Why the Disappearance of the Struggle Makes Us Feel Like Frauds
Reflecting on the shift from manual labor to creative judgment in the age of automation.
In , in a humid basement along Broadway in New York City, a man named George worked by the light of a single kerosene lamp. He was a retoucher for the studio of Mathew Brady. His entire universe consisted of a glass plate negative and a tiny, sharp needle.
When a Civil War general arrived with a face weathered by gunpowder and lack of sleep, George would spend sixteen hours hunched over that glass. He would painstakingly scratch away at the emulsion, microscopic flake by microscopic flake, to soften the line of a jaw or remove the shadow of a scar.
He breathed in the fumes of collodion and silver nitrate until his lungs felt like they were lined with velvet. His fingertips were permanently stained a deep, bruised purple from the chemicals. To George, the pain in his lower back and the failing vision in his left eye weren’t just side effects of his job; they were the job. They were the physical evidence that he was a master of his craft.
Irritability andregret
I am thinking about George right now because my eyes are currently screaming. I managed to get a generous glob of peppermint shampoo in them about ten minutes ago, and the world is currently a blurry, stinging mess of salt and regret. It’s a stupid, clumsy mistake-the