Scout- The reason i haven’t sent you a picture of the pump drill is because I wanted to make sure it worked first and I haven’t been able to make it work. If it is like totally the wrong dimensions and will never work that would be bad for someone reading the article. I’ve spent so much time on it that it is probably close to working but at the moment I hate it. I’m sick of the thing. I don’t ever want to see it again. I made it more or less following the directions in Primitive Technology: A Book of Earth Skills. But I actually replaced most of my initial primtive parts with nice straight non-primitve wood because they were causing me problems. At this point it is made of very few primitive materials but looks rather “primitive” as it is being held together with 6 different kinds of string and washclothes and hot glue. the current problem is a wobbly bit that I am not sure how to secure. I’m so bad at shit like this. Learning primtive skills requires a whole different attitude than the one that has served me fine for 24 years. I’m basically lazy. In order to save time I do things until they look “good enough” not until they look “as good as possible”. This means that something fails and I make it a little better. It fails again. I make it a little better. Then another part fails. I make that one a little better, and on and on. Then I get frustrated and give up, when basically if I had just done a nice job in the first place it would have taken a lot less time. You know what I wished I had learned at an early age? Carving. It would help with so many skills if I was better at carving.
You know what I think another problem is? I’m not used to doing things. I get discouraged so easily. I never learned to make things. I learned to read and write really well, but to actually do things? to make observations? To deal with failure? I wish I had learned real things in school like how to change the oil in my car, and build a table, and sharpen a knife. Damn! Why didn’t I go to vo-tech with the “stupid” kids. I hate failure. I avoid it at all costs. Especially when others are near. Now if we had mentors, of course, there wouldn’t be so much failure. No one would have to figure things out for themselves from books. Tom Brown might have you think so. He might say that no one needs a mentor, and that trying and failing and trying again is the only real way to learn, hence the bowdril with the green wood story. But I think that’s bullshit because a) you need to balance the amount of help you give someone with letting them learn for themselves. It’s probably different for everyone, the threshold, maybe TBJ was a maniac, but most people will just give up without help, and that doesn’t mean they are wimps. Maybe TBJ just has to say things like that all the time because of all the people whining “but you had grandfather to teach you.” b) the point of that story was mostly proper posture is the key, not that everyone should spend a lot of time doing something the hard way, though he has revealed that attitude elsewhere.
What do people think? Do you really learn more by doing something the hard way and teaching yourself? Or is that some sort of cultural or Tracker School myth? I say the key is the person wanting to learn more than anything. I remember reading Walden for school in 9th grade and I hated it. It meant nothing to me. I read it again my first year of college of my own volition and absolutely loved it. I remember learning about weather, and sun and the moon and wind patterns lots of times in school but I never really cared and I only just barely remember. Now I do care and am teaching myself. Such a waste of time and money to have learned all those things before I was ready. A lot of times I don’t understand something until I want to learn it and I have tried a little bit and then failed. But just a little bit of confusion is all it takes to get me interested not failure over and over again. Of course money plays into the equation. I’ll try something first myself to make sure I can’t just do it before I pay someone else to teach me.