD players. And that pessimist, though rather long-winded, has a good point. After all, we all enjoy a certain pride in doing things ourselves, and losing that pride of creation and self-improvement is tantamount to losing part of what it means to be human.

The optimist, as always, has the last word. Even a society that has been simplified to complexity cannot kill that drive of industriousness in us all; at its worst it sends it on vacation. You see, I’m living in that proof. When I was told we’d be living in tents here, I expected to be lucky to stay dry and warm every night. What I found instead were palaces of plywood and 2x4s, creating private cubicles for rooms, “stadium seating” facing TV sets for movies and video games, and elaborate, screened-in porches for less-electronic entertainment. Is it the easy life? Certainly. But to leave it at that ignores the hard work and long days that have been, and continue to be put into building and rebuilding our “homes.” After all, the people who built these Palaces of Pine had other pursuits that came first on the priority list. And this isn’t the first time such dwellings have been created ex nihilo, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Ayn Rand might say that the builders are a select few, all of whom may be uniquely attracted to the purposes and lifestyle of the military, nothing more. I wholeheartedly disagree. Granted, many in this group are more mechanically-inclined than most, but that doesn’t also change the fact that we’ve also all bought our fair share of frozen dinners back home, or that one prominent purpose of our building has been to simplify more leisurely pursuits. To the contrary, this small example serves to prove that even in our cookie-cutter society; we remain the same creatures our fore-fathers were: we see a hard life, and almost instinctively will pay any price and bear any burden to create a world less harsh than we’ve known, for ourselves and for those who will inevitably come after. This is a concept not limited to simply nail and board, nor is it merely an American or Western value. The drive to create a better life is invincible; it is the very core of what it means to be Human.