The Old Forgotten Skills

The skills that human beings require change radically over the millennia. I would not be successful at hunting, farming making textiles or building a shelter any more than a person two thousand years ago could do any of the divers tasks that I have to do each day.  I suppose that I could learn skills that my ancestors had eventually and perhaps even make do after a fashion.

Today we teach the young to be adaptable because we expect that they will have to frequently learn new skills in order to make their livings.  Few are the jobs that will last a working lifetime. For example, surgeons, cooks, drivers of cars and lawyers will eventually be replaced (wholly or partially) by robots.

What then will be the new skills and careers of the surgeons, cooks, lawyers and drivers? Fifty years ago the list of those affected by what was the called automation would include  dockers, miners, factory workers, draftsmen, bank clerks and milkmen.

Skills, so hard learned, will become as almost obsolete. There are very few fletchers, coopers, and milkmaids now when once there were many. The old skills are forgotten.

So far humanity has adapted and learned new skills to survive and prosper and multiply. I fear that climate change and global warming may well mean that our planet will no longer be able to support the weigh of the humanity that is changing its environment and those people who are left (we must hope that some will be left) will have to learn the old forgotten skills,

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