In his book Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew Crawford points out that we live our lives organized on a “predicate of passive consumption”. He is correct and exemplifies his perspective in the way we perceive ourselves as making stuff.
We really only select features when we pick a home. Often people claim that “we are building our own home”. No fabrication is actually taking place. only features are selected from diagrams and catalogues, each of those judged as good by others we have never met.
Evaluation is the exercise not fabrication. We are left with nothing but safe and easy options requiring only a passive decision. the easiness is the reward of technology.
I tell every young person who will listen…” No matter what you want to do in life – teacher, dentist, retailer,… – learn a trade.” It will help you in the early years financially, but will also teach you to think in three dimensions; cause and effect, problem solving, patience, and the gratification from a job well done. The people you meet along the way will teach you things you can never learn either in school or along your chosen path of employment.
As I quoted Lapham earlier….”The truth is not about assimilating doctrine or statistics. It’s about acquiring the courage of one’s own thoughts, and if it’s impossible to have courage without convictions, it’s equally impossible to have convictions without knowledge and understanding”. That knowledge and understanding will only come with some mental fitness.
Crawford observes correctly that in management…”one’s career depends entirely on…personal relationships, in part because the criteria of evaluation are ambiguous. As a result, managers have to spend a good part of their day managing what other people think of them. With a sense of being on probation that never ends, management feel …organizational upheaval … could overturn their plans and possibly damage their careers fatally.
Crawford says further that…”mutually contradictory statements are made to … stake out a position on every side of an issue.”
The result is constantly thinking and talking in circles.
In contrast, when you rebuild a starter, it either works or it doesn’t. You need that change in the way that you use your brain to maintain mental, perhaps even emotional, fitness.
