I think there’s been a devaluation of some kinds of knowledge for some time. Mainly, current generation seems to think that anything worthwhile is machine made, and anything related to handcraft is some kind of excentricity.
This involves some kind of renegation of the past, maybe an urge to get rid of the parents’ and grand parents’ shadow.
People always seem surprised when they see a young woman like me doing crochet, commenting that it’s something their grandma’s like to do.
I think this applies to tea… why ‘waste your time’ learning about tea quality, water, ‘complicated proceedings’ like specifications of brewing, if you could just go to the market and buy some ready tea in a plastic bottle? why bothering if it’s white or green?
they just don’t know what they are missing
some countries will value more something that looks foreign and devalue anything traditional…
like here in Brasil, there’s so much abundance of fresh fruit that most people won’t bother eating them, while in Europe people will pay a fortune to have a couple of bananas or a watermelon.
I call this ‘colonization syndrome’… buying something industrialized seems fancier than having a handcrafted object.
Or something from a foreign country seems better, no matter the quality.
Sad.
But i think this kind of thing reaches some equilibrium point… for example, when handcraft is so devalued that it will begin to disappear, it may acquire a high value, because there will always be people interested in rare things.
Maybe i took a big detour on the subject, but i think these subjects are related.
