Shopcraft as Soulcraft

So a friend of mine recommended a book that I have been working my way through and recommend. It's called "Shopcraft as Soulcraft" by Matthew Crawford. Crawford received a Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Chicago, got a job at a Washington think tank and quit after one year to open a motorcycle shop, which he has been happily doing ever since. The book is an obvious homage to Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcylce Maintenance," and Crawford does not hide that fact. But it's much more about the satisfaction of working with your hands. And it's also about how the way that sort of labor is viewed in America has changed over time and about how it is more or less looked down upon. And neglected, as Crawford sites the number of high schools that have cut shop. One of my favorite quotes from the book is "The trades are a natural home for anyone who would live by his own powers, free not only of deadenbing absraction but also of the insidiuos hopes and rising insecuriteis that seem to be endemic in our current economic life. Freedom from hope and fear is the stoic ideal." Crawford has the good fortune to have been working on cycle his entire life and did not just pick it up later in life. Unfortunately, I have no talent in this area or any of the manual arts, so that is not an option. His advice for college students to pick up a trade sounds like good advice

It should be remembered that the academic philosopher is a fairly recent invention, starting, I think, with Kant. In fact my two favorite philosophers in history were insistent on having trades by which they supported themesleves, Spinoza with grinding lenses and Rousseau with copying music. Of course, with Rousseau it's a little more complicted but he at least speaks of how important it was to have a profession by which to support himself and remain independent, though he was not above taking free rent (though he did turn down a stipend from a king). So I've always found that ideal very appealing. .