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Comment by radiorental | Hacker News Reader

Understood and agreed, they need to construct or repair buildings efficiently...

However there is the concept of 'the resistance of the material' where the act of working with the material with bare hands and simple tools is a meditative process. Something I would have thought applicable to the contemplative and monastical life of a monk.

There's a fascinating article from BBC 4 on the topic https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000xqt

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They address this in a roundabout way in the article:

> Ornate pieces that used to take months for a skilled carver, now can be accomplished in a matter of days. Instead of cutting out the beauty, using the excuse that it takes too long, thus doesn’t fit into the budget, modern technology can be used to make true Gothic in all its beauty a reality again today.

The options are either use the best tool for the job, or don't do the job at all because the budget (time or monetary I'm not sure) is not there.

None of the statements you paraphrase addresses what the parent referred to as the meditative work with material resistance. What you point out is the logic of efficency and capital. For monks who vow to live in poverty that's less of a concern in theory than it is for all other areas of society.

We live in a time of NOW. The monks probably do not want to build a cathedral in 500 years, but in 50, so that they might get some donators

Sure - but if you take especially late Gothic cathedrals like Milan's, there's 3400 Statues and 135 spires, decorated with almost 100.000 Crockets (the decorative elements on the steeple roofs). I feel these things are more mass production than meditative process...

They still do, it's just that the first 95% of carving things out of rock is literally getting the rock into the shape needed to start doing actual scuplting.

I'm short, it's artistic boilerate with no meaningful value to either the artist or the viewer.

I don't see any reason that someone couldn't still enjoy working with the material with bare hands and simple tools to meditate, even with the automated stone carving. People still play chess even though AI dominates.

Who's to say they don't? I'd guess the monks are using CNC for standard elements, while statuary is done by hand. (Though possibly not by the monks.)

I think there is a parallel with what you say and the hate/love it produces the introduction of ai in the software process. (craftman programming vs ai slop). In the end the result depends on who is behind the process and his/her quality standards.

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