Matthew B. Crawford Archives

The World Beyond Your Head

The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew B. Crawford. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (ISBN: 9780374535919) 2016.

Summary: Argues that becoming an individual involves engaging with real physical environments and shared human practices.

Crawford, like many others, writes in this book of how we live distracted lives. However, he argues that the fault lies not in our screens but in ourselves. In particular, his contention that the rise of the autonomous self has made us vulnerable to distraction. The idea that we live “inside our heads” makes us vulnerable to all kinds of consumerist ploys, intensified through our digital economy. He offers one of the most chilling portrayals of this in how gambling has sought to be so frictionless that people will spend hours at a machine, urinating and defecating themselves rather than break away. He observes the irony that our quest for autonomy in the end results in a “mass solipsism” of “autistic monads.” We lose any real individuality.

Crawford believes to be human is to truly engage with our physical environment as well as other beings. He offers the examples of how the stick of a hockey player becomes an extension of one’s body, how the motorcycle an extension of the rider. He reminds us that the Latin root of “education” means “to lead out.” We are led out of our heads when we give focused attention to any skilled practice. Crawford offers examples of glass-blowing, learning Russian, playing music together with others. Drawing on Michael Polanyi, he observes the personal aspect of any form of true knowing, the relationship between knower and the object known.

Real individuality emerges in communities of practice in which we both perfect a skill and use it in a social context. Crawford uses his own trade as a motorcycle mechanic, showing how skilled work is recognized in the acceptance and payment of a labor bill. Likewise, real human relationships constantly bring us up against those not like us. This is so even in marriage. Knowing and bonding involves the practice of attention, the skill of negotiating those differences. Digital relationships seem easier, and more frictionless. And yet all this leads to boredom and the flattening of self.

Throughout, Crawford has held up the idea of skilled and embodied communities of practice. The final part of his book consists of just one chapter, “The Organ Makers Shop.” He introduces us to the pipe organ makers George Taylor and John Boody. He explores the lineage of organ-making from which they’ve come, the apprenticeships each underwent. The account walks through the renaissance in mechanical organs and the physicality of the workshop. For example, we learn how leather is a superior material for bellows rather than space age materials. Then there is the fine art of voicing organ pipes.

What most struck me in this account is how employees became master craftsmen. John Boody was asked out motivating employees to care about quality:

“They are absolutely the most vicious and greatest proponents of that,” he said. “The way to get people most disturbed here is to give them any sense that you are trying to cheapen things, or push them ahead. You think when you start out something like this that the hardest thing is going to be to teach people to care and value that aesthetic. But it happens, and you cannot convince them to do less.”

Behind the stories, there is some denser philosophy. By arguing that we need to get out of our heads, Crawford is not arguing that we stop thinking and just do. Rather, he invites us to use our minds to understand the ideas and practices that have misled and distracted us. Likewise, skillful work of any kind is mindful, attentive. But somehow, it must take us into the world of things and people.

The book led me to reflect on my own practice of reviewing. Reading books and writing about them can be a pretty “in your head” sort of thing. But I’m approaching the ten thousand hours of developing a skilled practice. I’ve written something like three thousand reviews. I’ve studied other reviewers. There is copyright law to observe. One needs to understand the vagaries of each platform. Then there is the back end technologies of websites, SEO, and more that go into every post. I also relate to a network of authors, publicists, publishing houses, booksellers, and devoted readers. My “hardware” includes reading glasses, pencils, computers, tablets, and smartphones.

And here I’d like to press Crawford. His examples focus on embodied practices, which I would certainly honor. But I think there is also skillful work one does as a “knowledge worker.” Crawford is his own best example of this. No doubt, doing other things besides “knowledge work” is good. My life has been enriched by everything from choral singing to painting, to maintaining and repairing my seventeen year old mower.

But the skillful practice of reviewing has changed me from simply being a reader to one who cares about what makes books good, who appreciates the labors of authors and wants to protect that from the intrusion and theft of AI. It has made me passionate about intellectual freedom and free speech and a free press. In sum, it has made me more fully who I am, even into my seventies. In Crawford’s terms, I think this is what it means to become an individual.

Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford. New York: Penguin Books, 2010.

Summary: A philosopher turned motorcycle mechanic explores the nature of satisfying work and the intellectual dignity of the manual trades.

Why would a Ph.D. give up a prestigious job in a Washington think tank to open up a motorcycle repair shop? Why does he find greater intellectual satisfaction tearing apart a motorcycle engine, working with solvents, grease, and oil, than producing articles on political philosophy? This work is Matthew B. Crawford’s personal answer to those questions.

He begins with some observations that caught my attention and helped explain the title of the book. When I attended middle school, all the boys (sexist as we were in those days) had to take classes in the mechanical arts–shop class. Even though I was on the geekier end of the spectrum, I had to buy the requisite safety glasses and learn mechanical drawing, basic wood and metal working including working around power equipment without losing a finger or other appendage. We learned what tools to use for different jobs. From about the 1990’s on, such classes were phased out because the emphasis increasingly was on preparing for college, and for becoming a knowledge worker. Which explains Crawford’s friend who has a surfeit of power equipment (as well as the dearth of people in the trades).

Crawford argues that our society’s focus on “knowledge work” has degraded the manual trades. Principally, it fails to recognize the kind of intelligence it takes to wire a house, build a building, plumb a bathroom properly, or diagnose a misfiring problem in a motorcycle when all the diagnostic procedures fail to yield an answer. Crawford observes that we no longer know how to care for and repair our stuff–indeed, some of it has been engineered by people who haven’t thought about making such repairs, or made those repairs a proprietary process. We’ve separated thinking and doing, denigrating the doers whose work takes skill, intuition, problem-solving ability, and imagination, while upholding knowledge workers often disconnected from the world of things.

Crawford narrates his own journey from electrician to working for an abstracting service whose productivity demands impaired his ability to do what the work really required. After completing a doctorate in political philosophy, he went to work for a Washington think tank but quit after five fatiguing months of struggling to do anything of tangible worth. He found he had more of a sense of individual agency and connectedness to his work and community as an electrician or mechanic.

He takes us into a deep dive into the work of motorcycle repair, describing challenging repair jobs on old machines he’d never encountered. We learn about the “guild” of mechanics, the wisdom acquired from years of experience that leads to a kind of intuitive knowledge when one encounters a particular problem. He traces the journey from apprenticeship to becoming a master mechanic. This work occurs in a community of other mechanics, parts dealers, enthusiasts, and novices in which one is alienated neither from the material one works on or the web of relationships within which the work occurs.

The subtitle of this book is “an inquiry into the value of work.” Crawford argues that many are disconnected from the value of their work, and sometimes find this in leisure activities. Meaningful work, he would argue, involves full engagement with the stuff of one’s work, allowing for “progress in excellence,” contributing to a life well-lived by those served by the work. He argues that a humane economy allows for and rewards such work. He also notes the built in accountability of good work–an improperly vented toilet stinks up the whole house! Such accountability needs to be built into knowledge work as well, and happens best in community. At one time, for example, mortgage lenders were in a community and knew their clients and were responsible for good lending practices. The loss of this connection to one’s work contributed to the disaster of 2008.

I found myself applauding much of this book. My father-in-law, a high school educated laborer, designed and built his own garage–a structure still standing fifty years after he passed. This kind of intelligence needs to be honored and those who work in these kinds of jobs held up to high regard if they do their work to the standard of excellence Crawford describes. I hope at the same time that this will not have the effect of denigrating all knowledge work. I think of researchers who build their own research apparatus, write their own computer code and combine mental and mechanical skill with the same skillful agency Crawford describes. I think of skillful managers who combine technical expertise and soft skills to develop products that serve others while creating flourishing environments for those on their teams. His larger discussion of what makes good work applies both to manual trades and “knowledge work.” All good work involves both thinking and doing, agency and engagement, the flourishing both of worker and the common good.

Both manual and knowledge work can be organized in ways that demean or dignify the worker. Good societies will not play one off against the other but recognize the dignity of meaningful work in all arenas. Crawford also raises good questions about the communities within which good work takes place. Increasingly, I find myself wondering if we can afford the global economy we have created, where we rely on workers and supply chains half way around the planet while living disconnected economic lives from our neighbors. This book is about a lot more than shop class!