Matthew B. Crawford is a senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and a fabricator of components for custom motorcycles. His first book, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, was a bestseller.
"Attention is the thing that is most one's own: in the normal course of things, we chose what to pay attention to, and in a very real sense this determines what is real for us, what is actually present to our consciousness. Appropriations of our attention are then an especially intimate matter," he writes at the beginning of this book. Although the chief complaint of our times is how much time and energy goes into the technological toys we hold in our hands, the author does not believe this is the major source of distraction. He sees it more as a cultural problem.
Crawford defines attention as the faculty through which we encounter the world directly. In a consumer society, it is hijacked by advertising and commercial forces that try to make inroads into our mental space. This assault has gone so far that "silence is now offered as a luxury good." The Enlightenment's adoration of autonomy has run out of juice, and we are left with a new source of freedom through "joint attention," described as working with others in collaboration.
In the most interesting parts of the book, Crawford holds up five "ordinary activities" which make positive use of attention and skill building: the short-order cook, the hockey player, the motorcycle rider, the glassmaker, and the organ maker. Here is heavy-duty philosophical book which basically expresses the mantra ""Be affectionate to the world."
