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

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Piet Terheyden

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.

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.

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.

Danny White

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

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

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

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