Comment by staticshock

Yep, there are tons. Growing food, building shelter, etc. But, for pretty much all of the skills we've allowed to atrophy in response to the advances of capitalism, technological & scientific progress, and societal changes, one COULD make the same basic argument, which is that losing that skill is detrimental to the individual, and yet here we are, not growing our own food, not building our own shelter, etc.

The arguments you make ≤ the values you actually hold ≤ the actions you take in support of those values.

I'm only interested in any such argument to the extent to which you've personally put it into practice. Otherwise, you're living proof of the argument's weakness. (To be fair, it's extremely hard to be internally consistent on this stuff! We all want better for ourselves than we have time and energy for. But that's my point: your fully subconscious emotional calculus will often undercut at least some of your loftier aspirations. Skills that don't matter anymore invariably atrophy due to the opportunity cost of keeping them honed.)