Matthew B. Crawford

A philosopher and mechanic extolls the virtues of manual labor, describing how the satisfactions and challenges of creating with one's own hands promotes a sense of connection to life that office work suppresses.

An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

Shop Class as Soulcraft

Danny White

What are the attractions of being disburdened of involvement with our own stuff?

If you need a deck built, or your car fixed, the Chinese are of no help

The disappearance of tools from our common education is the first step toward a wider ignorance of the world of artifacts we inhabit

Piet Terheyden

It's a good idea to pay attention to the world and try to understand how it works rather than how you would like it to work.

The idea of autonomy denies that we are born into a world that existed prior to us. It posits an essential aloneness; an autonomous being is free in the sense that a being severed from all others is free. To regard oneself this way is to betray the natural debts we owe to the world, and commit the moral error of ingratitude. For in fact we are basically dependent beings: one upon another, and each on a world that is of our making.

We're not as free and independent as we thought. Street-level work that disrupts the infrastructure (the sewer system below or the electrical grid above) brings our shared dependence into view. People may inhabit very different worlds even in the same city, according to their wealth or poverty. Yet we all live in the same physical reality, ultimately, and owe a common debt to the world.

Thought-provoking without getting too wistful or abstract.

Scott Wilson

This book was a truly interesting look at a mixture of craft/trades work; philosophy; job quality; job meaning; and both a look at work in the past, present and future.

I have marked this to re-read and I will probably sit down with a pen and paper the next time I read to get to a deeper level of depth.

Bravo Mr. Crawford!

Donald

This book is a lot more political than I thought it'd be. You can't go a few pages without running into quotations from Arendt, Kojeve, Aristotle, etc. I'm sympathetic to his argument, and the stories about motorcycles are fun.

Lance Willett

I read this as a more approachable Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Ignoring the craft of software? It's manual in that you type the code. And isn't just plug-and-play
though some folks (cough, .NET or WordPress page builders like Beaver Builder) do encourage GUI-based software development. A true hand-coder I think is just as much a craftsperson as someone building a wooden table.


 But craftsmanship must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away.


Does the website work? It needs to work. On my phone, and load fast everywhere.

Good counterpoint, though: "Permanence is easier to achieve with hand-made goods, though, such as furniture."

A website is obsolete almost the moment you launch it. It probably won't outlive you. A well-made table could live hundreds of years.

Conclusion:


 So what advice should one give to a young person? By all means, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. In the summers, learn a manual trade. You’re likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems. To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable.

I.m. ruzz

the first 80 pages or so present some really fascinating ideas about the value of physical work. The last 120 pages become an argument for his failure from academia meant for his dead father, and a whole lot of bike mechanic masturbation. 

Several of his key arguments are shaky at best and he uses his estimable intellect to bend the world to his theories. They'd have taught him how to avoid doing that, perhaps, if he'd saw his post secondary education through. ah, who am i kidding.. 

having said all that, i think it's worth buying and reading for those 80 pages because some of the ideas he puts out there are important, and lucid (when not being trumped up). 

in particular his points on the value of study towards mastery on the "quality" of ones life, and how the road to mastery is paved with submission of the self to something other than the self. There are other smaller but equally interesting concepts like our modern fixation on the removal of psychic irritants. 

he uses the metaphor of the oil dipstick-less mercedes benz, but the point could be applied easily to nearly anything. Modern humans are fixated on not having anything even remotely abrasive in their lives. this drive toward a frictionless life has far reaching consequences and it could be the topic of an entirely separate book but this is the first time i've seen anyone point it out so clearly. 

there are a number of weighty gems of thought buried in talk of grease and bike repair. If you can tolerate the irritation that comes from having to dig through this meaningless (to non mechanics) chatter and keep a notebook handy to grab good thought jumping off points, it's worth the purchase price.

Shop Class as Soulcraft An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

Reviews

Highlights