"The Case for Working With Your Hands"

[sl8]

By Matthew B. Crawford

The television show “Deadliest Catch” depicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, “Dirty Jobs,” shows all kinds of grueling work; one episode featured a guy who inseminates turkeys for a living. The weird fascination of these shows must lie partly in the fact that such confrontations with material reality have become exotically unfamiliar. Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive. “Dilbert,” “The Office” and similar portrayals of cubicle life attest to the dark absurdism with which many Americans have come to view their white-collar jobs. <...>

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=magazine

Good read.

<edit - added byline>

[Mika]

1. Fantastic article! Thanks for posting it.

The visceral experience of failure seems to have been edited out of the career trajectories of gifted students. It stands to reason, then, that those who end up making big decisions that affect all of us don’t seem to have much sense of their own fallibility, and of how badly things can go wrong even with the best of intentions (like when I dropped that feeler gauge down into the Ninja). In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?

[Fumesucker]

2. For those who don't want to register at the NYT site..

thisisstupid38 is a valid login

and fuckyou is the password.

From bugmenot.com

Since we almost always learn more from what we do wrong than what we do right, the insulation of a large portion of the population from the results of their errors leads to more error prone behavior.

[sl8]

7. Thank you. n/t

[omega minimo]

11. and

"fuckyou" very much :toast:

thisisstupid38 is a valid login

and fuckyou is the password.

[mainer]

3. Electricians and plumbers don't seem to have any employment worries

And a good auto mechanic is worth gold. The article is absolutely right. How would our society function without people who can actually fix things with their hands and not just with a keyboard?

[90-percent]

4. neat subject

I like working with my hands. I used to work in auto body shops many years ago, like 35 or so.

A good collision man has to be smart, experienced, organized and a creative problem solver because each hit is different.

I got out because I didn't have what it took to work in such a dirty unhealthy, atmosphere, mostly because I wasn't smart enough or had enough drive to do the BULL WORK that required the problem solving abilities of a bona fide engineer - perhaps more so?

Physically demanding, mentally demanding, dirty exhausting, unhealthy work. most I left behind were full blown wage slaves. They got into it as kids because they liked cars, and then at 25 they discover they have a mortgage and three kids and are earning the only living they know to support that lifestyle, which is nothing more than the American Dream we all aspire to. their plight reminded me of the enchanted island in Pinocchio.

Secondly, a century ago, the terms "engineer" and "mechanic" were interchangeable and both were terms of respect. I spent the body of my professional working life as a CNC Engineer, which combines hand work and cerebral work in equal measures. But, I was turning in to a cube rat wage slave and got laid off three months ago.

Kids getting into trades these days are playing it smart, in terms of supply and demand. Society still needs good hands that do THE ACTUAL WORK.

Getting an electrician license today seems like a pretty smart career move, for example.

-90% Jimmy

[Fumesucker]

5. Some interesting quotes from the article..

How was it that I, once a proudly self-employed electrician, had ended up among these walking wounded, a “knowledge worker” at a salary of $23,000? I had a master’s degree, and it needed to be used. The escalating demand for academic credentials in the job market gives the impression of an ever-more-knowledgeable society, whose members perform cognitive feats their unschooled parents could scarcely conceive of. On paper, my abstracting job, multiplied a millionfold, is precisely what puts the futurologist in a rapture: we are getting to be so smart! Yet my M.A. obscures a more real stupidification of the work I secured with that credential, and a wage to match. When I first got the degree, I felt as if I had been inducted to a certain order of society. But despite the beautiful ties I wore, it turned out to be a more proletarian existence than I had known as an electrician. In that job I had made quite a bit more money. I also felt free and active, rather than confined and stultified.

<...>

As it happened, in the spring I landed a job as executive director of a policy organization in Washington. This felt like a coup. But certain perversities became apparent as I settled into the job. It sometimes required me to reason backward, from desired conclusion to suitable premise. The organization had taken certain positions, and there were some facts it was more fond of than others. As its figurehead, I was making arguments I didn’t fully buy myself. Further, my boss seemed intent on retraining me according to a certain cognitive style — that of the corporate world, from which he had recently come. This style demanded that I project an image of rationality but not indulge too much in actual reasoning.

<...>

Contrast the experience of being a middle manager. This is a stock figure of ridicule, but the sociologist Robert Jackall spent years inhabiting the world of corporate managers, conducting interviews, and he poignantly describes the “moral maze” they feel trapped in. Like the mechanic, the manager faces the possibility of disaster at any time. But in his case these disasters feel arbitrary; they are typically a result of corporate restructurings, not of physics. A manager has to make many decisions for which he is accountable. Unlike an entrepreneur with his own business, however, his decisions can be reversed at any time by someone higher up the food chain (and there is always someone higher up the food chain). It’s important for your career that these reversals not look like defeats, and more generally you have to spend a lot of time managing what others think of you. Survival depends on a crucial insight: you can’t back down from an argument that you initially made in straightforward language, with moral conviction, without seeming to lose your integrity. So managers learn the art of provisional thinking and feeling, expressed in corporate doublespeak, and cultivate a lack of commitment to their own actions. Nothing is set in concrete the way it is when you are, for example, pouring concrete.

[Hannah Bell]

13. perfectlly describing many of the white collar dilemnas some have trouble with.

i've often wished i'd been wise enough to train as a plumber.

if you don't like lying, double-speak, bullshit & politics, white collar isn't for you.

[Coyote_Bandit]

6. Good explanation of why

I am thinking of taking my 40 something self back to technical school this fall - and shit-canning my ten years of college education (including 3 graduate degrees and 2 professional licenses). The education is a detriment - which in many ways makes it a liability rather than an asset. If I can work with my hands then I can do something lots of folks can't - or won't. I've been learning how to do glasswork. I'm thinking of being formally trained to be a bench jeweler. Maybe I can combine the skills and earn a livlihood.

[vadawg]

10. a ggod defense against starvation is always to have skills to fall back on

whether thats farming or something unique or the ability to fish, hunt etc. I am amazed at some people who used to laugh at my country ways and for simplyfing my family's life who are now contacting me to see if i need any help on my property and for advice on growing stuff in their gardens. My motto is if you can survive a week without modernity then you can survive a month, if you can survive a month then a year is doable.

[windoe]

8. K & R

Thank you for posting this important article.
Institutionalized thinking has become so prevalent, it is nearly invisible. It is really time for some creative out of the box problem solving, including the very structure of companies (they are too big and powerful), and what is called education, if this country is to make it in the 21st century.
Interesting that the working class being disenfranchised can also be an opportunity for us to rebuild ourselves in a new shape, ensuring that we do not make the same mistakes again, this time forming groups that honor the individuals mental and physical health, working to live not living to work. I believe that the working class is very powerful, the silent majority if you will, all of this talent out of work, if we only build ourselves up from the roots.
I am interested in living off the grid and making a simple life, somehow finding a balance between technology and living in harmony with the Earth. My experience doing bodywork has taught me how much people are in need of getting back in touch with their bodies, and this article relates well to what I have been studying.
Take care, windoe.

[Raksha]

9. A very good essay...

it almost reads like a sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

[blaze]

12. Great article!! Thanks so much for posting!

Almost 15 years ago, I was laid off from an office job... long story short, I became an HVAC (heating, venting and air conditioning) tech. The technology continues to evolve on a regular basis. When I started, most controls were 120v or pneumatics... now most are digital with wonderfully complex programs running in the background. If the programming starts scrambling my brain, there is always some very physical task waiting for my attention. When I'm worn out physically, the programming awaits. It's a wonderful job!!

I work for a school district that has almost completely abandoned any recognition of the trades... I'm sure there are students that would excel in the trades, but they keep being steered away from them. Maybe I'll send a link to this article to our superintendent.

Thanks again!