I like what Cannupa Hanska Lugar said about making art it’s "the medicine of making things."
I’ve addressed these topics a couple of times on my YouTube show. There are two books that really stand out for me concerning the ideas of manual work, the philosophy of value, and meaning. “Shop Class as Soulcraft” (2009) by Matthew B. Crawford and “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (1974) by Robert M. Pirsig.
For me, these ideas and philosophies are directly related to working in the 19th and early 20th-century photographic processes. The processes are hands-on and laborious. And they have a high rate of failure. There is real skill and knowledge involved to make successful images - they are not simply handed to you. Almost the exact opposite of the 21st-century photography world today. So why would anyone choose to do such difficult and arduous work? I hope to address that question in this post.
Let me start by addressing a couple of ideas from each of the books. The first is from “Shop Class as Soulcraft” (from LifeClub):
MAKING THINGS
Can you recall the last time you worked on your car, built a piece of furniture from scratch, or made your own clothing? Chances are it’s probably been a while – if you’ve ever done it at all.
That’s because the modern world is full of devices that discourage users from repairing or even understanding them. Many modern products are so complex and delicate that the majority of people are too intimidated to attempt repairing them. Just imagine trying to fix a problem with your flat-screen TV.
In addition, many contemporary products are designed to conceal their messy inner workings with a seamless facade. For instance, if you open the hood of a new German car you won’t see an engine but a plastic case.
Products are even put together in such a way as to discourage their disassembly. For instance, they might come with extra hardware that can only be loosened with uncommon tools.
Part of the reason we’ve become more passive and dependent on other people to fix things is due to these changes. We used to make things; now we buy them. We used to fix things; now we throw them away.
It’s not just that we’re discouraged from making repairs – we might also have the feeling that doing things ourselves is economically wasteful. After all, imagine all the time and effort that would go into knitting an imperfect sweater when you could buy a perfectly good one for a few bucks.
However, the interest in manual work is slowly but surely on the rise. It’s clear that people are growing increasingly discontent with not understanding the products they use and depending on businesses to provide them with everything from food to clothing.
On top of that, the rapidly deteriorating state of the economy is demanding more self-reliance. As a result, we’re seeing people grow their own food, fix things themselves, and even raise chickens on the rooftops of New York City.
DISENGAGED WORKFORCE
Schools today are less focused on teaching – resulting in a disengaged workforce.
Did you know that manual trades are now looked down upon by most schools? Shop classes have been slashed over the last 20 years, as educators fear that students working with tools and their hands will distract them from their real goal: becoming knowledge workers.
In fact, many schools actively discourage students from choosing a career in the trades, instead urging them to focus on becoming knowledge workers. Although the latter is more likely to be the route to a lifetime of job insecurity, educators are still inclined to prepare their students for theoretically oriented jobs.
That’s because they assume these jobs will provide better career options than craft training, which is still viewed as limiting a person’s potential if they want to switch professions down the road. This narrow focus means that many students go into higher education regardless of their true passions and talents. These students end up earning a degree that fails to prepare them for any specific career and locks them into a potentially lifelong struggle to hold a job.
But that’s not the only change taking place in schools. As we know, knowledge work itself now depends less on knowledge, and the knowledge workers of tomorrow are well aware. As a result, high schools are no longer working to impart knowledge to their students. Schools now have more of a social function: they award degrees and grades that are more like merit badges, granting their bearers access to further courses of study and theoretical professions.
That means schools have become focused on competing with each other for grades, instead of actually teaching. In a climate like this, it’s no wonder that students are disengaged with their schoolwork when their schools are so disengaged with learning!
And from the book, “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (from Cambridge Assessment):
HIGH-QUALITY ENGAGEMENT VERSUS THE GUMPTION TRAP
Robert Pirsig has a lot to say about high-quality engagement, indeed the main idea he presents is that this is the secret to a fulfilled life. What lessons does this hold for schools?
According to Pirsig being engaged is a necessary condition for excellence. The feeling of being a subject separate from an object disappears when we are profoundly absorbed in what we are doing. Pirsig uses the term ‘quality’ to describe an experience that he likens to the original meaning of the ancient Greek concept of arête. Roughly translated, arête is the act of living up to one’s full potential through engagement, virtue, and wisdom.
Individuals can most easily find quality in areas of their passions and talents. Examples might include solving a mathematical problem, overcoming technical or business challenges, making a team work well together or diagnosing and treating illness. For others creating art or music, experiencing the improved well-being of others through service or climbing a new technical route on a mountain might be the stimulus. Sportspeople sometimes refer to the experience of engaged effortless perfection as ‘flow’ or ‘being in the zone.’
The opposite of this high-quality experience– poor engagement is what Pirsig describes as a gumption trap. Pirsig gives the example of a friend who loves riding his motorbike and has high-quality experiences doing so, but he gets very upset and impatient when it breaks down. He does not have the mindset and values needed to engage with motorcycle maintenance and he will never solve the problem until he accepts this and deals with his values.
Being in a gumption trap becomes a big problem when a lack of engagement becomes our default state of living. We go through the motions of living and experience tolerable boredom at best. We work on automatic. For many people, this becomes the default state of their working lives. Psychologists sometimes call this learned helplessness and it is becoming endemic in the modern world.
THE VALUE OF MAKING THINGS
So what’s the point? Hard work, failure (learning things through experience and suffering), and making things gives meaning and purpose to your life. Four lines of thought have emerged as the principal ways in which philosophers and artists have explained the importance of art. These can be given convenient labels: hedonism, aestheticism, expressionism, and cognitivism. Briefly, the first holds that art is valuable for the pleasure derived from it; the second that art is valuable as a source of beauty; the third that art is valuable as a vehicle for expressing an emotion; and the fourth that art is a source of knowledge and understanding equivalent to, but distinct from, science and philosophy.