Reading Journal - Entry #65
The Geography of Nowhere and Shop Class as Soulcraft
Welcome back to the Reading Journal! These are short, weekly entries where I can share what I’ve been reading and digest it in the process.
This week, I read James Howard Kunstler’s, The Geography of Nowhere, and began Matthew Crawford’s, Shop Class as Soulcraft. These two books have overlapped quite a bit and it’s helped me understand them better, I think, to read them together.
Let’s go ahead and dive in!
The Geography of Nowhere
I first heard of this book in a County Before Country talk I listened to online by Dr. George Grant. The title of his talk was the same as this book, and I found the talk fascinating, so I decided to go ahead and read the book.
This book was difficult to read primarily because it was such a mixed bag. Kunstler points out some very real issues with American architecture and city planning, specifically regarding neighborhoods. His points about the car's effect on American infrastructure and daily life are valid. We’ve built entire cities now that are built for cars, not for people. His example of imagining if things were built for trains the same way we build for cars helped me see how true this is. Our neighborhoods, institutions, and public places are all built for cars and rarely for people. For example, buildings are often set back from the road behind parking lots. Whereas in communities built before cars, buildings are built right up to the sidewalk so that people walking by can easily come and go, see into shop windows, etc.
However, he does all of this in the tone of a progressive elitist. In the first third of the book or so this tone is largely absent but, as soon as he reaches the point where oil and gas are major parts of America's energy consumption, he adopts it fully. His whole motivation, it seems, for this work is to convince people how imminent the fossil fuel catastrophe is and how America is not prepared for a future without cars. I can agree that, should there be a disaster that removes our ability to drive, it would be catastrophic and that it's an incentive to build human-scaled towns and neighborhoods, but his constant harping on the environmental angle grows annoying very quickly.
I'd much rather argue for the things he suggests because they simply produce more human environments, by which I mean they're environments meant for people to live in community, not for people to drive past each other in their sealed metal boxes.
Shop Class as Soulcraft
There was so much overlap in the themes of this book and Kunstler’s that there were times when I’d momentarily forget which one I was listening to. They were both writing against the postmodern age’s consumerism and desire for comfort above all else; what Francis Schaeffer called the desire for personal peace and affluence. In this book so far, Crawford makes a convincing case that by emphasizing “knowledge work” over trade work, we’ve convinced ourselves that “knowledge work” is better. However, he argues that trade work is actually more fulfilling for most people and is perhaps more appropriately called knowledge work than what we think of by that name.
Crawford explains the difference between scientific knowledge in abstract terms and the knowledge that comes from working with your hands. The example he gave was helpful to me: his father, a physicist, told him once that a double-knotted string could always be untied by simply tugging on one end. Crawford notes that, while this is true for a mathematical, abstract string, it may or may not be true in any given situation. For example, the material and length of the string make a big difference in whether or not you’ll actually be able to untie a double-knotted string by pulling on one end. He uses this as indicative of the difference between most office work and those who are good at their trades.
Most office work is in the abstract category. Someone has abstract knowledge that allows them to accomplish certain abstract tasks. For example, my own 9-5 work is processing loan paperwork, on which I can put in a full day’s work and everything I’ve done will have been abstract as far as my experience goes. Whereas, in Crawford’s case, if he puts in a full day’s work as a motorcycle mechanic, he’s either made progress on a job or has seen a bike that wasn’t running properly when it came in drive away in good condition. Not only that, he’s learned over the years the craft of being a motorcycle mechanic. He knows the specific sounds to listen to for certain issues, he knows how to narrow things down as he troubleshoots an issue because he knows what to look for on certain parts to identify specific problems. Most of those skills, though, aren’t things he could’ve truly learned from a textbook. It took practice and time actually doing the work to get to the level of service he can offer now.
While there’s a portion of that kind of skill development in some office jobs, the thing Crawford says is missing is agency and true artistic work. Agency, he says, is what comes from knowing how to handle a problem. You can take healthy pride in your skills and use them to help yourself and those around you. For artistic work (not his term but I don’t think he gives a single term to this concept), he describes the experience when working with your hands or on a work of art where you, as the artist or tradesman, must submit yourself to the thing you’re doing. If you’re an artist, you’re submitting yourself to the subject of your painting, trying to step outside of your perspective and see the subject as it is. If you’re a tradesman, your skills and experience are submitted to the limitations of the machine or system on which you’re working. Only when you learn to fully submit to the limitations of the motorcycle or instrument can you become great at your trade or art.
As an aside, while reading this portion of the book, I realized that this is another reason why modern and postmodern art is no good: everything about them is about the artist’s perspective, instead of trying to see the subject as it is. The modern artist doesn’t submit their skills and perspective to the subject but rather tries to submit the subject to their skills and perspective.
That concludes this week’s Reading Journal! If you know someone who would enjoy these posts, please share it with them. Also, please feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments below and share what you’re reading.
Finally, thank you for reading the Reading Journal!
In Him and for His Glory
Great read, I will need to check out those books. The Geography of Nowhere sounds like the kind of thing that @WrathOfGnon talks about. Shop Class as Soul Craft sounds excellent. My father is a painting contractor, and he knows more about the real world than most of the individuals in my "advanced" industry (software development).
Just finished up Shop Class this evening. Really enjoyed reading it. Gives me a lot to think about as I consider a possible career change.