This video is ten years old. At the time, Fred Harriss was billed as “Britain’s longest-serving blacksmith.” He’s been banging away since 1938, when he was ten years old. Well, let’s face facts. There was really only one man who was likely to break Fred Harriss’ record, and that was Fred. According to the comments on the video, he’s still going strong at 94 years old. He doesn’t seem to take any days off, either. How many people can claim to break a record at work every single day for years on end? 

Human beings like Fred are getting pretty scarce. I’m not talking about his age, or his work ethic, which are nonpareil, of course. I mean that he’s a person that is a Thing, and always has been. Commerce is currently atomized. People do little bits of this or that, but not enough of anything to become The Thing That Is. Heidegger had a lot to say about the idea. It mostly makes my eyes glaze over. Sartre came closer: What you choose to do is who you are. You define yourself. Even refusing to do anything is a choice, which defines you whether you want to or not. A policeman will explain that very concept to you with a taser and handcuffs if you refuse to identify yourself during a traffic stop. A man becomes the thing he is doing at the very moment he acts.

I guess Sartre means that a guy sleeping behind a dumpster all the livelong day is as much a Thing as Fred. I don’t think so. So I guess I’m not buying anything on the card tables at Sartre’s Bazaar, either. I’m going to be required to retreat to the Stoics. Fred has an unwavering devotion to his craft, and a total mastery of himself. Daily repetition, regardless of external circumstances, makes him a model of virtue through discipline. A sunny Sisyphus. It’s how you roll the rock that matters. Sleeping at the bottom of the hill in the shade of the rock doesn’t cut any ice with yours truly. And Sartre should look me in the eye when he’s talking to me.

Fred is a smithy. That’s a Thing, in addition to being a person. He avers that he’s never been anything else, and never wanted to be anything else, including retired. To retire would mean that he would cease to be the Thing that he is. That means he would cease to exist, in the only way that matters to him.

If you study ancient Greek and Roman gods, you notice that they’re not omnipotent, and some are at least partially human. They dabble in human affairs, and do mundane stuff like grabbing chicks and dragging them back to their Olympian lairs, or the underworld, and having trailer park kids with them and whatnot. The line between human and divine was kinda blurry. In Rome, especially, extraordinary humans were declared gods. Many other cultures did the same sort of thing. When people did superhuman things, they were granted apotheosis.

noun: Exaltation to divine rank or stature; deification.
noun: Elevation to a preeminent or transcendent position; glorification.
noun: An exalted or glorified example.

I’ve decided to revive the practice. I’m expanding the pantheon. In doing so, I’ll be able to consider myself pretty exalted in my own right. For example, the President of the United States can pardon people, but if I can declare them gods, I’d say I have a leg up. And I’m international, baby. So I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Hephaestus, Vulcan, Goibniu, Gobannus, Völundr, Svarog, Tvaṣṭṛ, Viśvakarma, Ogun, Amatsumara, Kanayago-no-Kami, and Kajiya-hime.

And, you know, Fred.