Is bonsai getting harder?

[rockm]

Here's how much it has changed: In 1974 I was an ignorant college student, temporarily majoring in Botany. Based on a tiny sliver of knowledge I attempted to "bonsai" a sapling pine tree by wiring it with...a coat hanger. The tree died since I was attempting to grow it indoors by a window. My enthusiasm diminished until I retired. And now that I have the free time to indulge the hobby I am faced with the reality that my years on planet earth will ultimately preclude crossing the finish line on any of the trees I now have. But at least I now have the internet to learn which variety of coat hangers works best...

I too have come to the realization that I don't have the time to really begin trees "from scratch" anymore. Twenty year time lines aren't very attractive to me for any tree I have. I've been working on some trees for 30 years and they're now beginning to be respectable (or at least for me). In the last few years, I have been looking for trees that have had most of the "heavy lift" development done (apex, primary branching, nebari, etc). Life is more precious when there's less of it to waste,-to roughly quote Bonnie Rait.

 

[Gabler]

They didn't survive COVID just to go back to wage slavery. I'd go as far as saying there's cold war going on in the US labor market now.

Many of us think of the Industrial Revolution as a thing that happened in the past, especially now that we’ve “moved on” to the Information Age, but on a cultural timescale, we’ve barely had time to figure out how to adjust to the new environment that has created. Heck, we’re still trying to figure out how to adapt to the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution.

The overwhelming majority of people throughout history have lived and worked on small farms, where they built up as much wealth as they could while paying protection money/taxes to local and sometimes faraway tyrants. If they were lucky, they would actually get the protection they were paying for. Nonetheless, they were working for themselves and their families, reaping the bounty of the earth, giving away a portion to the local bully.

Nowadays, we’re still paying protection money/taxes to local and faraway tyrants, and on top of that, we’re overwhelmingly making a living by earning wages working for someone else. There’s entrepreneurs out there, but it’s incredibly risky to start a business in competitive post-industrial markets, so most of us take the safer option of working to build someone else’ business.

Overall, the effects of industrialization have been overwhelmingly positive. It’s a more efficient way to generate wealth, and our standard of living has risen at an exponential rate. Nonetheless, we extoll efficiency over all other virtues, and we’re not psychologically equipped for living in this kind of cultural environment. Some handle it better than others.

Growing plants gives us a little taste of the days when we might have worked to grow the family farm, rather than working to grow some other guy’s business in exchange for some money for living expenses and a little entertainment.

 

[Kanorin]

Many of us think of the Industrial Revolution as a thing that happened in the past, especially now that we’ve “moved on” to the Information Age, but on a cultural timescale, we’ve barely had time to figure out how to adjust to the new environment that has created. Heck, we’re still trying to figure out how to adapt to the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution.

The overwhelming majority of people throughout history have lived and worked on small farms, where they built up as much wealth as they could while paying protection money/taxes to local and sometimes faraway tyrants. If they were lucky, they would actually get the protection they were paying for. Nonetheless, they were working for themselves and their families, reaping the bounty of the earth, giving away a portion to the local bully.

Nowadays, we’re still paying protection money/taxes to local and faraway tyrants, and on top of that, we’re overwhelmingly making a living by wages working for someone else. There’s entrepreneurs out there, but it’s incredibly risky to start a business in competitive post-industrial markets, so most of us take the safer option of working to build someone else’ business.

Overall, the effects of industrialization have been overwhelmingly positive. It’s a more efficient way to generate wealth, and our standard of living has risen at an exponential rate. Nonetheless, we extoll efficiency over all other virtues, and we’re not psychologically equipped for living in this kind of cultural environment. Some handle it better than others.

Growing plants gives us a little taste of the days when we might have worked to grow the family farm, rather than working to grow some other guy’s business in exchange for some money for living expenses and a little entertainment.

I like this insight. To take this one step further, I'd say that bonsai is growing as a hobby in North America (probably applies to Europe as well). Lots of new members in our club talk about excitement for "DOING bonsai" more so than HAVING bonsai. Probably in part to what @Gabler was alluding to - it's a way for people to connect or interact with nature (especially people who live in more urban and suburban settings and/or people who whose profession doesn't involve much interaction with nature).

 

[ShadyStump]

it's a way for people to connect or interact with nature (especially people who live in more urban and suburban settings and/or people who whose profession doesn't involve much interaction with nature).

I was thinking this exact point as I hit the button on my last post.
In the 80s and 90s there was a "green" colonialism about tree museums. I feel like this what the national parks and other public land in the US are turning into: you travel to a place to PAY to see the trees on a guided tour, and DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING! It's fragile.

Gardening, houseplants, bonsai, terrariums, even aquariums; all of that is a way for us to have some small piece of nature in our homes.
So, yes, I wholeheartedly believe bonsai will grow to be a global norm, with people participating on various levels, and everyone in the world will know at least one person who has at least one tree somewhere in their life.

Back to the original topic, bonsai is getting easier to access, absolutely.
It is, however, getting harder to master as our definition of "mastery" changes with that access.

 

[MaciekA]

I think bonsai is getting both harder and easier at the same time. But I think there's more to it than just "it's harder because the expectations are higher".

It's easier for people who have a good nose for competence even when they're new to a field or space, and are very good at managing their information diet and selecting good information sources, and/or are willing to reach out to people and "travel to the teacher" as Michael Hagedorn puts it.

But when @NaoTK says this:

You can't blame these trees, that was the expectation 30 years ago and there was limited knowledge sharing. Young artists making trees from scratch these days are doing ebihara roots and field growing amazing taper etc.

I think this is actually a great example of it becoming easier for some people. These young artists may be in a more competitive, more technically-dense field than it was a couple decades ago, however, these are still people for whom it is actually still easier overall. Why? Because these are folks who have even heard of ebihara roots, field growing, and taper.

That's a huge selection bias! Maybe not an interesting point for bonsai club attendees. Maybe not interesting for Bnut members. Maybe the Mirai members are snickering at the back.

But come to reddit, instagram, or tiktok, where the actual masses are, and get the true firehose sampling of actual societal involvement in bonsai. There you will witness the bigger reality of bonsai, where the beginners are being handed a real shit sandwich of misinformation, mallsai, and seed kits, and have a hard time escaping it. @PowerTap said something about influencers -- they're not all good influencers (influences?), and neither are the vendors found through typical methods (via google or local shops).

I claim with no evidence but strong suspicion (largely because I moderate a ~280,000 user subreddit) that the non-club, non-forum beginner bubble is many times larger than all the "competent" bonsai scenes combined. Metaphorically-speaking, if they are the salmon, then the stream they are swimming against is an furious river of junk information, junk products, and outright cynical vendors (particularly the seed kit people, who are sowing widespread disappointment moreso than trees). What chance does a person have at succeeding at bonsai when the garden center tells them that a podocarpus or juniper is perfectly fine to put indoors?

I personally can't find a good reason to dismiss the "beginner bubble" as somehow "not part of" Jonas's question, and not part of this discussion.

But they are out there, and my claim is that bonsai is becoming both harder and easier at the same time because we have diverging groups:

• The lucky: Find sources (whether IRL or internet) within the first month of interest <-- it's become MUCH easier for these folks
• The unlucky: Shit sandwich of misinfo / seed kits / mallsai, tree dies in under 3 months <-- MUCH harder for these folks because the dropout rate is significant

The unlucky are a very big group if you are sampling with a widely-cast net!

 

[ShadyStump]

Just now had a thought relating to gender in the world of bonsai.

It's certainly a male dominated practice as of now. From my personal life experience, I point to socially enforced gender roles: ie. "men don't do plants unless they're farmers," mentality, at least in the western world. The result was men took their plants to an undoubtedly admirable extreme.
I hold the same theory about male dominance in cheffing, BTW. "Cooking is women's work," said someone's mother once to her son, garnering the response, "I'll show you!"

Anyways, how do we expect to see this change in the somewhat near future?
We know there is and will be change, but will the up and coming generation be equally divided, or will the process of women entering bonsai be slower, or perhaps out pace men?

 

[Gabler]

Just now had a thought relating to gender in the world of bonsai.

It's certainly a male dominated practice as of now. From my personal life experience, I point to socially enforced gender roles: ie. "men don't do plants unless they're farmers," mentality, at least in the western world. The result was men took their plants to an undoubtedly admirable extreme.
I hold the same theory about male dominance in cheffing, BTW. "Cooking is women's work," said someone's mother once to her son, garnering the response, "I'll show you!"

Anyways, how do we expect to see this change in the somewhat near future?
We know there is and will be change, but will the up and coming generation be equally divided, or will the process of women entering bonsai be slower, or perhaps out pace men?

There was a truly awful experiment performed by a guy named John Money that’s since been debunked. I won’t go into the details. Google it if you dare. He claimed to have proven gender differences are entirely a social construct. That’s clearly not true, now that we know the full story, but in the meantime he created a false narrative of a human infant as a tabula rasa. Today we know it’s clearly not the case that boys and girls are identical at birth.

Anyway, my point is that one key area of difference on average between men and women is interest. Women are generally more oriented toward other people and (cute) animals, and men are more oriented toward techniques and things. You‘ll see that, for example, manifested in the equestrian world. There are tons of girls who love horseback riding and few boys, but the numbers flip when you get to the highest levels of competition. Girls are usually more interested in horses. Boys are more often interested in riding. The ones who are interested in competition therefore tend to be the boys. It has little to do with baseline ability or societal standards.

Bonsai seems to be male-dominated because men on average have more fun putting in the hours to perfect their technique. Women are certainly equally capable, but few choose to pursue it with autistic levels of devotion.

 

[NaoTK]

autistic levels of devotion

Do you know me?

 

[Gabler]

Do you know me?

I think that’s most people who are frequently here.

About half my friends out here in meatspace have a formal autism diagnosis, including four college roommates. I operate on their wavelength more comfortably than with highly social people. I’m not autistic, but considering that autism is a “spectrum,” I’m definitely closer than most to the cutoff point between autistic and allistic.

 

[ShadyStump]

There was a truly awful experiment performed by a guy named John Money that’s since been debunked. I won’t go into the details. Google it if you dare. He claimed to have proven gender differences are entirely a social construct. That’s clearly not true, now that we know the full story, but in the meantime he created a false narrative of a human infant as a tabula rasa. Today we know it’s clearly not the case that boys and girls are identical at birth.

Anyway, my point is that one key area of difference on average between men and women is interest. Women are generally more oriented toward other people and (cute) animals, and men are more oriented toward techniques and things. You‘ll see that, for example, manifested in the equestrian world. There are tons of girls who love horseback riding and few boys, but the numbers flip when you get to the highest levels of competition. Girls are usually more interested in horses. Boys are more often interested in riding. The ones who are interested in competition therefore tend to be the boys. It has little to do with baseline ability or societal standards.

Bonsai seems to be male-dominated because men on average have more fun putting in the hours to perfect their technique. Women are certainly equally capable, but few choose to pursue it with autistic levels of devotion.

Let's avoid politicizing the discussion, but I'll throw a quick rebuttal out there.

Of course you are talking in gross generalizations, and we all know exceptions to the posited rules (so shut up, trolls); and the tabula rassa concept has been explicitly disproved times and again, so, yes, there is a certain level of innate difference between males and females that is generally determined.
HOWEVER, having raised children, one of whom is autistic and therefore unable to manage the normal level of sociological mimicry that most people find instinctual; and taught in school for several years; and minoring in psychology; I can definitively say with conviction that the evolution of any given individual's personality is equal parts nature and nurture, and that human beings, certain cognitive disorders aside, are genetically built to a significant extent to assimilate culture.
Most of this assimilation happens entirely instinctively, often subconsciously, by observation.
It's my belief that a minimum of 60% of the gender differences we tend to note are acquired by rearing.

As far as it goes for bonsai, you've just brought it back around to the differences between the people who desire mastery vs the hobbyists, and I again point to the social psychology.

Personally, as a single father who's wanted nothing in his life more since he was a child himself than to raise contented well adjusted children, I can say that would've been much easier to achieve if my mom had just gotten me a baby doll when 5yo me asked for one.

Done with that subtopic now.

 

[Wulfskaar]

It's probably easier, but in like a 2 steps forward and 1 step back kind of way.

Easier access to information, materials, and guidance. But all that info and guidance reveals so many diverging opinions that it creates confusion for a newb like me.

 

[NaoTK]

I think bonsai is getting both harder and easier at the same time. But I think there's more to it than just "it's harder because the expectations are higher".

It's easier for people who have a good nose for competence even when they're new to a field or space, and are very good at managing their information diet and selecting good information sources, and/or are willing to reach out to people and "travel to the teacher" as Michael Hagedorn puts it.

But when @NaoTK says this:



I think this is actually a great example of it becoming easier for some people. These young artists may be in a more competitive, more technically-dense field than it was a couple decades ago, however, these are still people for whom it is actually still easier overall. Why? Because these are folks who have even heard of ebihara roots, field growing, and taper.

That's a huge selection bias! Maybe not an interesting point for bonsai club attendees. Maybe not interesting for Bnut members. Maybe the Mirai members are snickering at the back.

But come to reddit, instagram, or tiktok, where the actual masses are, and get the true firehose sampling of actual societal involvement in bonsai. There you will witness the bigger reality of bonsai, where the beginners are being handed a real shit sandwich of misinformation, mallsai, and seed kits, and have a hard time escaping it. @PowerTap said something about influencers -- they're not all good influencers (influences?), and neither are the vendors found through typical methods (via google or local shops).

I claim with no evidence but strong suspicion (largely because I moderate a ~280,000 user subreddit) that the non-club, non-forum beginner bubble is many times larger than all the "competent" bonsai scenes combined. Metaphorically-speaking, if they are the salmon, then the stream they are swimming against is an furious river of junk information, junk products, and outright cynical vendors (particularly the seed kit people, who are sowing widespread disappointment moreso than trees). What chance does a person have at succeeding at bonsai when the garden center tells them that a podocarpus or juniper is perfectly fine to put indoors?

I personally can't find a good reason to dismiss the "beginner bubble" as somehow "not part of" Jonas's question, and not part of this discussion.

But they are out there, and my claim is that bonsai is becoming both harder and easier at the same time because we have diverging groups:

• The lucky: Find sources (whether IRL or internet) within the first month of interest <-- it's become MUCH easier for these folks
• The unlucky: Shit sandwich of misinfo / seed kits / mallsai, tree dies in under 3 months <-- MUCH harder for these folks because the dropout rate is significant

The unlucky are a very big group if you are sampling with a widely-cast net!

I would love a separate thread on this topic of normies. The 280,000 redditors are my future customer base, so as much as I deplore lego sets and blue star junipers and would like to ignore their existence, I would like to encourage them to swim up the right stream. We will all benefit from having them join us enlightened beings. Maybe there needs to be an r/actualbonsai. Oh wait that's here?

 

[ZombieNick]

I would love a separate thread on this topic of normies. The 280,000 redditors are my future customer base, so as much as I deplore lego sets and blue star junipers and would like to ignore their existence, I would like to encourage them to swim up the right stream. We will all benefit from having them join us enlightened beings. Maybe there needs to be an r/actualbonsai. Oh wait that's here?

If only the Legos were limited to Reddit and normies...

 

[ShadyStump]

Hey! I wish someone would get me those Lego sets!

id finally have a tree I can't kill.

 

[jszg]

There was a truly awful experiment performed by a guy named John Money that’s since been debunked. I won’t go into the details. Google it if you dare. He claimed to have proven gender differences are entirely a social construct. That’s clearly not true, now that we know the full story, but in the meantime he created a false narrative of a human infant as a tabula rasa. Today we know it’s clearly not the case that boys and girls are identical at birth.

Anyway, my point is that one key area of difference on average between men and women is interest. Women are generally more oriented toward other people and (cute) animals, and men are more oriented toward techniques and things. You‘ll see that, for example, manifested in the equestrian world. There are tons of girls who love horseback riding and few boys, but the numbers flip when you get to the highest levels of competition. Girls are usually more interested in horses. Boys are more often interested in riding. The ones who are interested in competition therefore tend to be the boys. It has little to do with baseline ability or societal standards.

Bonsai seems to be male-dominated because men on average have more fun putting in the hours to perfect their technique. Women are certainly equally capable, but few choose to pursue it with autistic levels of devotion.

Minor quibble, but the idea of a tabula rasa wrt sex is an old idea, older than John Money, a natural extension of the thought associated to Rousseau and espoused by the heirs to the Whigs, although it took until the 20th century for it to reach questions of our psychology, perhaps when technology caught up to theory. It predates the use of the word "gender" to refer to sex, too, which became fashionable in 1979 according to Google NGram viewer:


There is very real sexual dimorphism in man, which shouldn't be surprising, although neuro-dimorphism often arises in subtle ways ill-suited to news headlines. Autism is much more common among men. It is also true that men, as a group, have a much wider range of expressed traits neurologically than women do.

However, I don't think that bonsai will be a male-dominated hobby, although I can't imagine that it will have something like an inversion of sex ratio. Almost-exclusively-male professions are things like firefighters and soldiers, algebrists and topologists, hermits and holy-fools— and especially violent criminals. (Some look at our trees, though, and may well start to wonder about that last point...)

 

[PowerTap]

I would love a separate thread on this topic of normies. The 280,000 redditors are my future customer base, so as much as I deplore lego sets and blue star junipers and would like to ignore their existence, I would like to encourage them to swim up the right stream. We will all benefit from having them join us enlightened beings. Maybe there needs to be an r/actualbonsai. Oh wait that's here?

I started on Reddit and came here because so many of the Google search results ending in Bonsai brought me here.

I made an account to see the full resolution images.

 

[MaciekA]

I would love a separate thread on this topic of normies. The 280,000 redditors are my future customer base, so as much as I deplore lego sets and blue star junipers and would like to ignore their existence, I would like to encourage them to swim up the right stream. We will all benefit from having them join us enlightened beings. Maybe there needs to be an r/actualbonsai. Oh wait that's here?

It might indeed be here. Over my time as a mod I've come to accept that subreddits are actually much closer to hashtags (or even algorithmically-derived suggestions) than the "subforum" thing you see in a PHP or Python powered forum like this one. The folks who have a thought model of "subreddit = subforum" tend to be disappointed again and again as their subreddit begins to grow in popularity, because as it grows in popularity, its behavior begins to resemble that of a hashtag, with the vast majority of the "subreddit upvote ouija board" being ultimately decided by drive-by scrollers, who just upvote whatever. So ultimately, reddit becomes another unhelpful place since it's dominated by non-practitioners and becomes a non-practitioner echo chamber.

If the medium is the message and one such medium is a scrolling feed, it doesn't matter how awesome the occasionally excellent reddit threads can be, the feed dynamics along with the drive-by weirdos tend to dominate over everything and produce a message of: nobody really knows any bonsai techniques around here, and those who do seem to be crabby and unfriendly. Meanwhile on here, at least the crabby people on bnut are usually also growing a lot of bonsai

Bonsainut takes a different approach and brings with it other strengths and also negative tradeoffs too. Only on bnut can you witness a resident mugo pine expert randomly dredge up a years-old thread as if it was posted today and yell at someone for a blurry photo.

But also only on bnut can you actually talk to Walter, or Sergio, or BVF, only on bnut can you likely find clubs, supplies, material, teachers, etc. And while there are some immensely irritating aspects about this forum (literally just tell me how many dollars into which account I need to pay to never see a stupid ad for scammy shit on this forum ever again, please, this is embarrassing OMFG already cc @Rivka ), I also know that in the long term this will at least remain what it roughly is today and continue to be a forum dedicated to bonsai, whereas Reddit and companies like it are totally willing to betray us and shake the etch-a-sketch hard every so often to juice engagement / stock price. Not a great place to bring the beginners online IMO, though we do give it a try in the weekly beginner thread. If only bnut had reddit-style threading and the firehose of beginners, I'd do it here instead.

Ideally the Vast Ocean of Beginners would have some other entry point into all of this, but I am not sure how to crack that nut, because so much is in the way. Let's say someone lands on one of our instagram accounts and wants to learn more. How do they do that? Google just leads right back to the shit sandwich of seed kits, mallsai and misinformation.

 

[Wood]

We will all benefit from having them join us enlightened beings. Maybe there needs to be an r/actualbonsai

all of these points, especially @MaciekA's about subreddits always reverting to lowest-common-denominator--level, are very true. In the meantime, I suggest you join me in my holy war to rehabilitate /r/bonsaiporn by submitting photos of well-developed trees and downvoting photos of sticks in pots. That subreddit should be about nice bonsai inspiration photos, but it's currently just "hey look my bonsai seed kit sprouted"

 

[ShadyStump]

hey look my bonsai seed kit sprouted"

Hey, as sketchy as those things are, a sprout is pretty impressive.

 

[ChristianDGreat]

IMO its becoming easier, imaging we live in year 1990, we dont have internet back then.
Now there's information everywhere. So I believe its becoming easier.

Specially once you know what works on your area, everything is repetitive unless you acquire a new variety that you are not familiar with.

At the end of the day If you enjoy what you do it doesnt matter if its hard or not.

Thanks
Chris