#215： Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
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Summary
Matthew Crawford argues that the culture of distraction we face today runs much deeper than that and actually began several hundred years ago with the enlightenment. His name is Matthew Crawford and his latest book is called The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming An Individual in an Age of Distraction. And today on the show, Matthew and I discuss the origins of a distracted culture and the deeper implications of our lives live totally inside our own heads.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. So a common
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complaint of the modern age is the sense of distraction and lack of focus that pervades
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our lives. And we typically blame technology like the internet or smartphones for an ability
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to concentrate on the task at hand. But my guest today argues that the culture of distraction
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we face today runs much deeper than that and actually began several hundred years ago with
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the enlightenment. His name is Matthew Crawford. He's the author of the book shop class as Soulcraft
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and his latest book is called The World Beyond Your Head on Becoming a Human in the Age of
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Distraction. And today on the show, Matthew and I discuss the origins of a distracted culture
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and the deeper implications of our lives live totally inside our own heads. And we explore
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the idea that we really want to live a life of focus. We need to go beyond just blocking
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time-wasting sites on our computers and phones. Are you ready to take that journey and discover
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the world outside your head? Stay tuned for a great discussion. And after the show, make
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sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash Crawford.
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All right, Matthew Crawford, welcome to the show.
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So I've long been a fan of your work, your first book that I really enjoyed, Shop Class
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as Soulcraft. Your latest book, The World Beyond Your Head on Becoming an Individual in an Age
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of Distraction is out in paperback now, and it's very, very good. And we're going to talk
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about that today. But before we get there, can you talk a little bit about your background?
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Because I think it's interesting first, but also it will put, I think, put some context
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in from like where you're coming from with the arguments you're making today.
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Well, I tell a little bit of my story in Shop Class as Soulcraft. I majored in physics as
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an undergrad at Santa Barbara, UC Santa Barbara, and tried to get a job with that degree and
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couldn't. So I fell back on being an electrician and did that for a while. And then eventually
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I got interested in philosophy. I went and did a PhD in sort of the history of political
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thought at the University of Chicago and held various white-collar jobs that weren't doing
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it for me and found myself running a think tank in D.C. and really pretty much hated it.
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And so I lasted about five months. I quit that to open a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond,
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And yeah, and then from there, I mean, that's what you do, but you're also right now, I
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guess currently it says on the back of your book, you're a senior fellow at the University
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Yeah, right. So I don't teach, but I've got this gig as a research fellow at the University
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of Virginia. So what it means is that I try to get out there about once a week and have
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lovely conversations with people. It's a really nice intellectual community. So it's kind of
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just enough of a toehold in academia to give me what I need from that kind of environment.
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But there's no, yeah, there's no obligation. So I think there must be some clerical error
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at the heart of it, but I don't ask too many questions.
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Right. So you spend most of your time working in your motorcycle shop.
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Yeah, it varies because I, you know, as I should back up, I also do some writing, obviously,
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depending on how much writing. So like these days, it's probably like 30 hours a week in
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the shop. And that goes sort of up and down. I've gotten an employee right now, so I kind
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Gotcha. So your first book, Shop Class Soulcraft, you make the case that skilled manual labor can
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provide a person a sense of satisfaction and meaning that can't be found in the world
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that often can't be found in the world of knowledge work or information work, right? I mean, you felt
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you felt it. And I think a lot of other people felt it's like, I, the work I'm doing, I don't really
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know what it's doing, actually, pushing in numbers into Excel sheets. And it's a really great book.
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If our listeners haven't read it, go out there and get it. Your new book, The World Beyond Your
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Head on Becoming an Individuals in an Age of Distraction. Is this book a continuation of your
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thoughts in shop class? And if so, how are the two connected?
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Well, I guess one really simple way to state the connection would be they're motivated by the kind of
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being struck with the thought that various forms of slavery come wrapped in an ideology of freedom.
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So, you know, in Shop Class, I was trying to make sense of my own work experience and why I always
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felt so stultified and sleepy, really, in the various cubicle jobs I'd had. You know, when you're working in
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an office, it's often difficult to say exactly what you've accomplished at the end of any given day.
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The chain of cause and effect can be pretty opaque and confusing. And so that feeling of individual
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agency can be elusive. And by that, I just mean, you know, seeing a direct effect of your actions in the
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world. Whereas, you know, I've worked as a mechanic and electrician. And, you know, when I flip the switch
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and see the lights come on, it's like it's this incontrovertible experience of having done
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something that I can actually point to. And I always found that really kind of thrilling.
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And then so, and so, yeah, I mean, the connection, so in the world beyond your head.
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Yeah, yeah. Okay. So in the world beyond your head, it's this sense that we're living through a
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sort of crisis of attention right now. And it's become pretty widely remarked upon. It's usually
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people complaining about technology in some way. And that, but I think one reason it's become hard
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for us to resist all the entitlements and all the appropriations of our attention is that they
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they kind of presented to us under the, under an ideology of choice, right? Just having more
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choices is always better. And this idea that we get really from economics that to maximize your
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freedom requires maximizing the number of choices you face. But that's precisely the condition that
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makes for maximum dissipation of your energies. So it seemed like it required a reflection on
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kind of what's at stake when, when we're so kind of subject to appropriation of our attention by
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often mechanized forces and by commercial forces. Because when it's really bad, I think it often
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feels like what's at stake is whether you're going to be able to maintain a coherent self, you know,
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just a self-disabled to act according to settled purposes and ongoing projects rather than just
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Right. And besides, I mean, you kind of touched on it a bit, a bit, I mean, some of the consequences
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of this attentional problem that we're facing today. But I mean, it seems like in the book,
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it runs deeper or the case, your argument that you're making is it runs deeper than just being
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like, Oh man, I got to quit checking Facebook because I got to be productive in my job or whatever.
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It seems like the consequences actually are deeper and affect us on a societal level as
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Well, as I mentioned, a kind of a feeling of fragmentation, the feeling that your attention
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isn't simply yours to direct as you will. Now, of course, it's not, you know, as simple as some
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kind of, you know, it's not something coercive. It's tapping into appetites we have for certain
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kinds of stimulation. Um, and, uh, you know, we willingly invite into our lives, all these
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things from candy crush to, to porn. Um, and so I think really this distractibility points
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to a deeper cultural problem, which is kind of agnosticism about what's worth paying attention
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to. And that really comes down to the question of what, uh, what to value, uh, because what you pay
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attention to is sort of what's most present to you or most real for you. And I think, um, part of the
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problem is that just the way we inhabit the world is very, it's really changed dramatically over the
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past, I don't know, 20 years or something. I mean, you could, you could trace the kind of
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genealogy of this variously and push it back a hundred years if you want. But in any case, when,
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um, you know, sort of the natural way of inhabiting the world is just in your body and the body gives
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us a kind of center of orientation. So there's things behind me and, and, you know, in front of
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me, to the left, to the right, above and below. And that, what that does, it kind of establishes a
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zone of relevance, you know, what is actually within reach, you know, literally within reach.
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Um, and that's important for attention because the whole idea of attention is that you select
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some things out, you know, from everything that's available and not other things.
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But when you're, uh, encountering the world through, you know, representations, you know,
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like on a computer screen where you can take a virtual tour of the forbidden city in Beijing
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or, uh, you know, these underwater caverns, um, everything is lumped into a kind of distancelessness
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that, um, there doesn't seem to be any non-arbitrary basis on which to say, you know, this and that
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and not that pertains to me. So in that condition, um, I think it's very hard to compose a coherent
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life on the basis sort of, of infinite options, infinite choice. Um, not least because, you know,
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whatever's going on in your immediate environment with the people that you actually share your life
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with is likely to not be as amusing as whatever's going on, you know, on the internet. So again,
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it's this feeling of subject to centrifugal forces that kind of pulls apart.
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Yeah. And there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack there, but so you started off talking about,
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you know, there, we, there's this notion today that we have unlimited choices,
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which makes us free. But you argue that actually it can actually stifle us because we become
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overwhelmed with the amount of choices. And this is sort of the crux of the problem of attention.
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And you make the interesting case, like you said, I mean, things have gotten really changed a lot
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in the past 20 years with the advent of the internet and smart devices were constantly connected to a
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virtual world. But you argue that this attention problem we have originated, you know,
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two, 300 years ago, you could say with the, um, the enlightenment. Uh, I know there's a lot to unpack
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there, but how did enlightenment, the enlightenment thinking lead to this problem of attention that we
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Well, really at the heart of it isn't, is, um, a set of ideas that emerged, you know, back in the 1600s
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was about how we make contact with the world, how we grasp the world. And the, the big idea was that,
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um, we do so only through our internal mental representations of the world. In other words,
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you can't really make contact with the things themselves, but you, you construct some, some
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picture in your head. And that's, and it's always through that, um, kind of mediating representation
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that we encounter the world. Now, there's good reasons to think that this is a, as a more or
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less completely bogus view of how we grasp reality. And I say that based on, uh, more recent philosophy
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and, and, and cognitive science. But the weird thing is that life has come to imitate theory so that,
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you know, in the 21st century, sure enough, we increasingly encounter the world through these
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representations. Um, so as I, you know, as I kind of hinted at before, I think that's the basic reason
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why, um, we feel a kind of, um, a lack of limit on our mental lives that has the effect of kind of
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dissipating our mental energies. Um, because if you, if you're sort of bodily wave and, you know,
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being in the world doesn't, isn't providing a frame of orientation, then there's, there's literally
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no limit to what you can, uh, preoccupy yourself with. Right. And that can be just psychologically
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exhausting. Yeah, totally. And it's also, I mean, we're subject to this feeling like I'm, I'm missing
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out or I'm not completely optimizing my experience. I could be, you know, there's something more awesome
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going on in some corner. I need to investigate. And, uh, and that's connected, I think, to, um,
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this feeling of, of individualism, where it's really up to everybody to kind of make themselves,
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you know, into their fullest self. There's a kind of existential heroism where, um, you feel
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radically responsible for yourself. You know, once upon a time we had, you know, you might've had a
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hereditary occupation. Um, you might've been born into some rigid social system where you're,
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you know, the range of, um, kind of possibilities for you were quite constrained. Of course that that's
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bad in all kinds of ways, but what it meant is that, um, well, I think the experience of failure
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has become much, goes much deeper for us precisely because we feel like if you're, you know, if your
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life isn't everything you want it to be, it's on you because, um, you know, because we have so much
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freedom and that's, I think that leads to a lot of anxiety and depression.
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Right. Even de Tocqueville, right. Is that how you say his name? The French guy, like he noticed that
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in Americans, like they were had a lot of freedom, but like, they were like some of the most
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miserable people at the same time. Yeah. And one thing I, it took, it was great. He, uh,
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he pointed out that Americans, um, you know, they, we have this, um, this idea that everyone has to
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stand on their own two feet and reject any kind of example or custom, any kind of social authority.
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Um, and, and, you know, he's writing, this is back in the 1830s and this was already true from America.
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Um, and he says that this has a strange effect because we actually sense correctly that we're
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not really competent to judge everything for ourselves. And yet we have this cultural imperative
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to do so to make this anxious. So what we do is we look around to see what everyone else thinks,
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our contemporaries. Um, so there's sort of paradoxical way in which the rugged individualist
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turns out to be the conformist. Um, so in other words, we look to our contemporaries rather than to
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some inherited tradition or some, you know, other forms of, of social authority.
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Um, so going back to this idea that we're, um, agnostic about our attention, like we don't
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have like, you know, you're going like, if we want to use like Aristotelian terms, we don't
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have a telos, like an N for our attention. Um, and this, I think you are, you argue in the book
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that this originated in the enlightenment too. So there's this idea that, you know, personal
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autonomy, freedom is the thing that's most important. And as a result, like you can't impose
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your beliefs on other people so that they, or your preferences on other people, because that would
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rob them of their freedom. But, and that sounds great on theory. It's like, oh yeah, everyone has
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to do their own thing, but you make the case that it actually leads to sort of this blandness and
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flattening. Yeah. I mean, it's, um, you know, this, this, everything you just said, if you wanted to
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give a name to it, you could name it subjectivism, this idea that what makes something right or good
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or beautiful is how I feel about it. And that, um, all of these judgments are, are radically
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private. It's like an itch, you know, no one else can feel your itch or your pain, which means that
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there's a kind of, um, they're incommunicable in a way we can't really enter into a shared judgment
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about things. And, um, one thing that does, I think it makes us retreat ever further into
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ourselves. And there's a kind of, um, timidity about, um, just, you know, disputing with, with
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one another in a, in a kind of rational way. And so, instead of what we find these days is people,
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um, forming these self-selecting enclaves online, right? Where, where we affirm one another
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and form these kind of micro, uh, subcultures. And you see this in politics too, where it's
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increasingly, um, kind of self-reinforcing echo chambers, um, and the very idea of a shared,
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uh, truth, a shared world that we can kind of talk rationally about seems to have been eroded a
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little bit. Right. Right. And it makes the world sort of bland. Like when we do interact with others
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who don't share our interests, we have to keep very, things very neutral. And you gave the example
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of the music at the gym where it was playing, you know, some sort of weird, you know, emo music,
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bland emo music was being piped in. And like, you went to the kid at the counter and said,
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play anything. I'm sure whatever you listen to is better than this garbage. And the kid was just
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like, no, I can't do that. Yeah. He's, he's, that was interesting. Um, what he said was,
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I wouldn't want to impose my choice on anyone. And you know, that, that sounds admirable in a way.
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Um, but what it meant, uh, is that he had this kind of automatic deference to the music selected by some,
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um, you know, institutional music provider. Um, and so there's a weird way in which this, um,
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this sort of liberal notion of, of always, um, respecting the majority can turn very easily into
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a, just conceding the whole, um, field to whatever commercial forces are kind of the most energetic
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in taking over our, our public spaces. And I'm, you know, and I contrast that with when I was 13
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lifting weights in the YMCA and Berkeley, where there'd be a little boom box on the floor
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and, um, you know, people could fight over it, you know, to put their music on. Now, of course,
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you know, the guys who dominated the weight room were these huge, uh, you know, sort of lineman guys
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who would squat like 600 pounds. So it was a scrawny little, uh, scrawny little white guy.
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Obviously I wasn't going to be challenging anybody for the boom box, but I really preferred that
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because the source of the music was right there. It was accessible. And, um, there's a kind of
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hierarchy in the weight room. Um, it was clear to everybody. And somehow with the, the, my current
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experience in the gym with the music, it's like, it lays this kind of blank suffocating blanket of,
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um, I don't know, lameness over the whole thing. And everyone then of course plugs in their earbuds
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because they don't want to hear the music. And then you can't get a spot, uh, cause you have to
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like force someone to take their earbuds out. So it just, um, I just miss the kind of more slightly
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more edgy, uh, environment of a gym where it's, um, there was more interaction and there
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Right. So people were outside of, they had to like engage with the outside and they weren't
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in, you know, they weren't inside their head, so to speak.
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Yeah. Um, and I think it's, you make an interesting argument too. So, you know, this idea that we
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have, there's an illusion that we have freedom and autonomy, we can go online and we can order
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shoes, however we want them. Um, we can have it delivered right to our door in two days,
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thanks to Amazon prime. And it seems like technology is making our world more frictionless.
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Um, but how, how is it, why is it that this frictionlessness that we're trying to achieve
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with, you know, what people are trying to achieve in Silicon Valley, how does that actually
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deter us from actually becoming an individual and actually, and actually experiencing real
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agency and autonomy? I mean, your example of like the Mickey mouse clubhouse, like my kids are
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like, I got a five-year-old and a two-year-old. And so I've seen that show and I've hated it.
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I've just thought, this sucks. This is terrible. But you use that as an example of sort of like
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what the sort of, what we're trying, there's a sense of choice, but you really don't have a choice.
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Yeah. If you watch, uh, if you have kids, it means you end up watching a fair bit of
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children's television and it, uh, it's, it's pretty, uh, pretty horrifying, but it's hard
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to put your finger on what's wrong. I mean, everything is so nice. Um, and that's partly
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the problem. So, you know, in the book, I contrast the old Disney cartoons with the current one. So
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in the old ones from whatever, 50 years ago or something, um, you know, it's all about slapstick
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violence. Uh, material reality is constantly thwarting and frustrating people, uh, and, and
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injuring them. And it's funny. I mean, it's funny to get, watch someone get slapped by an over,
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uh, ground grandfather clock or, you know, uh, retractable blinds that suddenly, you know,
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pull you up, uh, and around, um, into the, into the, uh, mechanism. So contrast that with the
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current iteration where it's got all the same characters, but it's the, it's the, the world
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depicted as full of all this amazing technology that always works perfectly. And there's no moment
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of frustration that's allowed to arise. Um, and so when, when there is, you know, some kind
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of difficulty that the character faces in the story, uh, they say these magic words, I think
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it's misca, musca, something, something. Yeah. Or like Hey Toodles is the other thing.
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Yeah. Right. And then Hey, Hey Toodles. So when you say that it makes this, um, this, uh, this
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thing, I guess it's called Toodle that condenses out of the cloud and it's this computer like
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thing. And it presents a menu of four options, four solutions for whatever problem you have.
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And then your, your task is to simply choose one of these solutions. Now in every episode,
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there are four problems that arise. So you're guaranteed that one of these solutions is going
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to be the one. And so it's just, it's not just not funny. It's somehow the opposite of
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funny. And, uh, it's, if the old cartoons were kind of depicting a certain kind of psychological
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reality, the new ones seem to be not concerned with depicting reality so much as adjusting
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kids to, um, you know, to ask for help. Um, don't get into frustration, you know, um, you
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know, pick one of the, uh, solutions that's offered to you. So it's just super creepy in the
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way that it seems to be educating kids into a kind of passivity and dependence. Um, now
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this menu of options and choices, I think makes us more pliable to whoever is creating these
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little choice architectures. So, yeah, it's, um, so yeah, I put that in a chapter with the
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title, uh, um, virtual reality as moral ideal. The idea is that, um, is a kind of creeping
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substitution of virtual reality for actual reality.
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Right. Right. And I mean, so what this does, I mean, like you said, it puts us in our head.
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It makes us think that some magic thing will come down and solve our problems for us without
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any friction. We don't have to deal with annoying customer service. We don't have to deal with stuff
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not working. And if something doesn't work, there will be options for us to pick from.
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But as you said, like that, that giving us those options, it gives us the appearance of
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autonomy, but like you really don't have it because you have to choose one of those, one
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I'm kind of, yeah, I'm trying to kind of shift our concern from, from autonomy to agency.
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So, you know, this world depicted in the contemporary Disney cartoons is one where you
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don't need any skill whatsoever. I mean, you choose something, but you, you don't have
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any idea how your choice is actually realized in the world. Um, I think skill only develops
00:27:12.240
in an environment where you're challenged, where you have to engage directly with, you
00:27:18.240
know, material reality that isn't sort of geared to please you. Um, so in a, in a world where
00:27:28.140
everything is frictionless, it means you never develop skill, which means you're then dependent
00:27:32.300
on whoever's arranging things for you. And that really gets to, you know, the big idea
00:27:39.720
of the book, the world beyond your head, which is, um, that it's through skilled practices
00:27:46.680
that we can, um, kind of reclaim a certain way of being in the world more directly.
00:27:54.380
So I present these case studies of, um, short order cooks, motorcycle racers, um, hockey
00:28:02.680
players, people who build, uh, musical instruments. And these establish what I call ecologies of
00:28:10.540
attention where your perception is kind of tuned to the particular features of your environment
00:28:17.940
that show up for you through the lens of the activity and extraneous information is just
00:28:25.940
kind of dampened or, or disappears. And you get into that, um, state of total absorption
00:28:35.740
Yeah. And, and what you say, these, what these skills do, or the, you know, getting involved in
00:28:39.900
a skilled practice, um, it forces you out of your head. You have to deal with the world as
00:28:46.100
it is and not how you wish it were, you know, magic Mickey mouse club land. Um, but then also
00:28:54.120
you, you argue that skilled practices usually have these traditions or sort of hierarchy as
00:29:01.720
you talked about earlier that, you know, the, on the one hand, it seems like, Oh wow. It's
00:29:06.260
like, it's that's stifling, but you are, you actually know it can, it actually is the way
00:29:10.420
you can have agency and express your individuality. Yeah. I mean, to begin with just, um, I mean,
00:29:17.240
physical stuff, um, you know, to, to be good at playing the guitar, you have to submit to the
00:29:25.960
mechanical, you know, contingencies of the instrument. Uh, you have to practice scales
00:29:31.540
endlessly. Similarly, uh, you know, learning a foreign language is just a lot to, um, to learn.
00:29:39.260
It provides a kind of authoritative structure within which you develop your powers of expression.
00:29:47.640
And, um, so I think it's, uh, true in general that real agency only arises in the, in the context
00:29:56.300
of submission to things you have not made yourself. And, uh, you know, the terms submission and
00:30:05.340
authority, those are really jarring to the modern ear. Um, especially if it involves other people.
00:30:12.740
I mean, it's one thing to submit to a guitar, but if there's other people involved in it, then we
00:30:16.660
really get our hackles up. Um, so yeah, the final chapter of the book, I'm talking about this shop
00:30:26.420
where they're building Baroque pipe organs. So they've inherited these forms of the Baroque
00:30:33.820
pipe organs that are hundreds of years old. And what was really interesting about it to
00:30:39.180
me is that, um, they're engaged in this, uh, it isn't simply a kind of loving antiquarianism
00:30:49.740
where they're, you know, reproducing these static forms that have come down to them. It's
00:30:54.460
more like they're engaged in this quarrel with the organ builders of the past. And it's a quarrel
00:31:01.140
about how to best realize, you know, the musical potential of the pipe organ. So it's a conversation
00:31:09.380
and it, and it moves along and it kind of has a point. And one reason it was, uh, so fascinating
00:31:17.980
is that, well, to begin with, they're building their pipe organs to last 400 years. I mean,
00:31:25.780
they're, they're literally, that's their timeframe. You know, they're putting these in churches
00:31:31.140
and music halls. Um, so, you know, that alone shows you they're working on a very different
00:31:38.720
timescale than most of the economy. And this, it's, so there's this interplay between being
00:31:47.160
oriented toward the past and being oriented toward the future. And it means that the individual
00:31:55.400
craftspeople working there, and there was maybe like, I don't know, 20 or 30 people working there.
00:32:02.920
Um, their development and skill and understanding, they see as part of this much longer historical
00:32:11.520
art, which is the history of their trade. And it's this kind of living tradition that they
00:32:19.040
situate themselves in, in a really seem to kind of give a meaning to their work and that kind of
00:32:27.040
narrative coherence to their lives that I, I found really, uh, quite amazing. And, um,
00:32:36.400
um, one thing my, my observations there really did was complicate this idea of the spirit of
00:32:45.400
technology versus the spirit of kind of preservation. We often think that technology is, you know,
00:32:51.980
just kind of vandalizes the things that we, that we care about, or, you know, that it's some
00:32:58.120
kind of saving force that will, you know, make the world into utopia or something. But here it was
00:33:05.300
this kind of interplay of, um, it's, they're constantly innovating, they're trying new materials,
00:33:12.180
but it's, um, with a view to kind of keeping alive this, again, this, uh, this story arc
00:33:21.700
they're part of. And she said, it was a really, um, kind of, it's, it cuts so much against the image
00:33:28.300
we have of the, um, innovator as, you know, just gestating in a California garage someplace and
00:33:37.260
emerging like Moses with his, you know, new, uh, his new app or whatever it may be, um, which is
00:33:45.220
this kind of totally isolated moment disconnected to see the past and the future. And, um, so it was
00:33:52.160
interesting for that reason. Right. And so, I mean, yeah, the, the, just is by, by, by embedding
00:33:59.340
themselves in this tradition and in this community, very small community of organ restorers and
00:34:05.540
builders, it gave them a reference to which their, their changes meant like their, their changes meant
00:34:12.460
some meant something, right. So if they decided to use this material for the stop, uh, like they were
00:34:20.140
being true to it, but at the same time, like it allowed them to innovate as well. It gave them
00:34:23.660
reference for their, their innovation, I guess I'm trying to say. Yeah. And it's all these, uh,
00:34:27.920
sort of overlapping lineages of apprenticeship is what makes up this community. And, you know,
00:34:34.620
as a beginning organ maker, you have to just kind of do things the way your teacher shows you without
00:34:42.320
fully understanding the reasons for it. Uh, you learn by imitation and there's a, you know,
00:34:50.280
kind of mentorship that happens. And, you know, in our, uh, you know, in America, apprenticeship is
00:34:59.920
often criticized for being too narrow in education. It's often said that what the economy demands is
00:35:06.840
workers who are flexible, almost, you know, that they shouldn't be burdened with any particular set
00:35:12.080
of skills or knowledge because you have to be ready to reinvent yourself at any time.
00:35:17.740
But when you go deep into some particular art or skill, it trains your powers of concentration
00:35:27.680
and perception. You become more discerning about these particular objects, you know, in this case,
00:35:34.860
pipe organs. And if all goes well, you begin to care viscerally about quality. Um, usually because
00:35:43.600
you didn't initiate it into a kind of ethic of caring about what you're doing by the example of
00:35:49.820
some particular person, some mentor who embodies that spirit of craftsmanship. So I guess my point
00:35:57.240
then is that this kind of technical training, it was certainly narrow in its immediate application,
00:36:04.860
can be understood as part of education in the broadest sense that is, um, intellectual and moral
00:36:13.280
formation. So there, I think there's a larger point to be made about, um, kind of hands-on training
00:36:20.060
for young people. Yeah. This kind of, this reminds me of a conversation I had with, uh, a lady named
00:36:27.460
Susan Wise Bauer. I think she's at, she, she lives in Virginia. I know she wrote a book called
00:36:32.320
The Classical Education You Never Had. And she makes a similar argument, you know, that today in
00:36:36.580
education, in our schools, like we skip over, we, we think telling kids to memorize, you know,
00:36:42.100
rote information, right? Like dates and like, who are the characters and, you know, books like that's,
00:36:48.600
we shouldn't do that because like in today's economy, they need to know how to think and like,
00:36:51.960
you know, uh, be flexible. She says like, when you skip over that sort of the very basics,
00:36:56.720
um, and get people to developing opinions, that's what she says. We, people, kids are taught to
00:37:01.620
develop opinions. They, uh, they kind of, they don't have anything to build their opinion on.
00:37:07.440
Yeah. Yeah. Sort of shaky. Yeah. I think if you don't have actual knowledge, then it's very hard
00:37:14.900
to think because then you're just kind of moving around vague abstractions. I mean, yeah, I think
00:37:21.580
that's really true. Yeah. Um, so Matthew's been a really fascinating conversation. We've really
00:37:28.600
like scraped the surface of it, but I'm curious, I mean, so what's the takeaway for us guys who,
00:37:34.020
you know, that maybe we're not going to start a Baroque organ shop or become a, you know, a
00:37:41.580
motorcycle, custom motorcycle guy. But I mean, I mean, what's the takeaway for us? Is it just,
00:37:45.980
is it to get in touch with the real as much as possible and stay away from representations?
00:37:50.620
You know, I think any activity that brings you into, um, kind of cooperation and conflict
00:37:58.580
with other people kind of gets at a lot of this. So just, you know, playing sports, um,
00:38:06.420
playing music with other people, you know, cooking, cooking a meal. Um, it's, um, I mean,
00:38:15.160
this is just very obvious kind of advice that won't come as a shock to anybody.
00:38:20.620
There's nothing new here, but it does seem like the real satisfactions we get in life
00:38:28.240
or when we're, um, kind of, yeah, doing stuff that's real in the sense that, um, it's not
00:38:37.640
some manufactured experience that's been designed around you, uh, something to, to gratify your
00:38:44.580
need for certain kinds of stimulation. So, um, yeah, it's like we need some kind of big,
00:38:56.260
No, I guess, yeah, I don't know, but no, it makes sense. It's just, it's, it's a nice reminder
00:39:00.260
for people. And like this, um, you know, reading it not only has helped me, but it's made me think
00:39:04.860
about how I parent and like being cognizant of like, okay, am I letting my kids spend too much
00:39:10.260
time on the iPad, even though he only gets like a limited amount of time? Like maybe I need to
00:39:14.980
shut that off and get them outside and experience, uh, stuff that frustrates them. Um, I guess the
00:39:21.720
other takeaway is don't let your kids watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
00:39:24.320
Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Get some old three stooges or, uh, you know, those old violent, uh, road
00:39:31.520
runner cartoons because for one thing, they're actually funny. They are funny, but it also
00:39:38.000
teaches you something, it's teaching them something that the world isn't always going to save you.
00:39:42.640
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, uh, Matthew work. Go ahead. Oh, go ahead. I was going to say,
00:39:49.260
I was going to say we're work. Oh, I was just going to say, where can people learn more about your work?
00:39:54.320
Uh, well, I, I've got a website. It's, uh, Matthew B Crawford.com. Uh, you know, no, no period
00:40:02.160
after the B as in boy. And, uh, I've got links to, uh, some of my shorter writings, uh, people can
00:40:09.380
get a little taste if they want. And then, uh, from there, there's a link to my shop. If you're
00:40:14.200
looking for custom motorcycle parts, uh, yeah, hit me up. Cool. Well, Matthew Crawford, thank you so
00:40:19.700
much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Brett. My guest,
00:40:23.180
it was Matthew Crawford. He's the author of the book, the world beyond your head. You can find
00:40:26.820
that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about Matthew's work
00:40:30.680
at Matthew B Crawford.com and check out our show notes at aom.is slash Crawford for links to resources
00:40:37.380
where we can delve deeper in the topics we discussed today on the show.
00:40:50.560
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:40:54.900
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy
00:40:58.640
this show and have got something out of it, I'd appreciate it if you'd give us a review on iTunes
00:41:01.740
for Stitcher as that helps promote the show. As always, I appreciate your community support.
00:41:06.100
And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay and leave.