the age of distraction
June 10, 2015 9:47 PM Subscribe
But we would miss much by using identity politics to mock Crawford’s gendered vision. His critique of our so-called knowledge economy is a thoughtful extension of the powerful 19th-century Romantic rejection of the triumphs of modernity. John Ruskin, writing in the 1850s on "The Nature of the Gothic," emphasized that all classes require a "right understanding … of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy." Looking around industrializing England, proudly preening in disruption, he wrote: "It is not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure." Although he doesn’t cite Ruskin, Crawford is his heir.
Matthew Crawford's new book The World Beyond Your Head has been reviewed by The New York Times // The American Conservative // National Review // The Financial Times // The Guardian // Chicago Tribune // Bookforum // The Wall Street Journal
How To Flourish In The Age Of Distraction
Crawford was interviewed in The Guardian // The Independant
Oh, this is the 'Shopcraft is soulcraft' guy? Cool.
The full video of his talk at the RSA is here, the linked one is a short excerpt.
posted by Happy Dave at 11:44 PM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
The full video of his talk at the RSA is here, the linked one is a short excerpt.
posted by Happy Dave at 11:44 PM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Reactionary nonsense? ... hmm I can't help but feel that he has a misguided false nostalgia for this Work Shop aesthetic.
Given that in practice, in reality, the "Work Shop" is often the most narrow-minded, conservative, racist, homophobic, misogynist environment that one can work in. The most common work environment in which hazing practices occur and in which strongly conformist attitudes prevail.
So we should all learn a trade should we? - or is that only the men?
posted by mary8nne at 12:33 AM on June 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
Given that in practice, in reality, the "Work Shop" is often the most narrow-minded, conservative, racist, homophobic, misogynist environment that one can work in. The most common work environment in which hazing practices occur and in which strongly conformist attitudes prevail.
So we should all learn a trade should we? - or is that only the men?
posted by mary8nne at 12:33 AM on June 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
Yep, distraction (and its first cousin procrastination), are huge problems for me. It is very hard to break the cycle of waking up checking messages on the phone, checking news. Opening browser ostensibly for work research then reading the news and, bang!, 50 tabs are sitting there begging to be read.
It's not just a problem with work. It is an issue for my mental health too. So many times when I start to sit down to do some mindfulness meditation I think - I'll just check my phone one more time... Even worse, I sometimes trick myself it to thinking I'm being mindful - as in paying attention to my senses - when I'm cooking dinner etc. but really I'm listening to a podcast.
Have to check the book out.
posted by Beware of the leopard at 2:53 AM on June 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
It's not just a problem with work. It is an issue for my mental health too. So many times when I start to sit down to do some mindfulness meditation I think - I'll just check my phone one more time... Even worse, I sometimes trick myself it to thinking I'm being mindful - as in paying attention to my senses - when I'm cooking dinner etc. but really I'm listening to a podcast.
Have to check the book out.
posted by Beware of the leopard at 2:53 AM on June 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
Also, sorry to post twice in a row, but I could never get my head around the attraction and influence Kant's work had/has as it seemed so detached from reality.
The killer rebuttal [pdf] to the Categorical Imperative was written by Benjamin Constant in 1797 and I haven't come across a satisfactory response since. The essence of the rebuttal is that it follows from the Categorical Imperative that I must never lie and thus must tell a murderer where to find his victim.
Are Kant's views really shaping modern life/culture? I assume academic philosophers have long moved on.
posted by Beware of the leopard at 3:12 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
The killer rebuttal [pdf] to the Categorical Imperative was written by Benjamin Constant in 1797 and I haven't come across a satisfactory response since. The essence of the rebuttal is that it follows from the Categorical Imperative that I must never lie and thus must tell a murderer where to find his victim.
Are Kant's views really shaping modern life/culture? I assume academic philosophers have long moved on.
posted by Beware of the leopard at 3:12 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
The Chronicle of late seems to me to be a fairly reactionary publication. It could be just that I'm seeing them through the lens of their ongoing war against trauma-informed education, but lines like "His critique of our so-called knowledge economy is a thoughtful extension of the powerful 19th-century Romantic rejection of the triumphs of modernity" make me think 'not so much.'
posted by lodurr at 3:52 AM on June 11, 2015
posted by lodurr at 3:52 AM on June 11, 2015
It could be just that I'm seeing them through the lens of their ongoing war against trauma-informed education
There are actually some really interesting connections here around the concept of freedom as explored in Crawford's book. Insofar as "trigger warnings" etc. represent a demand for freedom from discomfort (and things like the Laura Kipnis case represent an attempt to use the law to limit the expression of unsettling ideas) I suspect they'd fall squarely into Crawford's critique of the assumption that "everything located outside your head is regarded as potential sources of unfreedom".
posted by oliverburkeman at 4:26 AM on June 11, 2015
There are actually some really interesting connections here around the concept of freedom as explored in Crawford's book. Insofar as "trigger warnings" etc. represent a demand for freedom from discomfort (and things like the Laura Kipnis case represent an attempt to use the law to limit the expression of unsettling ideas) I suspect they'd fall squarely into Crawford's critique of the assumption that "everything located outside your head is regarded as potential sources of unfreedom".
posted by oliverburkeman at 4:26 AM on June 11, 2015
I spend about a third of my time working in areas remote enough to have no cell service. It's helpful in that your phone never rings and there are no emails, but it is also frustrating in how much inefficiency it adds when a phone call or email means a half hour drive out and back -- work is collaborative and there are a lot of things that are so much more easily solved by just reaching out to the right person instead of having to figure it out from scratch.
I liked his Shopcraft book (while acknowledging its shortcomings) but the reviews of this one are not inspiring me to read it.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:27 AM on June 11, 2015
I liked his Shopcraft book (while acknowledging its shortcomings) but the reviews of this one are not inspiring me to read it.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:27 AM on June 11, 2015
Insofar as "trigger warnings" etc. represent a demand for freedom from discomfort...
... which outside the imagination of people attacking them is 'not very far'.
It strikes me since you phrase it that way that what's really going on in the anti-trigger-warning bullshit is that the people warning against them are afraid of the discomfort that arises for them when students actually question them. P. Z. Myers wrote recently about the fact that using trigger warnings as an instructor makes your job harder, because it makes you do it better -- it makes for more effective practice in the craft of teaching:
posted by lodurr at 6:17 AM on June 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
... which outside the imagination of people attacking them is 'not very far'.
It strikes me since you phrase it that way that what's really going on in the anti-trigger-warning bullshit is that the people warning against them are afraid of the discomfort that arises for them when students actually question them. P. Z. Myers wrote recently about the fact that using trigger warnings as an instructor makes your job harder, because it makes you do it better -- it makes for more effective practice in the craft of teaching:
My example of what I do in my developmental biology course probably best fits what most people think of as being a standard trigger warning: I’m going to show them something horrible that is going to elicit a strong emotional reaction in some people. And I know some people think that’s ridiculous, if they’re taking an embryology course, they should have a thicker skin and be able to look at dead deformed babies. If they’re taking a physiology course they ought to be able to look at spurting blood with casual disregard. If they’re taking a course in the sociology of crime, they ought to be able to regard rape with equanimity.So "trigger warnings" are really about good craft, and are something that Crawford ought to be all over, if he actually cares about what he claims to care about.
That’s exactly wrong. The purpose of these classes isn’t to cultivate callousness, but knowledge and awareness. There has to be some degree of objectivity — you don’t want professionals to melt down in a blubbering mess every time they encounter trauma — and part of the process of achieving that objectivity has to be preparation and a kind of psychological bracing that the warning gives.
posted by lodurr at 6:17 AM on June 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
What does Crawford have to say about migrant workers, about sweatshop workers, about the non-middle-class economy in general? The distraction he discusses is not a symptom of labor, but of leisure. A professor building a motorcycle in his workshop isn't discovering the joys of "real, true" labor and focus, he's indulging a hobby he can afford.
When you do that for a living, the odds are good that you will have long hours, low pay, and slow-building injuries unless you are one of the tiny few who have the social capital to set up shop as an artisan doing custom jobs. Similarly, a short-order cook working a 12-hour shift is not wearied, distracted, and made pliable by a smartphone, but by the fact that they're working a physically demanding job for twelve fucking hours. Doing these things feels satisfying for people like Crawford precisely because they don't *have* to do them *all* the time. It's self-congratulatory dilettantism.
Strip away the bullshit, then, and you're mostly just left with "Old White Man Yells at (the) Cloud."
(and things like the Laura Kipnis case represent an attempt to use the law to limit the expression of unsettling ideas)
Going after Kipnis with Title IX was a gross abuse of the provision. But let's not pretend her argument that it's A-OK for students and professors to start sexual relationships and that everyone today is too hung up on thinking about power differences is merely "unsettling" or "challenging" or whatever. Her column was basically the argument that nothing bad happened to her and her friends, therefore nobody anywhere was ever really at risk of being pressured into sex or harassed by someone with power over them. The argument is little more than symptom of the obliviousness of the powerful and the comfortable. The same goes for Crawford, come to think of it.
posted by kewb at 6:22 AM on June 11, 2015 [13 favorites]
When you do that for a living, the odds are good that you will have long hours, low pay, and slow-building injuries unless you are one of the tiny few who have the social capital to set up shop as an artisan doing custom jobs. Similarly, a short-order cook working a 12-hour shift is not wearied, distracted, and made pliable by a smartphone, but by the fact that they're working a physically demanding job for twelve fucking hours. Doing these things feels satisfying for people like Crawford precisely because they don't *have* to do them *all* the time. It's self-congratulatory dilettantism.
Strip away the bullshit, then, and you're mostly just left with "Old White Man Yells at (the) Cloud."
(and things like the Laura Kipnis case represent an attempt to use the law to limit the expression of unsettling ideas)
Going after Kipnis with Title IX was a gross abuse of the provision. But let's not pretend her argument that it's A-OK for students and professors to start sexual relationships and that everyone today is too hung up on thinking about power differences is merely "unsettling" or "challenging" or whatever. Her column was basically the argument that nothing bad happened to her and her friends, therefore nobody anywhere was ever really at risk of being pressured into sex or harassed by someone with power over them. The argument is little more than symptom of the obliviousness of the powerful and the comfortable. The same goes for Crawford, come to think of it.
posted by kewb at 6:22 AM on June 11, 2015 [13 favorites]
I gotta go back and re-read Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My recollection is that Pirsig is much better at addressing the kind of issues Kewb raises than most moderns seem to be. For that matter, IIRC Tracy Kidder does a great job with them in House.
posted by lodurr at 6:56 AM on June 11, 2015
posted by lodurr at 6:56 AM on June 11, 2015
I liked his Shopcraft book too.
I agree that there's lots here to disagree with but it's all a matter of degree and nuance.
The distraction he discusses is not a symptom of labor, but of leisure.
Yes, and no. Automated workplaces and repetitive assembly line work are quite different than jobs that truly require mental focus and attention.
This Jacobin piece gets that:
But McDonald’s was also different from other restaurants, where I had had to learn at least a few cooking basics. At McDonald’s, each station was highly mechanized to minimize the need for employees to know anything. That included counting: the cash register automatically spat out the correct change for me with every transaction. The food prep areas had huge specialized machines to standardize the cooking process. I didn’t even have to pay attention when filling up soft drinks — just hit the button for the appropriate size. Practically every machine was connected to some kind of timer. During busy times, the kitchen became a buzzing, beeping confusion, adding a layer of sonic chaos to an already hectic job.
This is the automated kitchen. At McDonald’s, food preparation is designed to require absolutely no thought or technique at all, deskilled as completely as possible by half a century of industrial management.
posted by j03 at 7:06 AM on June 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
I agree that there's lots here to disagree with but it's all a matter of degree and nuance.
The distraction he discusses is not a symptom of labor, but of leisure.
Yes, and no. Automated workplaces and repetitive assembly line work are quite different than jobs that truly require mental focus and attention.
This Jacobin piece gets that:
But McDonald’s was also different from other restaurants, where I had had to learn at least a few cooking basics. At McDonald’s, each station was highly mechanized to minimize the need for employees to know anything. That included counting: the cash register automatically spat out the correct change for me with every transaction. The food prep areas had huge specialized machines to standardize the cooking process. I didn’t even have to pay attention when filling up soft drinks — just hit the button for the appropriate size. Practically every machine was connected to some kind of timer. During busy times, the kitchen became a buzzing, beeping confusion, adding a layer of sonic chaos to an already hectic job.
This is the automated kitchen. At McDonald’s, food preparation is designed to require absolutely no thought or technique at all, deskilled as completely as possible by half a century of industrial management.
posted by j03 at 7:06 AM on June 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
Similarly, a short-order cook working a 12-hour shift is not wearied, distracted, and made pliable by a smartphone
Also, he specifically says this is not the root of the problem. So, maybe you could read a little bit here before jumping to conclusions.
From the Guardian review:
With so many demands on our attention, it seems little wonder it is in short supply. Yet our susceptibility to these forces is not the fault of newfangled technologies like the mobile phone, according to the author. Rather, it is the natural consequence of a philosophy about the self that took root during the Enlightenment and currently has a bearing on phenomena ranging from slot-machine gambling to children’s TV.
posted by j03 at 7:20 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
He may well not think it's the root of the problem, but he's still not in any meaningful way dealing with the experience of being working-class.
posted by lodurr at 7:25 AM on June 11, 2015
posted by lodurr at 7:25 AM on June 11, 2015
he's still not in any meaningful way dealing with the experience of being working-class.
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what his goals are and the idea he's trying to express. I'm not sure it has anything to do with "the experience of being working-class."
In the recorded talk above he's talking about interruptions from advertising in public spaces making reducing social contact as we try to escape from the constant bombardment of advertising.
So, yeah, he is not dealing with the experience of being working class..?
posted by j03 at 7:36 AM on June 11, 2015
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what his goals are and the idea he's trying to express. I'm not sure it has anything to do with "the experience of being working-class."
In the recorded talk above he's talking about interruptions from advertising in public spaces making reducing social contact as we try to escape from the constant bombardment of advertising.
So, yeah, he is not dealing with the experience of being working class..?
posted by j03 at 7:36 AM on June 11, 2015
Mod note: One comment deleted. Point made, but maybe let's not get altogether derailed onto whether the guy should have written about a different subject.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:15 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:15 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
My original answer was deemed objectionable, so since the point has not actually been made:
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what his goals are and the idea he's trying to express.
No, I'm not making any assumptions about his goals. I don't care what his goals are. His goals are irrelevant. What is relevant is that this creates a narrative that says 'we can solve these horrible societal problems of inattention by adhering to these privileged ideas about the nobility of craft.'
BTW, this is not a derail. It's a discussion about what the effect of this philosophy is in teh real world. If it needs to go to MeTa, fine, but it is not a "derail."
posted by lodurr at 8:30 AM on June 11, 2015
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what his goals are and the idea he's trying to express.
No, I'm not making any assumptions about his goals. I don't care what his goals are. His goals are irrelevant. What is relevant is that this creates a narrative that says 'we can solve these horrible societal problems of inattention by adhering to these privileged ideas about the nobility of craft.'
BTW, this is not a derail. It's a discussion about what the effect of this philosophy is in teh real world. If it needs to go to MeTa, fine, but it is not a "derail."
posted by lodurr at 8:30 AM on June 11, 2015
Why are ideas about the nobility of craft privlleged? My entire long family history of skilled working class people would sort of disagree.
in reality, the "Work Shop" is often the most narrow-minded, conservative, racist, homophobic, misogynist environment that one can work in. The most common work environment in which hazing practices occur and in which strongly conformist attitudes prevail
That is pretty sweeping and unsubstantiated, really. These problems are society problems, not "work shop" problems. Banks, insurance brokers, schools, police, government, have them to the same degree or not as "work shops".
posted by C.A.S. at 8:50 AM on June 11, 2015
in reality, the "Work Shop" is often the most narrow-minded, conservative, racist, homophobic, misogynist environment that one can work in. The most common work environment in which hazing practices occur and in which strongly conformist attitudes prevail
That is pretty sweeping and unsubstantiated, really. These problems are society problems, not "work shop" problems. Banks, insurance brokers, schools, police, government, have them to the same degree or not as "work shops".
posted by C.A.S. at 8:50 AM on June 11, 2015
we can solve these horrible societal problems of inattention by adhering to these privileged ideas about the nobility of craft.
While I disagree that this is a complete summation of whole his philosophical position, I think it's worth questioning why the "nobility of craft" is now so "privileged" as you say.
Pervasive Automation and the mindless repetitions of the Assembly Line have stripped the "nobility of craft" from the typical worker making something that was once common and unremarkable, "privileged" now.
posted by j03 at 9:44 AM on June 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
While I disagree that this is a complete summation of whole his philosophical position, I think it's worth questioning why the "nobility of craft" is now so "privileged" as you say.
Pervasive Automation and the mindless repetitions of the Assembly Line have stripped the "nobility of craft" from the typical worker making something that was once common and unremarkable, "privileged" now.
posted by j03 at 9:44 AM on June 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm also skeptical of many of the apparent premises here and particularly of the extrapolation of what he finds fulfilling to other people. I don't want to be a short-order cook - the most puzzling example for sure - either. But I'm not going to start trying to refute his arguments without even reading them. For one thing I'm pretty sure he's trying to say that more people should have access to the aspects of craft work that he identifies as positive, not that the current state of affairs for the working class - let alone "sweatshop workers" for pete's sake - is really great.
posted by atoxyl at 11:25 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by atoxyl at 11:25 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
There's nothing privileged about craft. There's plenty privileged about his discussion of craft.
posted by lodurr at 1:19 PM on June 11, 2015
posted by lodurr at 1:19 PM on June 11, 2015
Craft as he discusses it, and as people have room for it in the world in which we live, is a privileged indulgence.
If he wants to really take on how we can get past the stuff in our world that is blocking a more craft-like approach to living and working, I'll be all ears, because I think the lack of that is a huge problem. But unless he can trace the industrial revolution to Kant (which is gonna be pretty tough), I'm really not seeing what Categorical Imperatives have to do with it.
posted by lodurr at 1:33 PM on June 11, 2015
If he wants to really take on how we can get past the stuff in our world that is blocking a more craft-like approach to living and working, I'll be all ears, because I think the lack of that is a huge problem. But unless he can trace the industrial revolution to Kant (which is gonna be pretty tough), I'm really not seeing what Categorical Imperatives have to do with it.
posted by lodurr at 1:33 PM on June 11, 2015
God, I am already sick of Crawford. I like what kewb says in this thread, and it hits a lot of what drives me nuts about this guy.
There's something about having a guy with a Ph.D. in philosophy and a career as a thinker/writer lecturing everyone about how they need to master a craft. It comes off, to me, as a sneaky way to trumpet your own manliness and dismiss others as pencil-necked geeks. It feels like gross primate-style dominance posturing, in a way.
Some people really just want to focus on one damned thing. And that's ok. I feel like these writings are basically really crude and bad faith rantings by a failed academic who's found a niche lording a kind of machismo over the run of the mill academics. It's a too cool for school routine dressed up as an intellectual meditation. It's Patrick Swayze's character in Roadhouse. It's that adjunct professor we discussed here a few weeks ago, who took up MMA and wrote up a trade paperback about his bad ass exploits. Please. make. It. stop.
Reading between the lines of his resume it seems that never got an academic career off the ground. I suspect he's harboring resentment over that.
posted by jayder at 2:14 PM on June 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
There's something about having a guy with a Ph.D. in philosophy and a career as a thinker/writer lecturing everyone about how they need to master a craft. It comes off, to me, as a sneaky way to trumpet your own manliness and dismiss others as pencil-necked geeks. It feels like gross primate-style dominance posturing, in a way.
Some people really just want to focus on one damned thing. And that's ok. I feel like these writings are basically really crude and bad faith rantings by a failed academic who's found a niche lording a kind of machismo over the run of the mill academics. It's a too cool for school routine dressed up as an intellectual meditation. It's Patrick Swayze's character in Roadhouse. It's that adjunct professor we discussed here a few weeks ago, who took up MMA and wrote up a trade paperback about his bad ass exploits. Please. make. It. stop.
Reading between the lines of his resume it seems that never got an academic career off the ground. I suspect he's harboring resentment over that.
posted by jayder at 2:14 PM on June 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
But unless he can trace the industrial revolution to Kant (which is gonna be pretty tough), I'm really not seeing what Categorical Imperatives have to do with it.
That's the easy part, since Kant is one of the intellectual progenitors (along with Hume) of instrumental rationality, which is a central concept in the culture of industrial revolution.
posted by kewb at 2:23 PM on June 11, 2015
That's the easy part, since Kant is one of the intellectual progenitors (along with Hume) of instrumental rationality, which is a central concept in the culture of industrial revolution.
posted by kewb at 2:23 PM on June 11, 2015
Are Kant's views really shaping modern life/culture? I assume academic philosophers have long moved on.
I think Rawls was directly and heavily influenced by Kant. There may be some Kantian aspects to Habermas' work too.
I don't really think.the categorical imperative can be rebutted any more than his writings on metaphysics can. Kant saw morality as a representation of autonomy; that a rational being acts autonomously and thereby puts himself outside the deterministic natural order of cause and effect. We can apprehend our moral duty by a process of rational reflection represented by the categorical imperative. A rebuttal along the lines of the CI calling for a moral agent to tell a murderer where his victim is to be found is silly and reduces it to a caricature, and is not a rebuttal at all. Kant's writings express a view of what it would take for there to be a moral agent or moral act, and I believe he allows for the possibility that there has never been a moral act.
I don't see how the CI has anything to do with the industrial revolution though.
posted by jayder at 2:49 PM on June 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
I think Rawls was directly and heavily influenced by Kant. There may be some Kantian aspects to Habermas' work too.
I don't really think.the categorical imperative can be rebutted any more than his writings on metaphysics can. Kant saw morality as a representation of autonomy; that a rational being acts autonomously and thereby puts himself outside the deterministic natural order of cause and effect. We can apprehend our moral duty by a process of rational reflection represented by the categorical imperative. A rebuttal along the lines of the CI calling for a moral agent to tell a murderer where his victim is to be found is silly and reduces it to a caricature, and is not a rebuttal at all. Kant's writings express a view of what it would take for there to be a moral agent or moral act, and I believe he allows for the possibility that there has never been a moral act.
I don't see how the CI has anything to do with the industrial revolution though.
posted by jayder at 2:49 PM on June 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
But unless he can trace the industrial revolution to Kant (which is gonna be pretty tough), I'm really not seeing what Categorical Imperatives have to do with it.
Yeah I'm not sure what Kant has to do with his stuff really - it's just in the Guardian piece linked in the post:
posted by Beware of the leopard at 2:54 PM on June 11, 2015
Yeah I'm not sure what Kant has to do with his stuff really - it's just in the Guardian piece linked in the post:
That philosophy reached its apotheosis under Immanuel Kant, whose idea that experience must not guide reason is firmly rejected by Crawford as a pernicious influence on “our modern-day understanding of how we relate to the world beyond our heads”. An extreme case of this is evident in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, a children’s programme that cushions its young audience against having to grapple with real predicaments and people – unlike the original Mickey Mouse – through the intervention of a problem-solving avatar. In the adult world, such interventions may be glimpsed in the assisted-driving systems of cutting-edge cars, or in virtual reality experiences.So I thought I address it. Bit of a derail to be honest, sorry.
posted by Beware of the leopard at 2:54 PM on June 11, 2015
Well there is definitely the question is he really an "academic turned motorcycle mechanic" or a guy who sells books with a side gig - for which he probably attracts some clients via his media presence - that he thinks sounds cooler?
Stuff like this:
When I went to lift weights in 1978, music came out of one boombox in the middle of the room, and the music was decided by a kind of natural hierarchy – if the 300lb football player had his music on, you just listened to it. Now it’s this awful generic gym crap. I asked the guy in my local place to put on his own music instead, because anything would be better. He said he didn’t want to impose his choice on others, which is the perfectly respectable answer to give, but it struck me as a little bit slavish, or at least lacking a certain boldness that you want to see in a young person. It also encourages people to listen to their own music on earbuds. At one time I counted 38 TV screens. The gym used to be a social place and it has lost that character. Genuine connection to other people tends to happen in the context of conflict – having a contest of different people’s tastes and working it out
doesn't help with the "nothing worse than a nerd turned macho" factor.
I do think it's interesting that for all his focus on "working with your hands" a lot of his observations apply to (the pleasures of) computer programming. And I think he actually acknowledges this at some point.
posted by atoxyl at 3:03 PM on June 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
Stuff like this:
When I went to lift weights in 1978, music came out of one boombox in the middle of the room, and the music was decided by a kind of natural hierarchy – if the 300lb football player had his music on, you just listened to it. Now it’s this awful generic gym crap. I asked the guy in my local place to put on his own music instead, because anything would be better. He said he didn’t want to impose his choice on others, which is the perfectly respectable answer to give, but it struck me as a little bit slavish, or at least lacking a certain boldness that you want to see in a young person. It also encourages people to listen to their own music on earbuds. At one time I counted 38 TV screens. The gym used to be a social place and it has lost that character. Genuine connection to other people tends to happen in the context of conflict – having a contest of different people’s tastes and working it out
doesn't help with the "nothing worse than a nerd turned macho" factor.
I do think it's interesting that for all his focus on "working with your hands" a lot of his observations apply to (the pleasures of) computer programming. And I think he actually acknowledges this at some point.
posted by atoxyl at 3:03 PM on June 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
When I went to lift weights in 1978, music came out of one boombox in the middle of the room, and the music was decided by a kind of natural hierarchy – if the 300lb football player had his music on, you just listened to it.
This guy is supposedly an intellectual and he's longing for the good old days when the biggest badass decided what everyone else listened to? That says a lot about how seriously we should take his "thought."
Seriously, wtf?
posted by jayder at 6:23 PM on June 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
This guy is supposedly an intellectual and he's longing for the good old days when the biggest badass decided what everyone else listened to? That says a lot about how seriously we should take his "thought."
Seriously, wtf?
posted by jayder at 6:23 PM on June 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
Why your brain wants to check Facebook every 31 seconds – and how you can stop it
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:24 PM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:24 PM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
Can someone give me an example of, "The soft despotism that is the flip side of American individualism?"
Is that our economic system? (Not soft enough.) Is it the unfailing narcissism in academia, that presents as glass ceilings of gender, or socio economic bias? Soft despotism that seems to me, nebulous, in contrast to the the concept of individualism.
I Kant get my head around it, though getting in touch with reality, the physical world, seems a good notion. This idea of apprenticeship in organ making that is way grad school.
posted by Oyéah at 8:43 PM on June 11, 2015
Is that our economic system? (Not soft enough.) Is it the unfailing narcissism in academia, that presents as glass ceilings of gender, or socio economic bias? Soft despotism that seems to me, nebulous, in contrast to the the concept of individualism.
I Kant get my head around it, though getting in touch with reality, the physical world, seems a good notion. This idea of apprenticeship in organ making that is way grad school.
posted by Oyéah at 8:43 PM on June 11, 2015
Can someone give me an example of, "The soft despotism that is the flip side of American individualism?"
I could from my own perspective, but I doubt it would be the same as his. To me, the first example that springs to mind is the very idea epitomized in the 'boldness' quote above: If you're bold enough (or just plain strong enough), you get to call the shots, and you probably won't even have to bust any heads or twist any arms to do it.
posted by lodurr at 6:12 AM on June 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
I could from my own perspective, but I doubt it would be the same as his. To me, the first example that springs to mind is the very idea epitomized in the 'boldness' quote above: If you're bold enough (or just plain strong enough), you get to call the shots, and you probably won't even have to bust any heads or twist any arms to do it.
posted by lodurr at 6:12 AM on June 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Preserving the Self
Aristotle and Marx may not have agreed on much else, but they agreed on the purpose of life. Aristotle defined the highest happiness as "the pursuit of excellence to the height of one’s capacities in a life affording them full scope." For Marx, the mark of a rational, humane society is that free, creative labor has become “not only a means to life, but life’s prime want.” Not leisure, not entertainment, not consumption, but creative activity is what gives human beings their greatest satisfaction: so say both the sage of antiquity and the prophet of modernity.posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:19 AM on July 2, 2015
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I notice this alteration of awareness with my work - the more massages I give, the easier it becomes to identify postural distortions that lead me to underlying problems. This plays into other areas of my life though - because I am now more in touch with my visual sense, I am more keenly aware of knives and sharp things in the kitchen, for instance (one of many examples I can give). Massage is also learned very quickly in a specialized school resembling a trade school more than a conventional college, which again touches on his desire for apprenticeship based education - I truly wish that was an option in this day and age because if it was, there would be more skilled therapists able to perform medical massage.
I better cut myself off before I ramble into insensible anecdote land.
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 10:03 PM on June 10, 2015