During the Occupy Central trial, Tai Yiu-ting (Benny) and I, both standing at the dock, started a discussion: “What work would you like to sign up for when you’re in jail?” Tai said he’d like to join the kitchen team -- a convenient way to pick up cooking. I said I’d like to join the carpentry workshop and learn some handicraft skills. The staff from the Correctional Services sitting beside us was holding back his laugh.
Before the verdict was announced, I went to Australia to visit my daughter and had a birthday party. Her guardian used to be a professor in Hong Kong, and now works for the government as a city planner. I would often see him gardening in his backyard. In his free time he does volunteer work, planting trees on the side of railroads and protecting the oases in the deserts. He was angry to hear that I might go to jail. At the birthday party, though, he gifted me a box of German carving tools, and wished me a “triumphant return with my completed studies.”
Another friend, the husband of my daughter’s German teacher, is a jewelry designer. Whenever I see him concentrating on his work, my respect for him would well up. He can discuss politics with me over dinner, but I don’t have dexterous hands like his. At the birthday party, he said that since civil disobedience is illegal, the judge could indeed pronounce me guilty. But I should be jailed only for one day, to show respect to peaceful protests.
Too bad that judges in Hong Kong do not have the wisdom of this craftsman! We were sentenced for 16 months. The silver lining was that I really was assigned to the carpentry workshop. I began with sweeping the floor, and then was told to clean the wood panels; eventually, I was transferred to handling the drilling machine. The main task was to place pieces of wood onto the machine, and wait for the holes to be drilled — rather a disappointment for it requires little skill.
I was therefore exuberant when the instructor asked if I would be interested to train for a certificate in carpentry. In a matter of days I have learned how to use traditional wood carving tools, my attention fixed on the evenness of the wood dust. Eventually, after repeated practice, results yielded. My heart leaps with expectation as I look over the other ten wood carving tools in the box, all waiting for me to learn them.
Why did I want to learn woodwork? As I used to joke with my friends, “I earned with my mind for the first half of my life, I’ll learn to make my living with my hands in the second half.” In fact, though, craftsmanship requires coordination between the mind and the hands. Reading The Beauty of Life, I saw William Morris’s passion for the revival of arts and crafts at the end of the nineteenth century. He used his hands to bring art into life, creating graceful furniture, stitchings, carpets, mosaics, wall papers and book designs. Customers thronged to his products. But he was actually a socialist, a critic of consumerism and mass production. With the decline in traditional craftsmanship as manufacturing increasingly relied on machinery, the market was chock-full of sub-standard goods. And the workers, having become slaves to the machines and mundane tasks, led a hard life.
Morris taught workers some of the lost crafts. Together at his workshop they made elegant and stylish home goods, avoiding the alienation and reification inherent in machine work. Yet since it took time to create the fine pieces, their prices were exorbitant. His goal to make cheap yet beautiful things for the working class was simply unreachable.
At a deeper level, Morris wanted to counter what Max Weber called "instrumental rationality" through his Arts and Crafts Movement. Weber claimed that with the deterioration of religion, consensus on value judgment becomes increasingly difficult in society.
As a result people tend to shelf those values altogether, and concentrate on developing efficient means to achieve the ends. We have, for instance, stopped asking whether economic development and material wealth is good or bad. Heedlessly we rush towards this goal, searching for the most efficient means, including mechanical mass production.
Sociologist Habermas further points out that this ideology of money and systemic power is devouring our living world. Simply relying on a revival of arts and crafts (as Morris did) is inadequate. We must reconstruct our value system instead. One way to achieve this is to establish an equal, rational, and authentic communicative platform that supports the people to reach consensus on social issues.
Carrie Lam’s Limited Attention to Reaching Institutional Goals.
Hong Kong has long been a society pervaded by instrumental rationality. Moreover, since it is buttressed by an authoritarian regime, those in power become less knowledgeable on how to establish social consensus through dialogue. A “champion” all her life, Carrie Lam knows only to focus on achieving the goals set by the system (be it in the school, by her supervisors, or by Beijing).
Look at how she dealt with the issue on Hong Kong Palace Museum. Her only concern was to conclude the mission as soon as possible, regardless of any social consensus that is necessary for the project. This chief executive, who represents instrumentalism in the extreme, now calls for a “platform for dialogue” to solve the current social crisis. What may come out of it is not hard to foresee. I might as well return to my wood carving!
25 August, 2019
Kin-Man Chan