An Itinerant Mind

Amateur ramblings.

There are two words that are used nowadays in a negative sense, and I feel that this is both sad, and a reflection of how society has been manipulated. Those words are 'amateur', and 'artificial'. An amateur is basically someone who pursues an activity purely for the love of doing so, and the word derives from the Latin amatorem, lover. The negative attached is of course that such a person is a dabbler, a dilettante, and not as good as a professional. A professional does something for money. They may be no good at what they do, they may hate it and do the bare minimum, or they may be a 'cowboy', who takes as much money as they can from you because you don't know their trade well enough to know they are swindling you. But they are professionals, and the implication is they are better than mere amateurs. But, this is a Capitalist opinion, the person who does anything for the love of doing it, cares about what they do, and will take time to do it well. Of course not all professionals are useless, but then, not all amateurs are either.

The word 'artificial' applies to anything that is not natural, so an imitation or a substitute for something else. The frequent assumption is that this means something somehow inferior. The word derives from the Latin 'artificialis', which is something that pertains or belongs to art. The art of anything was the skill obtained through practice and learning. So again the origin didn't contain that negative assumption of inferiority. Likely the negative has been applied because a lot of mass produced artificial goods are extremely tacky, a symptom of the making everything as cheap as possible and sell it for as much as we can get away with.

The point I am hoping to illustrate here is that we have been conditioned to see everything in terms of money. Everything. Even life. I would argue that our lives are much richer doing something we love, and are good at because we love it, than working because we need to pay the bills and believe that we have no other options. Happy is the man (or woman) who's work is their pleasure, yet many people discover turning a hobby into a business saps the pleasure out of it completely. Value your amateur activities for the pleasure that they give you, and if they involve making something artificial, then enjoy the art of making it the best that you can.