by Matthew B. Crawford
Dr. Crawford is the author of Shop Class as Soulcraft, a book well worth your time. Kansas Dad picked The World Beyond Your Head for one of his classes last year. He encouraged me to read it, knowing I would find in it an essential argument for the kind of life we are trying to provide for our children.
This book will require a higher level of concentration than many popular philosophical books. The author claims it was written at a level understandable by anyone with a high school education, which while probably true, would require that person be quite interested and willing to focus. My husband assigned this to one of his recent honors classes and, as far as he could tell, none of the college students made it through the book. That's a shame because it's worth the effort.
Dr. Crawford begins with attention and the myriad ways our society and culture purposefully and insidiously weaken our ability to focus and think.
Like many others, Dr. Crawford tries to seek the benefits of a life of faith without actual faith in God. We can hope this sort of questioning might lead some to truly encounter Christ.
In the epilogue, he writes:
I would love to assign this book to my high school students, but it would probably not interest them enough to draw our the required focus. I recommend it highly to just about everyone.
I have received nothing in exchange for this post, which is entirely my own opinion. Kansas Dad bought this book for his class. Links to Amazon are affiliate links.
This book will require a higher level of concentration than many popular philosophical books. The author claims it was written at a level understandable by anyone with a high school education, which while probably true, would require that person be quite interested and willing to focus. My husband assigned this to one of his recent honors classes and, as far as he could tell, none of the college students made it through the book. That's a shame because it's worth the effort.
Dr. Crawford begins with attention and the myriad ways our society and culture purposefully and insidiously weaken our ability to focus and think.
As atomized individuals called to create meaning for ourselves, we find ourselves the recipients of all manner of solicitude and guidance. We are offered forms of unfreedom that come slyly wrapped in autonomy talk: NO LIMITS!, as the credit card offer says. YOU'RE IN CHARGE. [...]
The image of human excellence I would like to offer as a counterweight to freedom thus understood is that of a powerful independent mind working at full song. Such independence is won through disciplined attention, in the kind of action that joins us to the world. And--this is important--it is precisely those constraining circumstances that provide the discipline.His critiques of modern culture are brutal and startling.
Few institutions or sites of moral authority were left untouched by the left's critiques. Parents, teachers, priests, elected officials--there was little that seemed defensible. Looking around in stunned silence, left and right eventually discovered common ground: a neoliberal consensus in which we have agreed to let the market quietly work its solvent action on all impediments to the natural chooser within.Essentially, corporations and marketers shape everything in our culture. The government is not permitted to write laws "limiting" the choices of consumers. We are led to believe we have complete freedom, but in reality, the corporate world employs every psychological and legal tactic to shape our every decision, creating the perception of wants only they can fulfill.
The creeping saturation of life by hyperpalatable stimuli remains beneath the threshold of concern if we repeat often enough the mantra that "government interference" is bad for "the economy."His writing on gambling, especially the manipulations of slot machines, is even more distressing than the story in The Power of Habit.
If we have no robust and demanding picture of what a good life would look like, then we are unable to articulate any detailed criticism of the particular sort of falling away from a good life that something like machine gambling represents.The games marketed to children on various devices employ the same tactics as slot gaming. Providing a "picture of what a good life would look like" is an indispensable aspect of our homeschool.
Like many others, Dr. Crawford tries to seek the benefits of a life of faith without actual faith in God. We can hope this sort of questioning might lead some to truly encounter Christ.
In the epilogue, he writes:
The problem we began with a few hundred pages ago was that of distraction, which is usually discussed as a problem of technology. I suggested we view the problem as more fundamentally one of political economy: in a culture saturated with technologies for appropriating our attention, our interior mental lives are laid bare as a resource to be harvested by others. Viewing it this way shifts our gaze from the technology itself to the intention that guides its design and its dissemination into every area of life.By the end of the book, he's exploring ways to counter this cultural tendency, not just by turning off a phone but by interacting directly and meaningfully with the physical world and the people who live in it. As we develop skills manipulating the physical world, we enrich our lives and our relationships.
I would love to assign this book to my high school students, but it would probably not interest them enough to draw our the required focus. I recommend it highly to just about everyone.
I have received nothing in exchange for this post, which is entirely my own opinion. Kansas Dad bought this book for his class. Links to Amazon are affiliate links.
