Doing something well for its own sake.
June 23, 2008 7:43 AM Subscribe
Read this excerpt of Richard Sennett's The Craftsman. Listen to him on the Diane Rehm show or peruse this interview with Laurie Taylor. Discuss.
The title of this post has nothing to do with the content of the excerpt. I'd be interested in a post on the former, but Yet Another We Must Beware Frankenstein? Meh.
posted by DU at 8:34 AM on June 23, 2008
posted by DU at 8:34 AM on June 23, 2008
That was an unduly negative remark. The title IS related to the Taylor interview. And if it's uninteresting, why do I need to meh? I do not.
posted by DU at 8:43 AM on June 23, 2008
posted by DU at 8:43 AM on June 23, 2008
DU: Craftsmanship, for Sennett, is the solution to the "Beware Frankenstein" problem, which he, too, is somewhat tired of. That's why he takes Arendt to task for blaming all science for the atomic bomb.
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:44 AM on June 23, 2008
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:44 AM on June 23, 2008
divabat, some people are just not cut out for it. But do whatever you enjoy, who knows where it will lead if not obvious at first.
posted by stbalbach at 8:53 AM on June 23, 2008
posted by stbalbach at 8:53 AM on June 23, 2008
I am quite interested in arts and crafts, but no matter how often I practice or try, I still can't get to a high enough quality level.
The game of craft is best played against oneself, not against others. That's not to say that you shouldn't check out other people's work, but the goal should be for your own opinion of each piece to be as good as or better than it was for the last, not for each piece to be better than some arbitrary standard. If you can see even a small way in which you've improved, try to be proud of that, rather than being depressed by your overall skill level.
Is it ok to just do something, well or not well, for its own sake?
Yes! Everyone has to start somewhere, and not everyone has what it takes to be a pro. Many people will always be better than you, and many worse, so there's no shame in being just as good at craft as you are. IMHO, as long as you are enjoying what you're doing, and you're not getting any worse (by your own standards), you're doing it right... and if you keep at it, one day you might look up from your desk or workbench and realize that your work became "good enough" some years ago!
posted by vorfeed at 8:59 AM on June 23, 2008 [3 favorites]
The game of craft is best played against oneself, not against others. That's not to say that you shouldn't check out other people's work, but the goal should be for your own opinion of each piece to be as good as or better than it was for the last, not for each piece to be better than some arbitrary standard. If you can see even a small way in which you've improved, try to be proud of that, rather than being depressed by your overall skill level.
Is it ok to just do something, well or not well, for its own sake?
Yes! Everyone has to start somewhere, and not everyone has what it takes to be a pro. Many people will always be better than you, and many worse, so there's no shame in being just as good at craft as you are. IMHO, as long as you are enjoying what you're doing, and you're not getting any worse (by your own standards), you're doing it right... and if you keep at it, one day you might look up from your desk or workbench and realize that your work became "good enough" some years ago!
posted by vorfeed at 8:59 AM on June 23, 2008 [3 favorites]
I was actually just thinking about this this morning from the point of view of an inventor. The classic gleaming dials and intricate scrollwork on the apparatus. Why put so much effort into something that might fail? Why not a simple prototype without all the decoration? I'm thinking there are 3 explanations:
1) Romanticization: Old-timey prototypes often were uglier than their steampunk descendents would indicate.
2) Less hurried age: Every generation thinks the previous one had it easy, but there's still an element of truth to this. Workplace efficiency didn't really become a mania until about 50-80 years ago. Before then, hardly anyone tracked how much was being "wasted" on fripperies.
3) Craftsmanship: The reason I was thinking of this topic was that I was thinking how ugly my own prototypes are. But actually, if anything, my own prototypes are overdesigned. For instance, when making a Lego machine I'll often disassemble a large portion of it because some non-functional part doesn't match (even if only in color). Why on earth does that matter? Does that mean I'm a craftsman? Or an anal-retentive perfectionist? Or is that the same thing?
posted by DU at 9:14 AM on June 23, 2008
1) Romanticization: Old-timey prototypes often were uglier than their steampunk descendents would indicate.
2) Less hurried age: Every generation thinks the previous one had it easy, but there's still an element of truth to this. Workplace efficiency didn't really become a mania until about 50-80 years ago. Before then, hardly anyone tracked how much was being "wasted" on fripperies.
3) Craftsmanship: The reason I was thinking of this topic was that I was thinking how ugly my own prototypes are. But actually, if anything, my own prototypes are overdesigned. For instance, when making a Lego machine I'll often disassemble a large portion of it because some non-functional part doesn't match (even if only in color). Why on earth does that matter? Does that mean I'm a craftsman? Or an anal-retentive perfectionist? Or is that the same thing?
posted by DU at 9:14 AM on June 23, 2008
As for the book, I find it pretty intriguing, though I agree with DU -- the excerpt is rather boring, and doesn't get to the meat of what he's trying to say. That's what you get for taking it from the first five pages of the prologue, I guess.
I like to think of craft as being a form of passionate reality -- unlike religion or escapism (passionate unreality) or our day-to-day chores (non-passionate reality), it's a brutally honest blending of what we most want to be and what we already are. I don't think our society much values or even likes this combination, but I think it's as vital as breathing, and the lack of it is close to the heart of what's wrong with our society. Judging from the interview, I think Sennett really gets that.
posted by vorfeed at 9:14 AM on June 23, 2008 [4 favorites]
I like to think of craft as being a form of passionate reality -- unlike religion or escapism (passionate unreality) or our day-to-day chores (non-passionate reality), it's a brutally honest blending of what we most want to be and what we already are. I don't think our society much values or even likes this combination, but I think it's as vital as breathing, and the lack of it is close to the heart of what's wrong with our society. Judging from the interview, I think Sennett really gets that.
posted by vorfeed at 9:14 AM on June 23, 2008 [4 favorites]
nice, I saw a guy reading this book on the train the other day, and had to perform contortions to read over his shoulder. What I saw looked pretty interesting - agreeing with vorfeed that a lack of devotion to craft is hurting our society.
posted by dubold at 9:22 AM on June 23, 2008
posted by dubold at 9:22 AM on June 23, 2008
Sennett is one of our most original thinkers on the human condition and material culture. For those interested in urbanism, I recommend Flesh and Stone: The Body And The City In Western Civilization; The Conscience of the Eye: The design and social life of cities; The Fall of Public Man; and The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity & City Life. Thank you for the post, anotherpanacea. May I recommend you add the tags Hannah Arendt and The Human Condition? As pointed out in the review you posted by Scott McLemee, The Craftsman is a direct engagement with that work.
posted by xod at 9:45 AM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]
posted by xod at 9:45 AM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]
I don't think our society much values or even likes this combination, but I think it's as vital as breathing, and the lack of it is close to the heart of what's wrong with our society.
Amen to that, brother. The most tragic feature of post-industrial life is its unnatural compartmentalization of life and livelihood. IMO, of course. It's like we've been swindled out of the right to claim even the trades to which we devote the overwhelming majority of our lives as things we own for ourselves--most of our occupations, in a real sense, belong to someone else (our employers). We're just borrowing them. Most of us earn our livelihoods from an updated and more subtle economic equivalent of share-cropping. But that's all getting a little of topic...
Great post, anotherpanacea. Based on the Powell's review, this is going on my book wish list.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:04 AM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]
Amen to that, brother. The most tragic feature of post-industrial life is its unnatural compartmentalization of life and livelihood. IMO, of course. It's like we've been swindled out of the right to claim even the trades to which we devote the overwhelming majority of our lives as things we own for ourselves--most of our occupations, in a real sense, belong to someone else (our employers). We're just borrowing them. Most of us earn our livelihoods from an updated and more subtle economic equivalent of share-cropping. But that's all getting a little of topic...
Great post, anotherpanacea. Based on the Powell's review, this is going on my book wish list.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:04 AM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]
"[...] I'll often disassemble a large portion of it because some non-functional part doesn't match (even if only in color). Why on earth does that matter? Does that mean I'm a craftsman? Or an anal-retentive perfectionist? Or is that the same thing?"
Interesting comment, DU. I think it is because you are, in fact, crafting the object. Perhaps part of that process involves personal satisfaction, your possible discoveries - however minor they may be in your own hierarchies of criteria - and joy.
Arendt might say that because your work belongs to the category of homo faber and is both technique - technê - and poetry - poiesis. It is distinct from the labor of animal laborans, characterized by impermanence and biological necessity.
Even if you dismantle the object without having ever shown it to anyone, the work is inherently public and is fundamentally civic in its intent. These are the qualities that are the preconditions for craft.
posted by xod at 10:54 AM on June 23, 2008
Interesting comment, DU. I think it is because you are, in fact, crafting the object. Perhaps part of that process involves personal satisfaction, your possible discoveries - however minor they may be in your own hierarchies of criteria - and joy.
Arendt might say that because your work belongs to the category of homo faber and is both technique - technê - and poetry - poiesis. It is distinct from the labor of animal laborans, characterized by impermanence and biological necessity.
Even if you dismantle the object without having ever shown it to anyone, the work is inherently public and is fundamentally civic in its intent. These are the qualities that are the preconditions for craft.
posted by xod at 10:54 AM on June 23, 2008
Oh don't worry, the ones with moving parts always end up on YouTube. Though whether that is a "civil" forum is a matter for semanticists.
posted by DU at 11:23 AM on June 23, 2008
posted by DU at 11:23 AM on June 23, 2008
May I recommend you add the tags Hannah Arendt and The Human Condition? As pointed out in the review you posted by Scott McLemee, The Craftsman is a direct engagement with that work.
Done, though I should point out that Sennett radically misreads Arendt's criticism of craftsmanship, in ways that are detrimental to the overall project. As usual, however, constructive misreading is much preferred to rote correctness. Sennett's argument with Arendt may not be quite what he thinks it is, but his positive project is pretty fascinating and I think it deserves a wide distribution.
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:22 PM on June 23, 2008
Done, though I should point out that Sennett radically misreads Arendt's criticism of craftsmanship, in ways that are detrimental to the overall project. As usual, however, constructive misreading is much preferred to rote correctness. Sennett's argument with Arendt may not be quite what he thinks it is, but his positive project is pretty fascinating and I think it deserves a wide distribution.
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:22 PM on June 23, 2008
"[...] Sennett radically misreads Arendt's criticism of craftsmanship, in ways that are detrimental to the overall project."
I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this. How do you mean?
posted by xod at 12:35 PM on June 23, 2008
I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this. How do you mean?
posted by xod at 12:35 PM on June 23, 2008
Well, they're on the same page in many respects, so it's a misreading insofar as he draws false distinctions between himself and her, defining himself as not-Arendt when he actually sounds most similar to her. She, too, saw thinking and philosophy as closely intertwined with work. Arendt's big insight (well, one of them) was to distinguish work, the making and preservation of the meaningful world we inhabit, from labor, the cyclical reproduction of our productive capacities. She's a Trinitarian, not a dualist: labor, work, and action are three separate kinds of activities, and each solves problems in the other's realm. The backbreaking labor of survival is unbearable without a shared language and culture to give it meaning; the world we share is stifling and static unless we can replenish it by acting and communicating together in novel and unpredictable ways.
Thus there's a difference between building a house and laboring in the fields: the house is finished and we can dwell within it because it endures past our efforts, but the stomach will be hungry again tomorrow, and the work of filling it cannot be satisfying in the way that making a house or writing a book is. In the same way, there's a difference between making a speech in a PTA meeting and writing a book about politics: we can outline the book, project its sales, foresee criticisms and anticipate objections, but we can't foresee the reactions of our fellow citizens in a plurality concerned with matters of self-governance. That's Arendt's claim, anyway, and I tend to agree. As such, there may well be things to be learned from the craftsman about our relationship to meaning and life, but we should never go so far as to re-assert the primacy of statecraft such that we again side with Plato's philosopher-king in the notion that human novelty and ingenuity can be shaped like wood or iron if only you practice manipulating them enough.
Sennett wants the respect for mastery from the workshop to have a place in the Senate. I want Linux programmers to respect skill but citizens to preserve equality over elitism. It's a small difference, but it's pretty important when you think about the role that expertise, especially medical and legal expertise, plays in suppressing democratic equality.
posted by anotherpanacea at 1:06 PM on June 23, 2008 [2 favorites]
Thus there's a difference between building a house and laboring in the fields: the house is finished and we can dwell within it because it endures past our efforts, but the stomach will be hungry again tomorrow, and the work of filling it cannot be satisfying in the way that making a house or writing a book is. In the same way, there's a difference between making a speech in a PTA meeting and writing a book about politics: we can outline the book, project its sales, foresee criticisms and anticipate objections, but we can't foresee the reactions of our fellow citizens in a plurality concerned with matters of self-governance. That's Arendt's claim, anyway, and I tend to agree. As such, there may well be things to be learned from the craftsman about our relationship to meaning and life, but we should never go so far as to re-assert the primacy of statecraft such that we again side with Plato's philosopher-king in the notion that human novelty and ingenuity can be shaped like wood or iron if only you practice manipulating them enough.
Sennett wants the respect for mastery from the workshop to have a place in the Senate. I want Linux programmers to respect skill but citizens to preserve equality over elitism. It's a small difference, but it's pretty important when you think about the role that expertise, especially medical and legal expertise, plays in suppressing democratic equality.
posted by anotherpanacea at 1:06 PM on June 23, 2008 [2 favorites]
"[...]there's a difference between building a house and laboring in the fields: the house is finished and we can dwell within it because it endures past our efforts, but the stomach will be hungry again tomorrow, and the work of filling it cannot be satisfying in the way that making a house or writing a book is."
I'm inclined to disagree, but I'm having trouble expressing exactly why. Is gardening not a craft? Why is the assumption made that survival must be back breaking work/labor? I don't think survival has always been so back breaking and or demoralizing, as evidenced by our hunter gatherer ancestors and even today among the few surviving primitive peoples (like the !Kung Bushmen). They don't labor/work nearly as much as people in industrialized nations do.
I guess what I'm getting at is that maybe creating the distinction between laboring and working is what plagues our society.
posted by symbollocks at 1:41 PM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]
I'm inclined to disagree, but I'm having trouble expressing exactly why. Is gardening not a craft? Why is the assumption made that survival must be back breaking work/labor? I don't think survival has always been so back breaking and or demoralizing, as evidenced by our hunter gatherer ancestors and even today among the few surviving primitive peoples (like the !Kung Bushmen). They don't labor/work nearly as much as people in industrialized nations do.
I guess what I'm getting at is that maybe creating the distinction between laboring and working is what plagues our society.
posted by symbollocks at 1:41 PM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]
Is gardening not a craft?
For me, the point is that one could, and people certainly do, garden in that way. It is alienated labor, say, picking acres of cotton, with no real relationship to other aspects of its production, that would be demoralizing.
posted by xod at 1:58 PM on June 23, 2008
For me, the point is that one could, and people certainly do, garden in that way. It is alienated labor, say, picking acres of cotton, with no real relationship to other aspects of its production, that would be demoralizing.
posted by xod at 1:58 PM on June 23, 2008
I want Linux programmers to respect skill but citizens to preserve equality over elitism. It's a small difference, but it's pretty important when you think about the role that expertise, especially medical and legal expertise, plays in suppressing democratic equality.
Are you saying that a Linux programmer could not practice programming as a craft? Isn't Sennett saying the opposite - that the practice of a craft, virtually any activity mastered, is a primary human impulse, ignored at our peril?
posted by xod at 2:21 PM on June 23, 2008
Are you saying that a Linux programmer could not practice programming as a craft? Isn't Sennett saying the opposite - that the practice of a craft, virtually any activity mastered, is a primary human impulse, ignored at our peril?
posted by xod at 2:21 PM on June 23, 2008
Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui.
At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee - zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music.
"Ah, this is marvelous!" said Lord Wen-hui. "Imagine skill reaching such heights!"
Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, "What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now - now I go at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.
"A good cook changes his knife once a year-because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month-because he hacks. I've had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I've cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone.
There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there's plenty of room - more than enough for the blade to play about it. That's why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.
"However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I'm doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until - flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away."
"Excellent!" said Lord Wen-hui. "I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!"
Chuang Tzu
posted by Huplescat at 4:07 PM on June 23, 2008
Are you saying that a Linux programmer could not practice programming as a craft?
No. They can, and do, because there's a right answer, it's a voluntary community, and they don't control our futures, etc.
Is gardening not a craft?
I suspect that gardening is a craft the way most of us practice it. It's also a hobby. Farming isn't a craft, or rather, it wasn't a craft until we industrialized it, turned it into agricultural science and engineering the earth. The discovery phase of agricultural science, all the work that land-grant universities do: that's a craft. Picking beans in the field all day? Not so much. Most of the activity that most people on the planet engage in, however, is neither hobby nor craft: it's back-breaking labor. The industrialization of farming has it's own problems, but I think it's a mistake to romanticize craft without acknowledging that material realities are inherently finite and that limited resources will be unequitably distributed in ways that transcend questions of skill and mastery.
posted by anotherpanacea at 4:23 PM on June 23, 2008
No. They can, and do, because there's a right answer, it's a voluntary community, and they don't control our futures, etc.
Is gardening not a craft?
I suspect that gardening is a craft the way most of us practice it. It's also a hobby. Farming isn't a craft, or rather, it wasn't a craft until we industrialized it, turned it into agricultural science and engineering the earth. The discovery phase of agricultural science, all the work that land-grant universities do: that's a craft. Picking beans in the field all day? Not so much. Most of the activity that most people on the planet engage in, however, is neither hobby nor craft: it's back-breaking labor. The industrialization of farming has it's own problems, but I think it's a mistake to romanticize craft without acknowledging that material realities are inherently finite and that limited resources will be unequitably distributed in ways that transcend questions of skill and mastery.
posted by anotherpanacea at 4:23 PM on June 23, 2008
Picking beans in the field all day stinks of industrial mono-culture farming, not traditional farming, with a day or so of picking beans all day in the field and a day or two of haying to get the livestock through the lean time of winter, but that’s just a small slice of life from a traditional family farm.
posted by Huplescat at 7:31 PM on June 23, 2008
posted by Huplescat at 7:31 PM on June 23, 2008
For those interested in urbanism, I recommend Flesh and Stone: The Body And The City In Western Civilization; The Conscience of the Eye: The design and social life of cities; The Fall of Public Man; and The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity & City Life.
Funnily enough, I was talking about Sennett today. I'm attending a seminar tomorrow on the relationship between PTSD and drug dependence (by a bunch of people who are pushing the that woo-woo, wiggly eyeball shit -- EMDR -- that's kinda hot at the moment. And yes, I know that NICE have validated it, but it still seems like woo-woo shit to me.)
While not wishing to deny the impact of trauma, my feeling is that the people who do this stuff tend to focus on overt trauma, whereas I tend to believe that the epidemiological data suggests that a much more important source is the stuff that Sennett talks about in The Hidden Injuries of Class. And I never cease to be amazed by the numbers of people who should be familiar with Sennett's work, but have no familiarity with it at all. While I think he's very popular in academic circles, he seems to be very unsuccessful at popularizing his ideas -- and I think that's a terrible shame.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:47 PM on June 23, 2008
Funnily enough, I was talking about Sennett today. I'm attending a seminar tomorrow on the relationship between PTSD and drug dependence (by a bunch of people who are pushing the that woo-woo, wiggly eyeball shit -- EMDR -- that's kinda hot at the moment. And yes, I know that NICE have validated it, but it still seems like woo-woo shit to me.)
While not wishing to deny the impact of trauma, my feeling is that the people who do this stuff tend to focus on overt trauma, whereas I tend to believe that the epidemiological data suggests that a much more important source is the stuff that Sennett talks about in The Hidden Injuries of Class. And I never cease to be amazed by the numbers of people who should be familiar with Sennett's work, but have no familiarity with it at all. While I think he's very popular in academic circles, he seems to be very unsuccessful at popularizing his ideas -- and I think that's a terrible shame.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:47 PM on June 23, 2008
Hurplescat, this is from ontic's comment:
My sister-in-law Betty reminded me of an old saying: "Nine hours of no work on a general (dairy) farm was a vacation". Dairy farming, even today, is a 24/7 work schedule.
Just because farming wasn't quite as mind-numbingly repetitive as a factory job doesn't mean that it wasn't oppressively difficult, demanding, and exhausting. By its nature, craft requires a certain amount of leisure and slowness, if only that necessary for instruction, self-correction, and problem-based thinking. Life on a farm rarely supplies that time, unless the farmer has serfs or slaves or hands to do the labor, and then he's not really in touch with the materiality of farming anymore, he's a manager who 'crafts people.'
Aristotle argued that household management necessarily requires the ruling of unfree people, whether they be slaves legally or simply wage-slaves who could not survive without employment. He makes an important distinction between this skill at getting good work out the the unfree, which manipulates human beings through pains and pleasures, and acting together with other free citizens, which has to be something more than simply craft because one cannot wield a whip or a reward to accomplish the task when one's interlocutor or partner in the project does not act out of need. The corollary to this is that politics becomes a skill or a science only when it is transformed into statecraft, when the governing of the state become similar enough to the management of slaves as to make the principles transferable. Only when I begin to manipulate my fellow citizens with carrots and sticks can I become the 'master' of politics, and this means, especially, that those I manipulate can no longer be considered fully free.
posted by anotherpanacea at 10:25 AM on June 25, 2008
My sister-in-law Betty reminded me of an old saying: "Nine hours of no work on a general (dairy) farm was a vacation". Dairy farming, even today, is a 24/7 work schedule.
Just because farming wasn't quite as mind-numbingly repetitive as a factory job doesn't mean that it wasn't oppressively difficult, demanding, and exhausting. By its nature, craft requires a certain amount of leisure and slowness, if only that necessary for instruction, self-correction, and problem-based thinking. Life on a farm rarely supplies that time, unless the farmer has serfs or slaves or hands to do the labor, and then he's not really in touch with the materiality of farming anymore, he's a manager who 'crafts people.'
Aristotle argued that household management necessarily requires the ruling of unfree people, whether they be slaves legally or simply wage-slaves who could not survive without employment. He makes an important distinction between this skill at getting good work out the the unfree, which manipulates human beings through pains and pleasures, and acting together with other free citizens, which has to be something more than simply craft because one cannot wield a whip or a reward to accomplish the task when one's interlocutor or partner in the project does not act out of need. The corollary to this is that politics becomes a skill or a science only when it is transformed into statecraft, when the governing of the state become similar enough to the management of slaves as to make the principles transferable. Only when I begin to manipulate my fellow citizens with carrots and sticks can I become the 'master' of politics, and this means, especially, that those I manipulate can no longer be considered fully free.
posted by anotherpanacea at 10:25 AM on June 25, 2008
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posted by divabat at 8:18 AM on June 23, 2008