Today I learned +

[CleverNickName]

Yes, profession often means "something you pay someone to do", like lawyer, doctor, accountant, soldier, or sex worker. We probably didn't pay each other to do hunting and farming initially because we didn't have money.

Profession can also mean "group of people whom you pay something to do, who may form organisations for mutual protection, quality control, or price fixing" and again that's not really a hunting/farming thing, at least initially.

This makes sense...there is a difference between someone who fishes for their next meal, and someone who fishes for their community, and someone who fishes for profit. All of them are fishermen, but not all of them are generally considered professional fishermen.

Still: if professions couldn't exist until money was invented, then "moneychanger" would be the oldest profession, right?

Don't mind me, my brain is just in a weird mood today. I'll be over here staring at the wall until it finally wears itself out and goes to sleep.

 

[Bohandas]

Saw this topic: I don't get the arguments for bioessentialism
and looked up the word 'bioessentialism'. And now I have yet another use for that 10' pole so popular in early editions.

The problem on this forum that a lot of people here are using it to mean something wholly distinct from its dictionary definition (the dictionary definition being "The philosophy that biology plays a larger role in determining human psychology or development than social, economic, or environmental factors" source: Wiktionary; emphasis mine) and then conflating it back to the dictionary definition as a strawman to attack people.

They're saying that the undelated statement "humans are different from orcs are different from elves" is bioessentialism and then using equivocation to falsely accuse people of supporting hate.

I don't know whether this stems from disingenuity or from genuine confusion, altuough hanlon's razor suggests genuine confusion

 

[Cadence]

In the years before me and in years I was too young to notice, pay toilets were a thing in America.

 

[MoonSong]

In the years before me and in years I was too young to notice, pay toilets were a thing in America.

In mine pay toilets are more like the norm. Ironically, free ones tend to be nicer.

 

[Ryujin]

In mine pay toilets are more like the norm. Ironically, free ones tend to be nicer.

Sort of how people will tend to thrash a rental car because they're paying for it, I guess?

 

[MoonSong]

Sort of how people will tend to thrash a rental car because they're paying for it, I guess?

More like they tend to be free in nicer places where they receive more maintenance and use nicer materials for the tilework. In less nicer places the owners have less resources to keep them up, or act like slumlords and use the barely minimum of everything.

 

[Cadence]

Really old canals might have drain plugs...

The Day They Pulled The Plug - Issuu

Rod Auton, Publicity Officer for Chesterfield Canal Trust tells us about the day the Chesterfield Canal went down the plug...

issuu.com

 

[Bohandas]

Really old canals might have drain plugs...

The Day They Pulled The Plug - Issuu

Rod Auton, Publicity Officer for Chesterfield Canal Trust tells us about the day the Chesterfield Canal went down the plug...

issuu.com

Like in that Spongebob episode!?!?!?!?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This makes sense...there is a difference between someone who fishes for their next meal, and someone who fishes for their community, and someone who fishes for profit. All of them are fishermen, but not all of them are generally considered professional fishermen.

Still: if professions couldn't exist until money was invented, then "moneychanger" would be the oldest profession, right?

Don't mind me, my brain is just in a weird mood today. I'll be over here staring at the wall until it finally wears itself out and goes to sleep.

No because the bolded bit isn't true.

The term profession enters French from Latin meaning one essentially referring swearing an oath, and originally referred to professions where you had to do that - doctors and lawyers, for example.

But over time, it came to mean "any job which required extensive training over years" and where you were independent (again, doctors, lawyers, etc. are theoretically independent), and also specifically not involved in a craft or industry (because those were regarded as something different and lesser).

Then English nicked the term.

So nothing that is not:

A) Independent

B) Not involved in a craft or industry

and

C) Requires extensive training

Could be a profession in the true sense any time before like, the 20th century. Also money changers as an actual job appear much later than forms of currency. So they wouldn't even be near the beginning even if we back-apply the 20th century English meaning of profession to antiquity.

The main point is, money has nothing to do with whether someone is professional or not. Absolutely nothing at all. People had jobs that required serious learning and hard work and even swearing of oaths long before money was really "a thing", and frankly people will still have professions in a barter-based post-apocalypse where money is dead again.

 

[CleverNickName]

So nothing that is not:

A) Independent

B) Not involved in a craft or industry

and

C) Requires extensive training

Could be a profession in the true sense any time before like, the 20th century.

Hm...that makes sense. In that case sex work might not be the "oldest profession." It sounds like it wasn't even a profession at all until the 20th century.