The Art of Manliness - #215： Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. So a common

00:00:18.540 complaint of the modern age is the sense of distraction and lack of focus that pervades

00:00:22.440 our lives. And we typically blame technology like the internet or smartphones for an ability

00:00:26.960 to concentrate on the task at hand. But my guest today argues that the culture of distraction

00:00:30.240 we face today runs much deeper than that and actually began several hundred years ago with

00:00:34.340 the enlightenment. His name is Matthew Crawford. He's the author of the book shop class as Soulcraft

00:00:39.660 and his latest book is called The World Beyond Your Head on Becoming a Human in the Age of

00:00:43.800 Distraction. And today on the show, Matthew and I discuss the origins of a distracted culture

00:00:47.760 and the deeper implications of our lives live totally inside our own heads. And we explore

00:00:52.040 the idea that we really want to live a life of focus. We need to go beyond just blocking

00:00:55.700 time-wasting sites on our computers and phones. Are you ready to take that journey and discover

00:00:59.720 the world outside your head? Stay tuned for a great discussion. And after the show, make

00:01:04.540 sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash Crawford.

00:01:12.800 All right, Matthew Crawford, welcome to the show.

00:01:16.300 Thanks for having me on.

00:01:17.560 So I've long been a fan of your work, your first book that I really enjoyed, Shop Class

00:01:21.500 as Soulcraft. Your latest book, The World Beyond Your Head on Becoming an Individual in an Age

00:01:26.540 of Distraction is out in paperback now, and it's very, very good. And we're going to talk

00:01:31.460 about that today. But before we get there, can you talk a little bit about your background?

00:01:34.640 Because I think it's interesting first, but also it will put, I think, put some context

00:01:40.200 in from like where you're coming from with the arguments you're making today.

00:01:43.180 Well, I tell a little bit of my story in Shop Class as Soulcraft. I majored in physics as

00:01:53.220 an undergrad at Santa Barbara, UC Santa Barbara, and tried to get a job with that degree and

00:02:02.420 couldn't. So I fell back on being an electrician and did that for a while. And then eventually

00:02:10.220 I got interested in philosophy. I went and did a PhD in sort of the history of political

00:02:16.880 thought at the University of Chicago and held various white-collar jobs that weren't doing

00:02:24.060 it for me and found myself running a think tank in D.C. and really pretty much hated it.

00:02:33.720 And so I lasted about five months. I quit that to open a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond,

00:02:40.340 Virginia.

00:02:42.620 And yeah, and then from there, I mean, that's what you do, but you're also right now, I

00:02:46.300 guess currently it says on the back of your book, you're a senior fellow at the University

00:02:49.900 of Virginia.

00:02:51.380 Yeah, right. So I don't teach, but I've got this gig as a research fellow at the University

00:03:00.340 of Virginia. So what it means is that I try to get out there about once a week and have

00:03:06.900 lovely conversations with people. It's a really nice intellectual community. So it's kind of

00:03:13.840 just enough of a toehold in academia to give me what I need from that kind of environment.

00:03:20.880 Gotcha.

00:03:21.080 But there's no, yeah, there's no obligation. So I think there must be some clerical error

00:03:25.500 at the heart of it, but I don't ask too many questions.

00:03:28.080 Right. So you spend most of your time working in your motorcycle shop.

00:03:33.300 Yeah, it varies because I, you know, as I should back up, I also do some writing, obviously,

00:03:39.760 depending on how much writing. So like these days, it's probably like 30 hours a week in

00:03:45.260 the shop. And that goes sort of up and down. I've gotten an employee right now, so I kind

00:03:50.840 of have to be there more.

00:03:52.160 Gotcha. So your first book, Shop Class Soulcraft, you make the case that skilled manual labor can

00:04:00.720 provide a person a sense of satisfaction and meaning that can't be found in the world

00:04:05.780 that often can't be found in the world of knowledge work or information work, right? I mean, you felt

00:04:09.380 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

00:04:15.000 know what it's doing, actually, pushing in numbers into Excel sheets. And it's a really great book.

00:04:20.540 If our listeners haven't read it, go out there and get it. Your new book, The World Beyond Your

00:04:24.360 Head on Becoming an Individuals in an Age of Distraction. Is this book a continuation of your

00:04:30.300 thoughts in shop class? And if so, how are the two connected?

00:04:35.420 Well, I guess one really simple way to state the connection would be they're motivated by the kind of

00:04:46.160 being struck with the thought that various forms of slavery come wrapped in an ideology of freedom.

00:04:56.320 So, you know, in Shop Class, I was trying to make sense of my own work experience and why I always

00:05:04.980 felt so stultified and sleepy, really, in the various cubicle jobs I'd had. You know, when you're working in

00:05:12.920 an office, it's often difficult to say exactly what you've accomplished at the end of any given day.

00:05:19.780 The chain of cause and effect can be pretty opaque and confusing. And so that feeling of individual

00:05:27.200 agency can be elusive. And by that, I just mean, you know, seeing a direct effect of your actions in the

00:05:33.620 world. Whereas, you know, I've worked as a mechanic and electrician. And, you know, when I flip the switch

00:05:41.640 and see the lights come on, it's like it's this incontrovertible experience of having done

00:05:48.660 something that I can actually point to. And I always found that really kind of thrilling.

00:05:57.300 And then so, and so, yeah, I mean, the connection, so in the world beyond your head.

00:06:01.500 Yeah, yeah. Okay. So in the world beyond your head, it's this sense that we're living through a

00:06:08.100 sort of crisis of attention right now. And it's become pretty widely remarked upon. It's usually

00:06:14.620 people complaining about technology in some way. And that, but I think one reason it's become hard

00:06:22.360 for us to resist all the entitlements and all the appropriations of our attention is that they

00:06:28.980 they kind of presented to us under the, under an ideology of choice, right? Just having more

00:06:37.060 choices is always better. And this idea that we get really from economics that to maximize your

00:06:44.900 freedom requires maximizing the number of choices you face. But that's precisely the condition that

00:06:51.680 makes for maximum dissipation of your energies. So it seemed like it required a reflection on

00:06:58.760 kind of what's at stake when, when we're so kind of subject to appropriation of our attention by

00:07:07.640 often mechanized forces and by commercial forces. Because when it's really bad, I think it often

00:07:15.500 feels like what's at stake is whether you're going to be able to maintain a coherent self, you know,

00:07:24.000 just a self-disabled to act according to settled purposes and ongoing projects rather than just

00:07:30.420 flitting about.

00:07:32.320 Right. And besides, I mean, you kind of touched on it a bit, a bit, I mean, some of the consequences

00:07:37.320 of this attentional problem that we're facing today. But I mean, it seems like in the book,

00:07:43.040 it runs deeper or the case, your argument that you're making is it runs deeper than just being

00:07:47.000 like, Oh man, I got to quit checking Facebook because I got to be productive in my job or whatever.

00:07:52.040 It seems like the consequences actually are deeper and affect us on a societal level as

00:07:58.100 well. So what are some of those consequences?

00:08:02.480 Well, as I mentioned, a kind of a feeling of fragmentation, the feeling that your attention

00:08:08.080 isn't simply yours to direct as you will. Now, of course, it's not, you know, as simple as some

00:08:14.180 kind of, you know, it's not something coercive. It's tapping into appetites we have for certain

00:08:19.200 kinds of stimulation. Um, and, uh, you know, we willingly invite into our lives, all these

00:08:26.980 things from candy crush to, to porn. Um, and so I think really this distractibility points

00:08:36.080 to a deeper cultural problem, which is kind of agnosticism about what's worth paying attention

00:08:44.120 to. And that really comes down to the question of what, uh, what to value, uh, because what you pay

00:08:51.960 attention to is sort of what's most present to you or most real for you. And I think, um, part of the

00:09:00.180 problem is that just the way we inhabit the world is very, it's really changed dramatically over the

00:09:05.360 past, I don't know, 20 years or something. I mean, you could, you could trace the kind of

00:09:10.440 genealogy of this variously and push it back a hundred years if you want. But in any case, when,

00:09:16.420 um, you know, sort of the natural way of inhabiting the world is just in your body and the body gives

00:09:22.640 us a kind of center of orientation. So there's things behind me and, and, you know, in front of

00:09:29.260 me, to the left, to the right, above and below. And that, what that does, it kind of establishes a

00:09:35.100 zone of relevance, you know, what is actually within reach, you know, literally within reach.

00:09:41.380 Um, and that's important for attention because the whole idea of attention is that you select

00:09:48.000 some things out, you know, from everything that's available and not other things.

00:09:53.100 But when you're, uh, encountering the world through, you know, representations, you know,

00:10:00.700 like on a computer screen where you can take a virtual tour of the forbidden city in Beijing

00:10:07.620 or, uh, you know, these underwater caverns, um, everything is lumped into a kind of distancelessness

00:10:16.420 that, um, there doesn't seem to be any non-arbitrary basis on which to say, you know, this and that

00:10:24.380 and not that pertains to me. So in that condition, um, I think it's very hard to compose a coherent

00:10:32.920 life on the basis sort of, of infinite options, infinite choice. Um, not least because, you know,

00:10:41.800 whatever's going on in your immediate environment with the people that you actually share your life

00:10:46.940 with is likely to not be as amusing as whatever's going on, you know, on the internet. So again,

00:10:56.040 it's this feeling of subject to centrifugal forces that kind of pulls apart.

00:11:01.660 Yeah. And there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack there, but so you started off talking about,

00:11:06.080 you know, there, we, there's this notion today that we have unlimited choices,

00:11:11.160 which makes us free. But you argue that actually it can actually stifle us because we become

00:11:16.940 overwhelmed with the amount of choices. And this is sort of the crux of the problem of attention.

00:11:22.380 And you make the interesting case, like you said, I mean, things have gotten really changed a lot

00:11:26.760 in the past 20 years with the advent of the internet and smart devices were constantly connected to a

00:11:30.980 virtual world. But you argue that this attention problem we have originated, you know,

00:11:36.820 two, 300 years ago, you could say with the, um, the enlightenment. Uh, I know there's a lot to unpack

00:11:43.620 there, but how did enlightenment, the enlightenment thinking lead to this problem of attention that we

00:11:49.660 have today?

00:11:51.480 Well, really at the heart of it isn't, is, um, a set of ideas that emerged, you know, back in the 1600s

00:11:59.800 was about how we make contact with the world, how we grasp the world. And the, the big idea was that,

00:12:09.460 um, we do so only through our internal mental representations of the world. In other words,

00:12:16.360 you can't really make contact with the things themselves, but you, you construct some, some

00:12:22.260 picture in your head. And that's, and it's always through that, um, kind of mediating representation

00:12:28.800 that we encounter the world. Now, there's good reasons to think that this is a, as a more or

00:12:35.080 less completely bogus view of how we grasp reality. And I say that based on, uh, more recent philosophy

00:12:42.940 and, and, and cognitive science. But the weird thing is that life has come to imitate theory so that,

00:12:51.320 you know, in the 21st century, sure enough, we increasingly encounter the world through these

00:12:58.100 representations. Um, so as I, you know, as I kind of hinted at before, I think that's the basic reason

00:13:06.140 why, um, we feel a kind of, um, a lack of limit on our mental lives that has the effect of kind of

00:13:16.420 dissipating our mental energies. Um, because if you, if you're sort of bodily wave and, you know,

00:13:24.480 being in the world doesn't, isn't providing a frame of orientation, then there's, there's literally

00:13:31.200 no limit to what you can, uh, preoccupy yourself with. Right. And that can be just psychologically

00:13:38.520 exhausting. Yeah, totally. And it's also, I mean, we're subject to this feeling like I'm, I'm missing

00:13:45.960 out or I'm not completely optimizing my experience. I could be, you know, there's something more awesome

00:13:52.860 going on in some corner. I need to investigate. And, uh, and that's connected, I think, to, um,

00:14:02.460 this feeling of, of individualism, where it's really up to everybody to kind of make themselves,

00:14:10.700 you know, into their fullest self. There's a kind of existential heroism where, um, you feel

00:14:18.680 radically responsible for yourself. You know, once upon a time we had, you know, you might've had a

00:14:24.840 hereditary occupation. Um, you might've been born into some rigid social system where you're,

00:14:32.080 you know, the range of, um, kind of possibilities for you were quite constrained. Of course that that's

00:14:39.140 bad in all kinds of ways, but what it meant is that, um, well, I think the experience of failure

00:14:47.880 has become much, goes much deeper for us precisely because we feel like if you're, you know, if your

00:14:55.780 life isn't everything you want it to be, it's on you because, um, you know, because we have so much

00:15:02.600 freedom and that's, I think that leads to a lot of anxiety and depression.

00:15:07.940 Right. Even de Tocqueville, right. Is that how you say his name? The French guy, like he noticed that

00:15:13.400 in Americans, like they were had a lot of freedom, but like, they were like some of the most

00:15:17.560 miserable people at the same time. Yeah. And one thing I, it took, it was great. He, uh,

00:15:24.520 he pointed out that Americans, um, you know, they, we have this, um, this idea that everyone has to

00:15:31.660 stand on their own two feet and reject any kind of example or custom, any kind of social authority.

00:15:39.600 Um, and, and, you know, he's writing, this is back in the 1830s and this was already true from America.

00:15:46.820 Um, and he says that this has a strange effect because we actually sense correctly that we're

00:15:53.920 not really competent to judge everything for ourselves. And yet we have this cultural imperative

00:16:01.060 to do so to make this anxious. So what we do is we look around to see what everyone else thinks,

00:16:08.940 our contemporaries. Um, so there's sort of paradoxical way in which the rugged individualist

00:16:16.220 turns out to be the conformist. Um, so in other words, we look to our contemporaries rather than to

00:16:22.940 some inherited tradition or some, you know, other forms of, of social authority.

00:16:28.780 Um, so going back to this idea that we're, um, agnostic about our attention, like we don't

00:16:35.320 have like, you know, you're going like, if we want to use like Aristotelian terms, we don't

00:16:39.220 have a telos, like an N for our attention. Um, and this, I think you are, you argue in the book

00:16:45.640 that this originated in the enlightenment too. So there's this idea that, you know, personal

00:16:48.980 autonomy, freedom is the thing that's most important. And as a result, like you can't impose

00:16:54.480 your beliefs on other people so that they, or your preferences on other people, because that would

00:17:00.140 rob them of their freedom. But, and that sounds great on theory. It's like, oh yeah, everyone has

00:17:06.100 to do their own thing, but you make the case that it actually leads to sort of this blandness and

00:17:10.820 flattening. Yeah. I mean, it's, um, you know, this, this, everything you just said, if you wanted to

00:17:19.680 give a name to it, you could name it subjectivism, this idea that what makes something right or good

00:17:26.520 or beautiful is how I feel about it. And that, um, all of these judgments are, are radically

00:17:34.780 private. It's like an itch, you know, no one else can feel your itch or your pain, which means that

00:17:40.200 there's a kind of, um, they're incommunicable in a way we can't really enter into a shared judgment

00:17:47.900 about things. And, um, one thing that does, I think it makes us retreat ever further into

00:17:55.060 ourselves. And there's a kind of, um, timidity about, um, just, you know, disputing with, with

00:18:06.240 one another in a, in a kind of rational way. And so, instead of what we find these days is people,

00:18:12.480 um, forming these self-selecting enclaves online, right? Where, where we affirm one another

00:18:21.500 and form these kind of micro, uh, subcultures. And you see this in politics too, where it's

00:18:27.080 increasingly, um, kind of self-reinforcing echo chambers, um, and the very idea of a shared,

00:18:36.400 uh, truth, a shared world that we can kind of talk rationally about seems to have been eroded a

00:18:44.200 little bit. Right. Right. And it makes the world sort of bland. Like when we do interact with others

00:18:49.500 who don't share our interests, we have to keep very, things very neutral. And you gave the example

00:18:54.460 of the music at the gym where it was playing, you know, some sort of weird, you know, emo music,

00:19:01.560 bland emo music was being piped in. And like, you went to the kid at the counter and said,

00:19:05.020 play anything. I'm sure whatever you listen to is better than this garbage. And the kid was just 0.99

00:19:10.980 like, no, I can't do that. Yeah. He's, he's, that was interesting. Um, what he said was,

00:19:16.740 I wouldn't want to impose my choice on anyone. And you know, that, that sounds admirable in a way.

00:19:23.960 Um, but what it meant, uh, is that he had this kind of automatic deference to the music selected by some,

00:19:33.420 um, you know, institutional music provider. Um, and so there's a weird way in which this, um,

00:19:42.420 this sort of liberal notion of, of always, um, respecting the majority can turn very easily into

00:19:53.440 a, just conceding the whole, um, field to whatever commercial forces are kind of the most energetic

00:20:02.000 in taking over our, our public spaces. And I'm, you know, and I contrast that with when I was 13

00:20:08.600 lifting weights in the YMCA and Berkeley, where there'd be a little boom box on the floor

00:20:14.940 and, um, you know, people could fight over it, you know, to put their music on. Now, of course,

00:20:21.700 you know, the guys who dominated the weight room were these huge, uh, you know, sort of lineman guys

00:20:28.700 who would squat like 600 pounds. So it was a scrawny little, uh, scrawny little white guy. 0.74

00:20:34.900 Obviously I wasn't going to be challenging anybody for the boom box, but I really preferred that

00:20:40.820 because the source of the music was right there. It was accessible. And, um, there's a kind of

00:20:47.900 hierarchy in the weight room. Um, it was clear to everybody. And somehow with the, the, my current

00:20:56.940 experience in the gym with the music, it's like, it lays this kind of blank suffocating blanket of,

00:21:03.280 um, I don't know, lameness over the whole thing. And everyone then of course plugs in their earbuds

00:21:09.240 because they don't want to hear the music. And then you can't get a spot, uh, cause you have to

00:21:15.540 like force someone to take their earbuds out. So it just, um, I just miss the kind of more slightly

00:21:22.980 more edgy, uh, environment of a gym where it's, um, there was more interaction and there

00:21:30.320 was also, there was more, more hierarchy.

00:21:33.040 Right. So people were outside of, they had to like engage with the outside and they weren't

00:21:36.860 in, you know, they weren't inside their head, so to speak.

00:21:39.760 Yeah. Yeah.

00:21:41.320 Yeah. Um, and I think it's, you make an interesting argument too. So, you know, this idea that we

00:21:48.500 have, there's an illusion that we have freedom and autonomy, we can go online and we can order

00:21:53.980 shoes, however we want them. Um, we can have it delivered right to our door in two days,

00:21:59.720 thanks to Amazon prime. And it seems like technology is making our world more frictionless.

00:22:07.000 Um, but how, how is it, why is it that this frictionlessness that we're trying to achieve

00:22:12.820 with, you know, what people are trying to achieve in Silicon Valley, how does that actually

00:22:17.500 deter us from actually becoming an individual and actually, and actually experiencing real

00:22:22.700 agency and autonomy? I mean, your example of like the Mickey mouse clubhouse, like my kids are

00:22:29.800 like, I got a five-year-old and a two-year-old. And so I've seen that show and I've hated it.

00:22:34.740 I've just thought, this sucks. This is terrible. But you use that as an example of sort of like 0.99

00:22:38.620 what the sort of, what we're trying, there's a sense of choice, but you really don't have a choice.

00:22:43.820 Yeah. If you watch, uh, if you have kids, it means you end up watching a fair bit of

00:22:49.460 children's television and it, uh, it's, it's pretty, uh, pretty horrifying, but it's hard

00:22:55.340 to put your finger on what's wrong. I mean, everything is so nice. Um, and that's partly

00:23:02.180 the problem. So, you know, in the book, I contrast the old Disney cartoons with the current one. So

00:23:08.060 in the old ones from whatever, 50 years ago or something, um, you know, it's all about slapstick

00:23:15.240 violence. Uh, material reality is constantly thwarting and frustrating people, uh, and, and

00:23:25.820 injuring them. And it's funny. I mean, it's funny to get, watch someone get slapped by an over,

00:23:33.060 uh, ground grandfather clock or, you know, uh, retractable blinds that suddenly, you know,

00:23:42.220 pull you up, uh, and around, um, into the, into the, uh, mechanism. So contrast that with the

00:23:49.500 current iteration where it's got all the same characters, but it's the, it's the, the world

00:23:56.180 depicted as full of all this amazing technology that always works perfectly. And there's no moment

00:24:05.200 of frustration that's allowed to arise. Um, and so when, when there is, you know, some kind

00:24:14.020 of difficulty that the character faces in the story, uh, they say these magic words, I think

00:24:21.340 it's misca, musca, something, something. Yeah. Or like Hey Toodles is the other thing.

00:24:26.500 Yeah. Right. And then Hey, Hey Toodles. So when you say that it makes this, um, this, uh, this

00:24:33.140 thing, I guess it's called Toodle that condenses out of the cloud and it's this computer like

00:24:39.300 thing. And it presents a menu of four options, four solutions for whatever problem you have.

00:24:47.140 And then your, your task is to simply choose one of these solutions. Now in every episode,

00:24:54.820 there are four problems that arise. So you're guaranteed that one of these solutions is going

00:24:59.980 to be the one. And so it's just, it's not just not funny. It's somehow the opposite of

00:25:06.060 funny. And, uh, it's, if the old cartoons were kind of depicting a certain kind of psychological

00:25:13.740 reality, the new ones seem to be not concerned with depicting reality so much as adjusting

00:25:21.940 kids to, um, you know, to ask for help. Um, don't get into frustration, you know, um, you

00:25:31.760 know, pick one of the, uh, solutions that's offered to you. So it's just super creepy in the

00:25:37.160 way that it seems to be educating kids into a kind of passivity and dependence. Um, now

00:25:46.440 this menu of options and choices, I think makes us more pliable to whoever is creating these

00:25:54.560 little choice architectures. So, yeah, it's, um, so yeah, I put that in a chapter with the

00:26:02.160 title, uh, um, virtual reality as moral ideal. The idea is that, um, is a kind of creeping

00:26:11.000 substitution of virtual reality for actual reality.

00:26:15.360 Right. Right. And I mean, so what this does, I mean, like you said, it puts us in our head.

00:26:20.080 It makes us think that some magic thing will come down and solve our problems for us without

00:26:26.180 any friction. We don't have to deal with annoying customer service. We don't have to deal with stuff

00:26:30.400 not working. And if something doesn't work, there will be options for us to pick from.

00:26:35.280 But as you said, like that, that giving us those options, it gives us the appearance of

00:26:40.220 autonomy, but like you really don't have it because you have to choose one of those, one

00:26:45.400 of those options.

00:26:46.300 Well, the word I like is agency.

00:26:48.860 Agency.

00:26:49.080 I'm kind of, yeah, I'm trying to kind of shift our concern from, from autonomy to agency.

00:26:54.240 So, you know, this world depicted in the contemporary Disney cartoons is one where you

00:27:00.340 don't need any skill whatsoever. I mean, you choose something, but you, you don't have

00:27:05.600 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

00:28:31.380 that can be really, uh, really pleasing.

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,

00:38:53.000 uh, grand point here to end.

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.

00:41:31.740 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - July 06, 2016

#215： Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

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