Working Metaphors
Michael Crawford wrote Shop Class as Soulcraft as a way to make sense of his work history:
This book grows out of an attempt to get a critical handle on my own work history; to understand the human possibilities latent in what I was doing when the work seemed good, and when it was bad to identify the features of the work that systematically preempted or damaged those same possibilities. In sorting things out, we have had occasion to think about the nature of rationality, the conditions for individual agency, the moral aspect of perception, and the elusive ideal of community. (198)
One of Crawford’s conclusions is that when a job is “scaled up, depersonalized, and made to answer to forces remote from the scene of work” that the results are disastrous. The formulation is not a new one. Karl Marx came to this conclusion in the mid-nineteenth century. I remember vividly getting tossed out of a high school government class because I agreed with Marx's theory of the alienation of the worker, based on watching the slow gnawing despair in my dad as he coped with his job. The textbook (and my teacher) insisted that capitalism was perfect and that this “theory” was fatally flawed. She would not allow me to endorse such a “communist” thought in the classroom and she ejected me as a troublemaker.
I never can seem to think of “work” in the same way as other people. It comes from my upbringing. My father went to a job he hated every day. Increasingly, automation and MBA’s were running the oil fields from the central office and he felt as if he was not taken seriously. Dad seldom talked about this “work” but he constantly had work to do that he did discuss with me. Mostly, what he was interested in doing (and sometimes talking about) was the work at home—building fences, raising animals and crops, sawing firewood, shingling the roof. None of these activities resulted in any monetary benefit (other than spending less at the supermarket, I suppose). Work and the earning of money were completely separate activities.
State of the blog address
As should be clear to anyone who has bothered to follow me for the last year (if you haven’t I don’t blame you) I have grown increasingly disinterested with writing/reading the Internet. I sort of hang on to the nostalgia of it by posting a fragment now and then, but the times when I was genuinely excited to be able to write in an arena where a public (however small) might be reading it are long gone. No matter how I might try to fight it—I just don’t care what the world thinks anymore. There are only a few people I’ve conversed with on the internet that I hold dear.
In the 3d world, I have lost almost every person I’ve ever cared about in the space of two years. One part of me wants to turn to the virtual environment for consolation—and around fifteen years ago, in similar circumstances, I did. It turned out well, and is perhaps the reason why I am married and happy and don't require consolation from strangers anymore. But that’s simplistic. The internet was, and is, more than a repository of potential friends.
I’m not new to public discourse, and I am hardly surprised when things get ugly for no apparent reason. People who have no real responsibility to each other, as is the case of the imaginary internets (sic., for the humor impaired), can be unbelievably cruel. I won’t go into the reasons behind this observation, although a google search might ferret out the trigger for my discontent. It sort of puts a damper on my desire to actually start to write in public again. Chances are it won’t stop me, but it does make me sad that exposing oneself to the public is to invite being abused.
Things have changed, and I’ve updated my about page to reflect that. It’s been a cruel few years, though now on the other side of it I’m happier and more comfortable than ever before. I’ve recently rediscovered reading for the joy of it (books, not the internet) instead of for “work” and thought I might like to write again just for the joy of it instead of taking notes for work. This blog has oscillated between work notes and moments of personal whimsy while I have avoided strenuous mental activity.
I have become increasingly interested in image work again, and other types of physical work that don’t involve reading. I have read incessantly for most of my life, and it hasn’t always been good for me. I’m not giving it up, but I think it’s time I moderated it.
Dealing with so much death, stress, and disaster has left me sort of hollow. I worked so hard for so long that I cannot leave my research interests behind, but I want to approach them in a more grounded way. I’ve got a solid roof over my head and am secure personally and financially (for perhaps the first time in my life). More often than not I have the sense to turn these bloody machines off when they are not useful.
It's a harvest time, of a sort.
