#134 – Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford
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00:00 Welcome and Introduction – Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford.
05:55 Discussing “Shop Class as Soulcraft” core ideas.
11:24 Matthew B. Crawford: Author exploring work, virtue, vehicles.
14:17 Matthew B. Crawford: humble origins, manual competency, influence.
20:07 Craftsmanship values substance over appearance in leadership.
23:19 Wisdom evolved; now focuses on practical knowledge.
25:25 Education misaligns with practical skills for life.
31:46 Virtual world vs. reality: leaders must choose.
34:09 “12 Rules for Leaders”: Intentional leadership guide.
39:34 Loss of autonomy with the rise of technology.
41:46 Rethink education, embrace manual competency, challenge systems.
47:23 “College students need pragmatic problem-solving books.”
52:42 Begin with basics: real-world skills, reduce narcissism.
54:16 Narcissists struggle with real-world competence limitations.
58:03 Subscribe and review the Leadership Lessons From The Great Books podcast.
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Opening and closing themes composed by Brian Sanyshyn of Brian Sanyshyn Music.
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Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and
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understand yet another business book, on the Leadership Lessons from the Great
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Books podcast, we commit to reading, dissecting, and analyzing the
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great books of the Western canon. You know those
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books from Jane Austen to Shakespeare and everything else in
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between that you might have fallen asleep trying to read in high
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school. We do this for our listeners, the owner, the
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entrepreneur, the manager, or the civic leader who doesn’t have the time
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to read, dissect, analyze, and leverage insights from
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literature to execute leadership best practices in the
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confusing and chaotic postmodern world we all now
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inhabit. Welcome to the rescuing of Western civilization
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at the intersection of literature and leadership.
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Welcome to the leadership lessons from the Great Books podcast.
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Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the
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leadership lessons from the great books podcast, episode
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number 134.
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There are some books in the world that are so
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difficult, so deep, and that bring up so many complicated
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and important ideas that they require us
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as readers and as leaders to taste,
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chew, and swallow them
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slowly. Some such books, some types of
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those books we have covered on this show, and we will
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revisit, this year as time and temperament
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permit, including War and Peace,
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About Face, by, Colonel David Hackworth,
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and Crime and Punishment, and, of course, Sitting
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Bull, his Life and Legacy. By the way,
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we’ll also be revisiting the Count of Monte Cristo this
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year as well. However, the book we are
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introducing to you today is one with which I had little
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familiarity initially. This is not to say I didn’t know the
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title of the book. I’d actually had it sitting on my bookshelf in
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my library for at least, I think, 4 years
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up to this point. And I had heard about the
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author. I’d heard his name pop up occasionally floating
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through the circles of reformed theological thinking
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on Twitter or x that I sometimes still
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run-in. But this author, at
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least for my particular position in the
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universe, hadn’t really made a dent.
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Once I cracked the book open and began to read it, I
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discovered, that it was a book that is
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so relevant for leaders and for leadership. I
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wondered what exactly it was that had put me off from
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reading it for so long or
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put me off from reading it up until this particular
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time and this particular moment.
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Other than Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Piersig,
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I am unaware of other books that so artfully, clearly, and
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masterfully describe in philosophical
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and pragmatic details the intersections between
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manual labor and the challenges of an increasingly
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digitized narcissistic and solipsistic
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national culture. What this book we’re covering
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today offers a way out of our current predicament
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and provides pragmatic solutions to the challenges inherent
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in the existence and in us existing
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in what is still deeply a material
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world. After all, I’m still walking
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around in a body just like you are. I’m still sitting in
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a studio behind a microphone recording this podcast,
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and it’s cold where I’m at, so I still have the heat on.
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By the way, I’m sure you’re still dressed while you’re
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listening to this. The hard, cold
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material world won’t go away. No matter how much the tech
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bros of Silicon Valley and the Madison Avenue
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marketers would desire to will it to be so.
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So today, we’re going to read a book that’s a that’s
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a direct punch in the mouth to all those folks.
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Today, we will be covering the introduction
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and a little bit of the first chapter and summarizing the
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ideas within those two sections of Shop
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Class as Soulcraft, an inquiry
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into the value of work by Matthew
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b Crawford. Leaders,
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take hold of the material world around you. Build
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something with your
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hands.
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And so we’re gonna open up today with the introduction
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to Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford.
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Now just so that we can get this, off the table early, this book
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was published by Penguin Press in New York in 2009.
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And as such, we will not be reading
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directly from the book. Instead,
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what we are going to do is we are going to go through,
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the introduction. I’m going to summarize some of the core ideas
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from this book, and then we are going to
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discuss those core ideas, break them down, and give
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some pragmatic conclusions that you can take from the
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book as a leader. So when you open
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up shop class as Soulcraft and inquiry into
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the value of work, you, of course, hit the introduction, and he opens the
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book Crawford does with an anecdote about
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a good friend of his who used to teach,
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a shop class in Richmond, Virginia,
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called Noel Dempsey, who is,
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well, who was rescuing at the time of the writing of this book,
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was rescuing tools being sold
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off by high schools that were getting rid of shop class
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in across the country in favor of turning students
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into, quote, unquote, knowledge workers.
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Crawford moves very quickly through a description of
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Sears catalogs and, how
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consumers back in the past used to be able
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to access their material goods in order to fix
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them and repair them with their own
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hands. He also laments this idea of a wedding
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of futurism to what might be called virtualism, a
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vision of the future in which we, and I’m quoting directly from the
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book the introduction here from Matthew Crawford, quote, a vision of the future in
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which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a
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pure information economy. Crawford
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posits that building things in the material world is an antidote to
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the ways in which the scientific managerial
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structure created around this type of virtualism,
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this type of fantasy, and
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and and is it serves as an antidote to that. He also,
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asserts that material work in the material world creates a
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different kind of moral structure around work. And he’s
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going to talk a lot about the moral structure around work and what that
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actually means in later chapters, which we’ll cover in
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later episodes of the show this year.
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But it’s an important point to remember from Crawford.
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Also, in the introduction, Crawford,
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states that he believes the ideal of manual competence
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is an antidote to, quote, unquote, more ghostly kinds
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of work. He, he doesn’t degrade
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knowledge work. He doesn’t degrade the working of the mind,
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but he definitely favors it. And by the way, we’ll talk about the
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background of Matthew Crawford here in the next section. He
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is not an unintelligent person himself, not a person
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who, is ignoring the cognitive load.
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But he is a person who believes that cognition
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and manual dexterity must go together.
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Finally, he predicts that many of the challenges we’re going to have at scale in
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the future of artificial intelligence software, that
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completely disintermediates the scientific manager and provides
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the ability at an even deeper level to, as I already said, glide about in
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a pure information economy. He predicts that those challenges are information economy,
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he predicts that those challenges are going to
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increase. One of the reasons why I think,
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we needed to read this book now and cover this book now on the podcast
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is because we are at this next technological revolutionary moment. I’ve talked a little bit
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about technological revolutionary moment. I’ve
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talked a little bit about AI on this podcast.
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I have not focused on it necessarily.
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And, yes, I have spoken about it from what may be interpreted as
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a doom and gloom perspective, but AI is
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just a tool. Crawford would assert that it’s
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yet another tool, a now
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computational tool built on top of electronic
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tools. That’s a term that he used back in 2009, which were built on
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top of scientific tools in the 20th
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century that were designed
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to delude and to create phasma
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to phasmatagorical worlds for the
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purposes of separating a worker from their
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work and at a deeper level, for the purposes
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of separating a human being,
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men and women, but a human being from this
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idea of competence, creativity,
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and here’s a big one, agency in
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the material world.
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So who is Matthew B. Crawford?
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What type of literary life has he led, and why should we bother caring
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about his book? And by the way, Shop Class as Soulcraft was
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his first book. He’s written
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3 others focused on the intersection of
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work and virtue, talking about,
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vehicles and the power of driving in America
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and what it means to actually have a vehicle in America.
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And, and he’s written another book. I can’t remember the topic, the particular topic of
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that one, but you can go and, you can go and find that book on,
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on Amazon. He seems to be a thinker that
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is living at an intersection
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that has been abandoned by many thinkers.
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Crawford was or is an American writer
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and research fellow at the Institute For Advanced Studies in Culture
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at the University of Virginia.
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But before that, he was a physics major as an
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undergraduate and then turned to political philosophy
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in the early 2000. And in Shop Class as
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Soulcraft, he chronicles his journey
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from being in a graduate and PhD
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role, a graduate student role pursuing his doctorate,
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and applying for and thinking about the moving into the
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academic world more deeply and the sense
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of, dysfunction
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is not really the word, disconnection that he had from that
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because from that particular world, because
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alongside his physics understanding and
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his political philosophy graduate work, he
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had been working as an electrician, and
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he’d always worked with his hands. He’d been interested in mechanics
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and in automotive work and, had been supporting himself as
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electrician working during the summers while in while working as
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an undergraduate. I’m not sorry. Not working. While matriculating
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as an undergraduate and matriculating as a graduate student. So he’d
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been doing that, and he’d also begun to develop, ever since he
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was a teenager, an interest in
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motorcycles and, in particular,
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cars, in particular, a VW Beetle.
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As of the year 2020, he,
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was a contributing editor at the New Atlantis
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and had continued to be a motorcycle mechanic
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with a shop, Shockoe Moto in
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Virginia. Matter of fact, in Richmond, Virginia. So if you Google
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Matthew Crawford, you’ll find Matthew B. Crawford. You will find,
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a whole bunch of different things on him, including a very interesting
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interview that he did with NPR
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back in the day. Matthew
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B. Crawford is one of these folks who came from
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humble, humble origins. He
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was, he was raised in a commune, from,
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the time he was born until he was about 12 years old.
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He learned how to engage with manual competency
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and learn the power of agency that went along with that. His
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father had a background in physics, and he talks about his father
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in Shop Class as Soulcraft and how
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his father’s conception of the
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world didn’t really help him when he
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had to fix a material problem
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with a vehicle he was frustrated with,
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that aforementioned VW VW Beetle.
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I believe probably that would have been in the late seventies early eighties because
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Mr. Crawford is, is, getting into his, into
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his sixties by now. So
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that’s a little bit about Matthew B. Crawford, a little
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bit about his literary life, his background, and his
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influences. I strongly encourage you to check him out. And,
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well, check out his work because
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the intersection that he lives at is an important
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one for us to get to as leaders
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with our own unique backgrounds.
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Alright. Back to the book. Back to shop class as
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Soulcraft by Matthew B Crawford.
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So we’re gonna pick up, where we left off, and
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we’re going to jump, from the introduction, which is
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all kinds of full full of all kinds of good stuff,
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to chapter, to chapter 1. Now I mistakenly said
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there that the introduction started off with a story about
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the gentleman, buying things on eBay from,
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from old, from old shop classes. And,
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actually, the introduction, really does start with and
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I, again, I need to correct this, a
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dealer of a machine tool
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warehouse, in Richmond, Virginia. Chapter
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1 of Shop Class’s Soulcraft, a briefcase,
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for the useful arts, that’s a subtitle of the chapter. The title of the
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chapter begins with Tom Hull, who used to teach
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welding machine shop, auto shop, sheet metal work, and computer aided drafting
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at Marshfield High School in Coos Bay, Oregon,
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who says, and I quote, a lot of schools shut
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down their shop class programs in the 19 nineties when there was a big push
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for computer literacy.
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And he’s right. They did. Matter of fact, I graduated high school just to make
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this a little personal. I graduated high school in 1997.
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I had to think about that for a minute.
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Anyway, I graduated high school in 1997,
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and I
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did not take a shop class, actually, during
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the course of my high school career. Now I did learn
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how to, pull an engine out of a
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vehicle and drop a new engine in to a vehicle,
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but I learned that from my, from my
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stepfather rather than from the
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public school system.
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So in chapter 1 of Shop Class’s Soulcraft,
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Matthew was making a case for the useful
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arts, and he he delineates, he
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separates, the useful arts as
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those that are tied to manual labor, this idea of
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craftsmanship, and how he characterizes it. And I
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love this characterization. A brute understanding of the
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character of the material world.
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So just to make this really simple, every time a
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natural disaster shows up, the
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hurricane that hit North Carolina last
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year, the fires currently
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burning Los Angeles, in
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Southern California, when a
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hurricane strikes New York City or
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when a earthquake strikes San Francisco.
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When a volcano goes off somewhere in the world,
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or when a winter storm
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shuts down our very fragile, in the United States anyway,
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electrical grid system. When these
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systems collapse in the face of
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brute nature, we are reminded as
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sophisticated urban oriented
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individuals. Even if we’re rural, we still many of
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us have cell phones, and we’re still on Instagram and on
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TikTok, and we can still see what people are doing in other places.
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The urban and the rural have merged together. So in this
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world where everyone knows everything about everybody or at least
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can find it out, where the world has
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flattened, where the distinctions between urban and rural,
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between the work that is flashy, like that of being an influencer,
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and the work that is practical, like that of being a plumber,
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where those lines have attempted to be blurred, the
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useful arts deal with the character,
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deal with the brute character of a world
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that is natural, a world that is material.
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Think about it this way. When a mudslide happens,
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an Instagram influencer isn’t going to show up to your
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house with a backhoe. Now, the
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guy who shows up to your house with a backhoe and clears
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the mud out of your front yard might,
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matter of fact, probably is on Instagram. But they wouldn’t
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identify themselves as, at least not probably
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primarily as an Instagram influencer. And this is the point that
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mister Crawford is making in the first chapter of
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or the first part of the first chapter of Shop Class’s Soulcraft.
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He states that, quote, craftsmanship means dwelling on a task for
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a long time and going deeply into it because you
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want to get it right, close quote. I can’t
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think of a better description for what leaders
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are supposed to do. Not managers. If you’re a manager listening to this, you
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can become a better leader, not by becoming a better
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manager, but by actually dwelling on the task
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of leadership for a long time and going deeply into it because you
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actually want to get leadership, not management,
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right. Crawford addresses as
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well the cognitive demands that are
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required, that are placed on us as human beings by the
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doing of manual work. I already mentioned plumbers
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and the guy who runs the backhoe, but construction
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workers, carpenters, automotive,
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not technicians, but mechanics, the people who lay
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road, and the people who lay brick.
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There are cognitive demands to all of that work that in an
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information and in a more technological age, we actually dismiss. And, by the
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way, in the world of AI, world of large language models,
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the work that is done in those areas defies large
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language models because that work creates
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experiences in a material world that the LLMs are
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still shut off to. The
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cognitive demands of manual work create a certain species of wisdom,
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Crawford continues. And he points out that the
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original idea of wisdom began with a
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Greek root, a Greek word
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that focused on the acquiring
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of technical skill through disciplined
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perception. Matter of fact, in a
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quote, in the tradition that developed in the west,
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wisdom lost the concrete sense it originally had in Homer.
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In religious texts, on the one hand, wisdom tended towards the mystical.
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In science, on the other hand, wisdom remained connected to knowledge of nature.
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But with the advent of idealization, such as the frictionless surface
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and the perfect vacuum, science too adopted a paradoxically
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otherworldly idea of how we come to know nature
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through mental constructions that are more intellectually tractable than
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material reality, hence amenable to mathematical
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representation. By the way, he doesn’t
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dismiss mathematics, but he merely says that it can only
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take you just like software
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so far.
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So does god or nature really like a
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builder? And how does god or nature
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define a builder? Well, I’m of the
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personal belief, and that was actually sort of the subheading of this particular
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section of our podcast today, this particular moment
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that we are going to have together that god does like builders.
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One of the things that obsesses
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parents and children alike, and Crawford talks about this
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much later on in his book, and we’ll talk about this as we go through
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the book this year. But one of the things that obsesses parents
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and children alike in America is
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this idea or the idea of getting a, quote, unquote,
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good job, making a good living, and living a,
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quote, unquote, good life. As a
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matter of fact, I have people in my life who are older than
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me, and I’m in my mid forties, who are
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still concerned that I’m not making a, quote unquote,
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good living. But what does that actually
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mean? What does that mean in the context of a K
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through 12 system and, later on, a college
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system consisting of graduated undergraduate work
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that no longer aligns with the world of
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work that is misaligned, or or
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as Crawford would assert, that is too overly
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aligned with the world of work.
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What is the point of the K through 12 to college to
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quote unquote urban employment in a large global city funnel
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if the people produced by that funnel, if the product of that
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funnel are unable to even know,
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identify, or fix what’s wrong in their own
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material world. Sure, you can
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read an Excel spreadsheet, but can you
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mount a door on a hinge if it falls off in your
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house without having to call somebody to do that?
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Sure. You can edit really, really fast
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using an AI program, or you can make really cool
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looking videos for YouTube, but you can’t hammer a
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nail. Sure. You
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can, go ahead and order a
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really cool latte from a really cool
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coffee shop in town with really cool people in it.
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But when that little check engine light comes on in your car,
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you don’t even know what it means, much less what to do
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if you’re ground out in a 102 degree
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heat in Texas or negative
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15 degree cold in the mountains of Colorado.
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To paraphrase from a movie from the 19 eighties, when you get
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in trouble in the material world with all of your
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00:27:36.054 –> 00:27:39.835
degrees and credentials that your parents encouraged
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you to get, who are you going to call?
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These are increasingly important questions to ask,
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and they were beginning to be asked in the
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early 2000. I know I was there. I
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was in college in the early 2000 as an undergrad
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and then as a graduate student. And I worked in colleges and
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universities for about the first 15 years of what is
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nominally considered to be an an adult life attempting to make a,
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quote, unquote, good living. And I’ve spent a lot of time
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around academics, and I’ve spent a lot of time intersecting with the
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academic institutions that make this country
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what it currently is.
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And none of these questions that I’ve asked can be answered by the
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academic institutions because they don’t consider them to be part of their
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purview. They consider those questions to be part of the purview of, quote,
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unquote, private institutions or, quote, unquote, larger society
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or, quote, unquote, individuals or, quote,
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unquote, systems.
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They don’t consider those questions to be
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even relevant. But parents do consider
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those questions to be relevant, or at least they should, and so should students,
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particularly students in their late teen and early
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twenties. Does autonomy, agency, and
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competence mean anything in a world where everything is a distraction,
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consumption, and the globalist universal message of a post Cold
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War political and economic system
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still doesn’t have all of the shine quite off of it
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just yet? I think autonomy,
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agency, and competence mean everything. Matter of fact,
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during COVID, and I’ll go on a little bit of a rant here, during
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00:29:33.845 –> 00:29:36.985
COVID, we saw a decline in competency,
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not in the plumber or the road builder
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or the garbage man or the automotive mechanic.
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We began to see a decline in competency in the
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service person, the delivery driver,
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the waiter or waitress. Isn’t
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that interesting? A decline in competency where people
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are serving people in the material world because we still need to
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eat food. But there was
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an increase in competency
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in interactions between people around
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objects in the material world.
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I think autonomy, agency, and competency mean quite a lot. I think
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Crawford would agree with me about this. And ShopClass’
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Soulcraft makes that assertion as
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well. Look.
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We’ve been asking these questions at a higher and higher level since the early
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2000, and we’ve been asking these questions and demanding answers
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more and more insistently, not just from
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academic systems, but overall from the western culture
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in general and, of course, the educational systems of the United States.
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And we haven’t been getting good answers. And so parents and
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children have been wandering away from these institutions,
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not in mass, not in gigantic
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flood like deluges, but in small drips.
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The pitter pattering of little feet as they go out the door to
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explore other options. The
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COVID 19 crisis of 2020,
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2021, and 2022 fully revealed,
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00:31:26.570 –> 00:31:28.670
fully lay bare
469
00:31:30.330 –> 00:31:34.030
the assumptions that we’ve been operating
470
00:31:34.090 –> 00:31:37.930
and laboring under in the United States anyway for at least the
471
00:31:37.930 –> 00:31:41.465
last 100 years, Assumptions about a quote unquote good
472
00:31:41.465 –> 00:31:45.225
living. Assumptions about living in a quote unquote urban
473
00:31:45.225 –> 00:31:48.664
environment. Assumptions about the value of an
474
00:31:48.664 –> 00:31:52.424
advanced degree and assumptions about
475
00:31:52.424 –> 00:31:55.740
the work that goes in to delivering
476
00:31:56.600 –> 00:32:00.140
you that latte. Reality,
477
00:32:01.559 –> 00:32:05.400
reality likes material reality. And we are
478
00:32:05.400 –> 00:32:09.159
seeing a bifurcation in America and
479
00:32:09.159 –> 00:32:12.975
globally between people who really, really, really like living in
480
00:32:12.975 –> 00:32:16.595
the virtual machine, the virtual electronic
481
00:32:16.655 –> 00:32:19.875
machine of pretend, where we can be avatars
482
00:32:20.255 –> 00:32:23.775
with voices and faces and bodies that are
483
00:32:23.775 –> 00:32:26.240
not, well, that are not real.
484
00:32:29.020 –> 00:32:32.320
A bifurcation between that world and the world of,
485
00:32:32.460 –> 00:32:35.980
well, natural disasters, the world
486
00:32:35.980 –> 00:32:39.424
of fires and floods, mudslides
487
00:32:39.644 –> 00:32:43.485
and earthquakes, the world of pandemics and
488
00:32:43.485 –> 00:32:46.384
roads, the world of plumbing
489
00:32:47.404 –> 00:32:51.184
and homeless people, the world of buildings
490
00:32:51.780 –> 00:32:55.620
that are no longer maintained and fall down, and bridges that
491
00:32:55.620 –> 00:32:59.240
cannot be rebuilt because we do not have the knowledge
492
00:32:59.380 –> 00:33:02.760
to do so that has to exist in people
493
00:33:03.300 –> 00:33:07.000
who operate with autonomy, agency, and competence
494
00:33:08.955 –> 00:33:12.335
against or maybe with
495
00:33:13.435 –> 00:33:17.215
the people who live in a virtual world.
496
00:33:19.595 –> 00:33:22.970
It’s time for leaders to
497
00:33:22.970 –> 00:33:26.190
decide in which world
498
00:33:27.210 –> 00:33:29.309
they are going to lead.
499
00:33:57.059 –> 00:34:00.440
Hello. So I’m gonna do some shelling here,
500
00:34:00.820 –> 00:34:04.355
and hopefully this will be a pause in
501
00:34:04.355 –> 00:34:08.114
our riveting conversation for you. I have
502
00:34:08.114 –> 00:34:11.795
an offer for you. My most recent book is 12 Rules
503
00:34:11.795 –> 00:34:15.599
for Leaders The Foundation of Attentional Leadership. It’s available in
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paperback, hardcover, or as an ebook on Amazon Barnes and
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in this book, I address the 12 leadership areas that I have found
507
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leaders need to be the most intentional in to be the type of leader
508
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followers actually want to follow. From
509
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establishing a foundation of leading teams through managing conflict effectively
510
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all the way through leading teams through change, knowing what to do and
511
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why to do it can help readers, like the
512
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ones listening to this show, become better leaders.
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Look, reading this book and living it is like getting coaching from me directly
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without having to pay my full coaching rate. Head on
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toolbox dot us, and scroll down the home page and click on the buy now
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Amazon, 12 Rules for Leaders, the foundation for
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intentional leadership. And that’s it for me.
520
00:35:16.869 –> 00:35:18.170
Now back to the show.
521
00:35:23.845 –> 00:35:27.525
Back to Matthew Crawford. Back to shop
522
00:35:27.525 –> 00:35:30.984
class as Soulcraft. We remain
523
00:35:31.204 –> 00:35:33.704
in chapter 1, summarizing,
524
00:35:34.565 –> 00:35:36.744
talking, asserting.
525
00:35:38.230 –> 00:35:41.590
Flipping forward or flipping through chapter 1, a brief
526
00:35:41.590 –> 00:35:44.970
case for the useful arts. There’s
527
00:35:45.030 –> 00:35:47.050
another piece in here,
528
00:35:48.710 –> 00:35:52.405
where Crawford talks about arts, crafts, and the
529
00:35:52.405 –> 00:35:55.845
assembly line. And this is something that, I am very
530
00:35:55.845 –> 00:35:59.525
much, oh, gosh. I shouldn’t say in
531
00:35:59.525 –> 00:36:02.825
favor of talking about, but I wish more people knew the history
532
00:36:02.885 –> 00:36:06.100
of. You can read writers, marketers,
533
00:36:06.540 –> 00:36:10.220
or no. Sorry. You can read writers like,
534
00:36:10.540 –> 00:36:14.080
Seth Godin, the marketer, but others
535
00:36:14.220 –> 00:36:17.900
who Doug Wilson, the theologian, who have talked
536
00:36:17.900 –> 00:36:21.695
in-depth about one of the most dynamic
537
00:36:21.695 –> 00:36:25.295
inventors of the early 20th century, a man named
538
00:36:25.295 –> 00:36:29.135
Henry Ford, and how he constructed not
539
00:36:29.135 –> 00:36:32.895
the car. Everybody thinks that that was his big insight
540
00:36:32.895 –> 00:36:36.740
or his big innovation. And in reality, the
541
00:36:36.740 –> 00:36:39.960
big innovation, the big insight was the
542
00:36:40.100 –> 00:36:43.800
assembly line. And Matthew Crawford takes apart
543
00:36:44.420 –> 00:36:48.205
the assembly line, and he
544
00:36:48.205 –> 00:36:51.665
opens with talking about how, quote,
545
00:36:51.964 –> 00:36:55.665
early in 20th century when Teddy Roosevelt preached the strenuous life
546
00:36:55.724 –> 00:36:59.105
and elites worried about their state of over civilized
547
00:36:59.405 –> 00:37:03.170
spiritual decay, the project of getting back in touch with, quote,
548
00:37:03.170 –> 00:37:07.010
unquote, real life took various forms. 1 was romantic fantasy about
549
00:37:07.010 –> 00:37:10.230
the pre modern craftsman. It was understandable
550
00:37:10.770 –> 00:37:13.490
given changes in the world of work at the turn of the century, a time
551
00:37:13.490 –> 00:37:17.315
when the of economic life was rapidly increasing the number
552
00:37:17.315 –> 00:37:21.075
of paper shufflers. As TJ Jackson
553
00:37:21.075 –> 00:37:24.595
Lears explains in his history of the progressive era, no place of
554
00:37:24.595 –> 00:37:28.370
grace, the tangible elements of craft were appealing as an
555
00:37:28.370 –> 00:37:31.910
antidote to vague feelings of unreality, diminished autonomy,
556
00:37:32.210 –> 00:37:35.730
and a fragmented sense of self that were especially acute among the
557
00:37:35.730 –> 00:37:39.110
professional classes, close quote. So
558
00:37:39.494 –> 00:37:43.174
Crawford begins opens up this chapter on the assembly line
559
00:37:43.174 –> 00:37:47.015
by talking about the progressives. Right? Most
560
00:37:47.015 –> 00:37:50.375
people don’t understand the history of the progressive movement. As a matter of fact, I
561
00:37:50.375 –> 00:37:53.815
would encourage you to go back and listen to the episode that we published at
562
00:37:53.815 –> 00:37:57.079
the beginning of last year, 2024,
563
00:37:57.700 –> 00:38:01.380
when we talked about Woodrow Wilson’s book, with Libby
564
00:38:01.380 –> 00:38:05.220
Unger, and, his little screed that he wrote.
565
00:38:05.220 –> 00:38:08.119
Woodrow Wilson was the classical Democrat
566
00:38:08.740 –> 00:38:12.335
progressive, By the way, his great grandchildren
567
00:38:12.715 –> 00:38:15.135
are Alexandria Okashia Cortez,
568
00:38:16.795 –> 00:38:20.395
and every blue haired progressive that you’ve seen on Blue
569
00:38:20.395 –> 00:38:24.160
Sky. But on the right wing in
570
00:38:24.160 –> 00:38:28.000
America, there is also right wing progressives. Right
571
00:38:28.000 –> 00:38:31.520
wing progressives progressivism began politically with
572
00:38:31.520 –> 00:38:35.360
Teddy Roosevelt, and we also covered some of his writing and thoughts on the
573
00:38:35.360 –> 00:38:38.235
podcast. I would encourage you to go back and listen to some of those.
574
00:38:39.575 –> 00:38:43.195
His great grandchildren came down in the form of,
575
00:38:43.735 –> 00:38:47.495
or in the visage of everyone from John
576
00:38:47.495 –> 00:38:50.760
McCain to Mitt Romney to
577
00:38:51.619 –> 00:38:53.000
Liz Cheney.
578
00:38:56.740 –> 00:39:00.420
Anyhow, I’ll leave out the political implications of this. You can think
579
00:39:00.420 –> 00:39:03.885
through that on your own. You’re a you’re a smart and erudite
580
00:39:03.944 –> 00:39:07.724
listener. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be listening to this show.
581
00:39:07.944 –> 00:39:11.645
But Crawford’s point is that progressivism really
582
00:39:12.025 –> 00:39:15.785
looked at craftsmanship as a romantic escape from paper
583
00:39:15.785 –> 00:39:18.420
pushing, a romantic escape from bureaucratization.
584
00:39:20.400 –> 00:39:24.000
And the elites pursued this, fiddling around on their
585
00:39:24.000 –> 00:39:27.760
boats, having their properties at their estates, riding their
586
00:39:27.760 –> 00:39:31.315
horses, these kinds of things. But the average person in the
587
00:39:31.315 –> 00:39:35.155
early 20th century still worked on a farm. And most
588
00:39:35.155 –> 00:39:38.675
farm workers had not transitioned into the
589
00:39:38.675 –> 00:39:42.515
urban environment that basically was going to be built
590
00:39:42.515 –> 00:39:45.850
out because of, well, because of the technology
591
00:39:46.230 –> 00:39:47.690
known as the car.
592
00:39:50.630 –> 00:39:54.170
This sense of a bureaucratized economic
593
00:39:54.230 –> 00:39:58.070
life, and diminished autonomy and human agency in a
594
00:39:58.070 –> 00:40:01.724
material world was looked at as a loss.
595
00:40:01.724 –> 00:40:05.165
In our time, it’s just looked at as the way things, quote,
596
00:40:05.165 –> 00:40:08.684
unquote, are. But in the early 20th
597
00:40:08.684 –> 00:40:12.285
century, this was looked at as a real loss. And Crawford points out that
598
00:40:12.285 –> 00:40:15.510
institutions used the decline in craftsmanship
599
00:40:16.049 –> 00:40:19.650
to create a new work order. Not a new
600
00:40:19.650 –> 00:40:23.410
world order, a new work order, a new
601
00:40:23.410 –> 00:40:26.615
scientific order. And even because progressives
602
00:40:27.155 –> 00:40:30.995
starting all the way back with the abolition of slavery really like this
603
00:40:30.995 –> 00:40:34.755
project, a new moral order, but
604
00:40:34.755 –> 00:40:38.355
a moral order divorced from religion, a
605
00:40:38.355 –> 00:40:41.990
moral order divorced from the fundamental
606
00:40:42.690 –> 00:40:46.310
realities of the material world, a moral order
607
00:40:47.330 –> 00:40:50.070
around technological fantasies
608
00:40:51.170 –> 00:40:54.310
first brought to you by the assembly line
609
00:40:54.935 –> 00:40:58.295
and later sold to you by the marketers on
610
00:40:58.295 –> 00:40:59.755
Madison Avenue.
611
00:41:02.135 –> 00:41:05.895
In chapter 1, Matthew Crawford makes the point
612
00:41:05.895 –> 00:41:09.035
that bucking the quote unquote moral weight of egalitarianism,
613
00:41:10.830 –> 00:41:13.890
that this sort of idea
614
00:41:14.350 –> 00:41:18.190
of the assembly line applied to k through 12
615
00:41:18.190 –> 00:41:21.710
education implies bucking that moral weight of
616
00:41:21.710 –> 00:41:25.250
egalitarianism would take courage for high school principals,
617
00:41:26.695 –> 00:41:30.075
to push students towards the cognitively
618
00:41:30.375 –> 00:41:34.075
rich work of manual labor.
619
00:41:46.900 –> 00:41:49.620
So what do we do with that idea? Right? What do we do with the
620
00:41:49.620 –> 00:41:52.840
idea of the assembly line being taken from
621
00:41:53.715 –> 00:41:57.495
making cars in the early 20th century to
622
00:41:58.035 –> 00:42:01.815
making a new type of man, to selling
623
00:42:02.035 –> 00:42:05.395
that new type of man to the new type of man, to
624
00:42:05.395 –> 00:42:09.095
inculcating the young through the k through 12 educational system,
625
00:42:09.369 –> 00:42:12.990
and to the decline of manual competency
626
00:42:13.609 –> 00:42:16.510
in an increasingly difficult material world.
627
00:42:17.369 –> 00:42:20.810
What do we do with all this? How do we stand
628
00:42:20.810 –> 00:42:24.435
athwart history as William F. Buckley would have infamously said
629
00:42:24.435 –> 00:42:28.115
back in the day, a product of the k through 12 system himself, as well
630
00:42:28.115 –> 00:42:30.775
as the Ivy League Educational Elite Institutions
631
00:42:31.475 –> 00:42:35.255
that produce the thinkers and the philosophers who come up with the justifications
632
00:42:35.955 –> 00:42:39.760
for this new progressive order? What, he would
633
00:42:39.760 –> 00:42:43.200
say stand to thwart history? How do we stand to thwart history and
634
00:42:43.200 –> 00:42:44.180
yell stop?
635
00:42:47.599 –> 00:42:51.225
And how do we do such yelling in light of
636
00:42:51.225 –> 00:42:54.905
the fact that we are at the end of or approaching the
637
00:42:54.905 –> 00:42:58.365
end of an 80 year cycle of history
638
00:42:59.705 –> 00:43:03.545
known as the 4th turning and that we are about
639
00:43:03.545 –> 00:43:07.349
to embark on another 80 year cycle
640
00:43:07.349 –> 00:43:11.109
of history that will take us all the way to the end of this
641
00:43:11.109 –> 00:43:13.450
21st century,
642
00:43:15.829 –> 00:43:19.349
an end that I will probably not live long
643
00:43:19.349 –> 00:43:20.915
enough to see.
644
00:43:24.175 –> 00:43:27.855
What do we do with all of this? How do
645
00:43:27.855 –> 00:43:31.475
we change the systems? Because here’s the thing.
646
00:43:32.270 –> 00:43:35.890
The material world isn’t going anywhere. Right? Manual
647
00:43:36.430 –> 00:43:40.210
labor still has meaning. You still have to
648
00:43:41.230 –> 00:43:45.070
deal with the land. You still have to move the trees and
649
00:43:45.070 –> 00:43:48.895
move the rocks and move the dirt and build the houses
650
00:43:48.895 –> 00:43:52.335
and build the buildings. And by the way, you have to do it competently so
651
00:43:52.335 –> 00:43:55.934
the buildings don’t fall down, the roads don’t crack, the
652
00:43:55.934 –> 00:43:59.295
trees don’t fall over on the kids, and, of
653
00:43:59.295 –> 00:44:02.420
course, so that everyone is safe
654
00:44:02.720 –> 00:44:06.560
physically so that they can all go run around and
655
00:44:06.560 –> 00:44:09.300
be unsafe, virtually.
656
00:44:11.680 –> 00:44:14.660
How do we manage this next transition of man
657
00:44:15.755 –> 00:44:19.375
from what Crawford described as electronic back in
658
00:44:19.435 –> 00:44:22.895
2008, 2009 when he was probably writing this book,
659
00:44:23.435 –> 00:44:26.575
to digital, to now algorithmic,
660
00:44:27.275 –> 00:44:30.415
which is the current transition we’re in?
661
00:44:33.329 –> 00:44:37.089
Well, if you’re a leader listening to this, you’re probably wondering
662
00:44:37.089 –> 00:44:40.609
when I’m going to get to the point, and here is the point. I’ve been
663
00:44:40.609 –> 00:44:44.369
looking for a strong antidote to the utopian level of marketing
664
00:44:44.369 –> 00:44:47.385
hype from the usual suspects technologists
665
00:44:47.845 –> 00:44:50.744
around what is now being called artificial intelligence.
666
00:44:51.924 –> 00:44:54.744
This book, Shop Class as Soulcraft,
667
00:44:55.684 –> 00:44:59.369
along with a couple of other books, including and I’ve already mentioned Seth Godin,
668
00:44:59.369 –> 00:45:02.750
but Seth Godin’s great book, Lynchpin, and Doug Wilson’s
669
00:45:02.890 –> 00:45:06.510
book, Productivity. These three books together
670
00:45:06.570 –> 00:45:09.470
represent an antidote to that marketing
671
00:45:09.930 –> 00:45:13.685
hype. Matter of fact, I would encourage you, if you’re
672
00:45:13.685 –> 00:45:17.205
listening to this as a leader and you have a student who’s getting ready to
673
00:45:17.205 –> 00:45:20.965
return to college for the spring semester or you have a
674
00:45:20.965 –> 00:45:24.680
senior in high school or even a junior who is wondering what to
675
00:45:24.680 –> 00:45:28.200
do with their lives and they’re not exactly excited about going to
676
00:45:28.200 –> 00:45:31.720
college, but they don’t have the skills or
677
00:45:31.720 –> 00:45:35.319
manual competency because you didn’t have those skills and you couldn’t give
678
00:45:35.319 –> 00:45:38.714
them to them, and no one in your
679
00:45:38.714 –> 00:45:42.555
family could either, I encourage you to get them those 3
680
00:45:42.555 –> 00:45:45.375
books. Shove them in their hands and
681
00:45:46.154 –> 00:45:49.755
then send them off to maybe trade school or maybe
682
00:45:49.755 –> 00:45:53.380
apprentice them to a plumber or an HVAC
683
00:45:53.380 –> 00:45:57.000
person or an auto mechanic in your local town.
684
00:45:57.940 –> 00:46:00.840
Don’t worry. They’ll make a good living.
685
00:46:02.740 –> 00:46:05.635
These three books are an antidote
686
00:46:06.175 –> 00:46:09.875
to that marketing hype. Such utopian
687
00:46:09.935 –> 00:46:13.555
hype, I worry, will only widen the chasm further
688
00:46:13.855 –> 00:46:17.555
between human thinking and human doing. And Crawford
689
00:46:17.615 –> 00:46:21.290
talks about the difference between those two things, and we’re gonna cover that
690
00:46:21.290 –> 00:46:24.910
later on as we explore this book more this year.
691
00:46:25.770 –> 00:46:27.870
We just did the first chapter here today.
692
00:46:30.010 –> 00:46:33.565
By the way, that chasm, the chasm between human thinking and human
693
00:46:33.565 –> 00:46:37.185
doing didn’t just open up during the 4th turning.
694
00:46:37.805 –> 00:46:40.945
It actually opened up at the end of the second
695
00:46:41.165 –> 00:46:43.665
turning in the United States
696
00:46:45.220 –> 00:46:48.760
and continued to open up during the 3rd turning unraveling
697
00:46:49.140 –> 00:46:52.660
in the 19 nineties when the Internet was turned
698
00:46:52.660 –> 00:46:56.420
on. And, of course, just like most things during a
699
00:46:56.420 –> 00:46:59.960
time of force turning chaos, that chasm has only grown
700
00:47:00.625 –> 00:47:04.305
as more and more white collar work even, not just blue collar
701
00:47:04.305 –> 00:47:07.665
work, but white collar work, has disappeared into the
702
00:47:07.665 –> 00:47:10.885
gaping maw of the computer algorithm.
703
00:47:12.869 –> 00:47:16.630
One of the things that people don’t understand is that the computer will eat your
704
00:47:16.630 –> 00:47:20.390
job if you allow the technologist to do
705
00:47:20.390 –> 00:47:24.069
that. As I said
706
00:47:24.069 –> 00:47:27.450
before, college students need to read this book.
707
00:47:29.405 –> 00:47:33.165
And, yeah, there’s been famous people who have banged the drum in
708
00:47:33.165 –> 00:47:36.705
the years between when Shop Class as Soulcraft
709
00:47:36.925 –> 00:47:39.425
was published back in 2009. And now,
710
00:47:40.605 –> 00:47:44.359
on the same things that Matthew Crawford was writing about back
711
00:47:44.359 –> 00:47:48.059
then, folks like Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs
712
00:47:48.440 –> 00:47:52.279
and other folks. Andy Frisella, I’m thinking
713
00:47:52.279 –> 00:47:56.039
of him as well, banging the drum and banging the drum and banging
714
00:47:56.039 –> 00:47:59.535
the drum. But the problem is the problem is
715
00:47:59.535 –> 00:48:03.215
that up until about the COVID crisis, too many people were still
716
00:48:03.215 –> 00:48:06.975
too invested in the system thinking that, of course, if we
717
00:48:06.975 –> 00:48:10.575
just throw more money at it, if we just throw more people at it, if
718
00:48:10.575 –> 00:48:14.420
we just throw smarter people at it, it’ll all
719
00:48:14.420 –> 00:48:17.319
work out in the end. By the way, that’s the conceit of scientific
720
00:48:17.940 –> 00:48:21.460
managerialism brought to you by Frederick Winslow
721
00:48:21.460 –> 00:48:25.220
Taylor, the guy who brought Henry Ford, the
722
00:48:25.220 –> 00:48:27.799
assembly line, and made it better.
723
00:48:35.454 –> 00:48:38.895
This year on the podcast, we are going to talk about solutions to
724
00:48:38.895 –> 00:48:42.175
problems in pragmatic ways. And I know I promised a lot of that last year,
725
00:48:42.175 –> 00:48:45.560
and we got to very few solutions, I feel, with many of our books that
726
00:48:45.560 –> 00:48:48.860
we covered. But this year, we really are gonna talk about pragmatic solutions.
727
00:48:49.320 –> 00:48:52.920
We really are going to talk about how to begin with the
728
00:48:52.920 –> 00:48:56.345
basics as we go into
729
00:48:56.405 –> 00:48:58.265
a cyclical spring.
730
00:49:00.085 –> 00:49:03.765
So let’s, let’s address
731
00:49:03.765 –> 00:49:04.265
that.
732
00:49:15.890 –> 00:49:19.650
So solutions to problems. Right? REM back in the day
733
00:49:19.650 –> 00:49:23.375
infamously said or sang in their great
734
00:49:23.375 –> 00:49:26.355
song, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
735
00:49:26.495 –> 00:49:30.275
Offer me solutions. Offer me alternatives. And, of course,
736
00:49:30.895 –> 00:49:34.655
as being avatars of generation x during that period of time
737
00:49:34.655 –> 00:49:38.039
in the nineties, they intoned, and I
738
00:49:38.039 –> 00:49:41.819
declined. Anyway, I am gonna offer solutions
739
00:49:42.039 –> 00:49:44.539
right now. I’m gonna offer some some ideas.
740
00:49:45.960 –> 00:49:49.480
And there are ideas that you could find in shop class’s Soulcraft by
741
00:49:49.480 –> 00:49:50.700
Matthew b Crawford.
742
00:49:55.494 –> 00:49:59.335
There are solutions, but we have to begin with the basics. And here’s
743
00:49:59.335 –> 00:50:02.934
some of the basics. We can’t return to manual
744
00:50:02.934 –> 00:50:06.329
competency without someone to train people in actual
745
00:50:06.329 –> 00:50:10.089
manual competency. By the way, the people who
746
00:50:10.089 –> 00:50:13.770
will train people in manual competency, the people who will train
747
00:50:13.770 –> 00:50:17.495
people in how to do that work and how to do the work that
748
00:50:17.495 –> 00:50:21.335
requires autonomy, agency, and competence well in a in a in
749
00:50:21.335 –> 00:50:24.935
a world that is real, where there are upper
750
00:50:24.935 –> 00:50:28.619
boundaries and limits to what can be achieved. The
751
00:50:28.619 –> 00:50:32.140
people who are going to teach that kind of
752
00:50:32.140 –> 00:50:35.660
work, the people who are going to insist that
753
00:50:35.660 –> 00:50:39.180
people take on that cognitive strain are
754
00:50:39.180 –> 00:50:42.895
probably not going to be, and this is part of the basics, they’re probably
755
00:50:42.895 –> 00:50:46.655
not going to be nice people. They’re
756
00:50:46.655 –> 00:50:50.415
probably not going to say the right words or put
757
00:50:50.415 –> 00:50:54.255
them in the right order. They’re probably not going to
758
00:50:54.255 –> 00:50:57.530
be people that are going to make the right jokes
759
00:50:58.630 –> 00:51:01.290
or or avoid inappropriate innuendos.
760
00:51:02.790 –> 00:51:06.470
They’re not going to talk the way that Hollywood writers writing for
761
00:51:06.470 –> 00:51:10.090
people on Twitter, who will give them claps, would
762
00:51:10.475 –> 00:51:13.215
write them as characters in movies.
763
00:51:14.795 –> 00:51:18.315
They’re going to speak roughly. They’re probably going to use
764
00:51:18.315 –> 00:51:21.455
slurs. They’re probably going to have
765
00:51:21.915 –> 00:51:25.695
retrograde attitudes towards minorities and women
766
00:51:26.500 –> 00:51:30.340
even if they are a minority and especially if they are
767
00:51:30.340 –> 00:51:33.160
a woman. They are probably
768
00:51:34.180 –> 00:51:37.160
not going to be nice people
769
00:51:38.184 –> 00:51:42.025
in terms of what we mean now in the world as nice, but they
770
00:51:42.025 –> 00:51:45.865
will be wise. So here’s one of
771
00:51:45.865 –> 00:51:48.664
the basics that we’re going to have to begin with, the kind of people that
772
00:51:48.664 –> 00:51:52.390
we’re looking for to teach these
773
00:51:52.609 –> 00:51:56.390
sort of skill sets, the people who will have acquired
774
00:51:56.609 –> 00:52:00.289
these sort of skill sets will be people who will
775
00:52:00.289 –> 00:52:03.990
be competent but not and wise but not nice.
776
00:52:05.115 –> 00:52:07.855
They will be hard, but not loving.
777
00:52:08.875 –> 00:52:12.555
At least not squishy, warm. You can get
778
00:52:12.555 –> 00:52:16.395
away with fuzz balls loving. They’re
779
00:52:16.395 –> 00:52:20.160
going to be hard. They’re going to be not nice. They’re going to
780
00:52:20.160 –> 00:52:24.000
be difficult to get along with. They’re probably
781
00:52:24.000 –> 00:52:27.599
going to be taciturn and not tell you or tell
782
00:52:27.599 –> 00:52:31.359
their students everything all at once. And they will probably be people
783
00:52:31.359 –> 00:52:34.720
who would rather show than tell because too many
784
00:52:34.720 –> 00:52:37.375
words can sometimes block
785
00:52:38.635 –> 00:52:40.255
out intuition.
786
00:52:42.395 –> 00:52:45.035
We have to begin with the basics. We have to begin with the kind of
787
00:52:45.035 –> 00:52:48.350
people we are looking for. Leaders,
788
00:52:48.650 –> 00:52:52.330
if you wanna be one of those kinds of folks, you’re gonna have to go
789
00:52:52.330 –> 00:52:56.030
and get information and competency and skill
790
00:52:56.170 –> 00:52:59.710
and spend time with the kinds of people
791
00:53:00.665 –> 00:53:04.345
who probably you wouldn’t pick
792
00:53:04.345 –> 00:53:07.724
to work with and you wouldn’t pick to lead.
793
00:53:10.744 –> 00:53:14.460
With the ruthless expansion of intellectual technology, building
794
00:53:14.460 –> 00:53:18.160
things in the real world with real people helps increase autonomy,
795
00:53:18.220 –> 00:53:21.900
agency, and competence way more than working
796
00:53:21.900 –> 00:53:25.280
in services or manipulating consumption
797
00:53:25.900 –> 00:53:29.465
through the exegesis of finance or through the
798
00:53:29.465 –> 00:53:32.365
mysticalness of marketing.
799
00:53:35.625 –> 00:53:39.305
The other thing that we’re going to have to understand is that the acquiring of
800
00:53:39.305 –> 00:53:42.839
manual competence requires us, all of us,
801
00:53:42.839 –> 00:53:46.680
myself included, to put down our narcissism, put down
802
00:53:46.680 –> 00:53:49.420
our overweening self regard
803
00:53:50.200 –> 00:53:53.740
because we can successfully manipulate an algorithm
804
00:53:53.880 –> 00:53:57.205
or we can get an LLM to do what it is we want it to
805
00:53:57.205 –> 00:54:00.645
do, or we can navigate Instagram really
806
00:54:00.645 –> 00:54:04.005
well. But this person who can hammer a nail, well, they
807
00:54:04.005 –> 00:54:07.685
can’t they can’t manipulate the Internet, so they must not
808
00:54:07.685 –> 00:54:08.185
exist.
809
00:54:11.460 –> 00:54:13.860
We’re going to have to put down our narcissism. We’re going to have to put
810
00:54:13.860 –> 00:54:17.700
down our overweening self regard. Narcissists tend
811
00:54:17.700 –> 00:54:20.600
to become uncomfortable in the presence of manual competence
812
00:54:21.140 –> 00:54:24.280
because their presence means that there’s actual friction
813
00:54:24.924 –> 00:54:28.444
in a place that a narcissist basically has
814
00:54:28.444 –> 00:54:32.144
no foothold in. The material world.
815
00:54:33.244 –> 00:54:36.704
A place where, as I said before, there are boundaries, there are barriers,
816
00:54:37.244 –> 00:54:38.385
and there are borders.
817
00:54:41.010 –> 00:54:44.690
At a basic level, leaders in organizations of
818
00:54:44.690 –> 00:54:48.210
all sizes, but let’s start with the small ones and then move into the medium
819
00:54:48.210 –> 00:54:52.050
sized ones because as you go to scale, this becomes infinitely harder. But
820
00:54:52.050 –> 00:54:55.365
leaders need to push back on the myth of a coming
821
00:54:55.585 –> 00:54:59.424
singularity. There is no and will
822
00:54:59.424 –> 00:55:02.884
never be a digital electronic or virtual eschatology
823
00:55:03.664 –> 00:55:07.270
that will be able to successfully compete against the
824
00:55:07.270 –> 00:55:11.030
brute reality of the facts of the material world.
825
00:55:11.030 –> 00:55:14.790
Let me be blunt. If
826
00:55:14.790 –> 00:55:18.490
you build your AI computing data banks
827
00:55:19.510 –> 00:55:22.330
on land next to
828
00:55:23.154 –> 00:55:26.994
a hurricane prone coast and a
829
00:55:26.994 –> 00:55:30.835
once every 20 year hurricane comes, it’s
830
00:55:30.835 –> 00:55:34.595
going to kill your
831
00:55:34.595 –> 00:55:38.180
server houses. And you’re going to
832
00:55:38.180 –> 00:55:41.859
have to find somebody to pour the concrete to
833
00:55:41.859 –> 00:55:45.460
rebuild them. And that person
834
00:55:45.460 –> 00:55:48.039
better be competent the first time.
835
00:55:51.714 –> 00:55:55.474
Leaders need to speak this out to their organizations, their networks, their
836
00:55:55.474 –> 00:55:59.315
families, and their communities. If they don’t, they’ll have
837
00:55:59.315 –> 00:56:03.015
no one to blame but themselves when competency
838
00:56:03.234 –> 00:56:07.000
and agency or as competency and agency continue to
839
00:56:07.000 –> 00:56:10.060
drain out of the world. By the way,
840
00:56:11.000 –> 00:56:14.440
the kinds of people that you’re looking to teach these sort of
841
00:56:14.440 –> 00:56:17.820
basics in the useful arts to the young,
842
00:56:18.119 –> 00:56:21.425
the unwise, and even the incompetent.
843
00:56:22.525 –> 00:56:25.665
The kinds of people you are looking for are people who are serious.
844
00:56:27.005 –> 00:56:30.145
Maybe not necessarily intellectually serious,
845
00:56:31.005 –> 00:56:34.650
but they are intuitively serious. They
846
00:56:34.650 –> 00:56:38.430
know a valuable idea when they hear 1,
847
00:56:39.049 –> 00:56:42.730
and they know what is not valuable when
848
00:56:42.730 –> 00:56:46.170
they hear it too. By the way, they have a not nice
849
00:56:46.170 –> 00:56:48.589
word for things that are not valuable.
850
00:56:51.505 –> 00:56:54.645
It is time to lay the cornerstone of a new world
851
00:56:55.505 –> 00:56:58.565
right around the corner that will look geopolitically,
852
00:56:59.265 –> 00:57:02.705
and this is at scale now, like the world before World War
853
00:57:02.705 –> 00:57:06.240
1, economically, like a return to
854
00:57:06.240 –> 00:57:09.940
real gold backed material currency.
855
00:57:10.720 –> 00:57:14.420
And psychologically, this new world will look like a return
856
00:57:15.040 –> 00:57:18.485
to a humble acknowledgment of the
857
00:57:18.485 –> 00:57:21.945
practical limits of hard material reality.
858
00:57:23.125 –> 00:57:26.585
What you can do and what you actually can’t do.
859
00:57:27.765 –> 00:57:30.905
And saying no to what you can’t do
860
00:57:31.480 –> 00:57:35.060
while fully exploring what you can
861
00:57:35.500 –> 00:57:39.160
do. But in order to do all this,
862
00:57:39.160 –> 00:57:42.860
we have to continue to explore pragmatically
863
00:57:43.960 –> 00:57:47.605
and understand pragmatically where to
864
00:57:47.605 –> 00:57:50.585
go ahead from here.
865
00:57:53.525 –> 00:57:57.285
And, well, that’s
866
00:57:57.285 –> 00:58:01.060
it for me. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Lessons from the
867
00:58:01.060 –> 00:58:04.660
Great Books podcast today. And now that you’ve made it
868
00:58:04.660 –> 00:58:08.500
this far, you should subscribe to the audio version of this show
869
00:58:08.500 –> 00:58:12.040
on all the major podcast players, including Apple Itunes,
870
00:58:12.260 –> 00:58:16.065
Spotify, YouTube Music, and everywhere else where podcasts
871
00:58:16.285 –> 00:58:19.965
are available. There’s also a video version of
872
00:58:19.965 –> 00:58:23.805
our podcast on our YouTube channel. Like and subscribe to the
873
00:58:23.805 –> 00:58:27.245
video version of this podcast on the Leadership Toolbox channel on
874
00:58:27.245 –> 00:58:30.619
YouTube. Just search for Leadership Toolbox and hit the
875
00:58:30.619 –> 00:58:34.380
subscribe button there on YouTube. And, while you’re doing
876
00:58:34.380 –> 00:58:37.819
that, leave a 5 star review if you like what we’re doing
877
00:58:37.819 –> 00:58:41.055
here on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
878
00:58:41.435 –> 00:58:45.195
Just go below the player and hit 5 stars. We need
879
00:58:45.195 –> 00:58:48.555
those reviews to grow and it’s the easiest way to help grow this
880
00:58:48.555 –> 00:58:52.075
show and tell all your friends, of course, in
881
00:58:52.075 –> 00:58:55.790
leadership. By the way, if you don’t like what we’re doing here,
882
00:58:55.790 –> 00:58:59.330
well, you can always listen to another leadership show. There are several
883
00:58:59.550 –> 00:59:03.327
other good ones out there. At least that’s what
884
00:59:03.327 –> 00:59:06.627
I’ve heard. Alright. Well,
885
00:59:07.246 –> 00:59:08.546
that’s it for me.