Deus Misereatur

The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction Matthew B. Crawford Farrar, Straus and Giroux http://us.macmillan.com/fsg ISBN: 9780374535919; $ 15.00; 04/05/2016 5 Stars out of 5: Artful and Astute I have tried for years to fathom where we are in our present-day location. As I look beyond the geopolitical commotions to the normal, day-in-and-day-out state of affairs, I find it alarming how easily distracted we’ve become, and the ways disruption has taken over our mental, visual, and audio space. Why is that, how did we get here, and is there a viable way forward? Matthew Crawford, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, fabricator of components for custom motorcycles and established author, addresses all of this and more in his recently published 320 page paperback, “The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.” The overall theme of “The Worl...

"Those who belong to a certain order of society - people who make big decisions that affect all of us - don't seem to have much sense of their own fallibility. Being unacquainted with failure, the kind that can't be interpreted away, may have something to do with the lack of caution that business and political leaders often display in the actions they undertake on behalf of other people" (203-4). Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford My rating: 4 of 5 stars There I was in South Florida, working on the air frame of fighter jets and the internal bulkhead of an H-3 helicopter. My nicotined hands were cut and calloused, my steel-toed boots sliced, my uniform often sweat-soaked and spotted with carbon. But the work was rich and refreshing. The high point came when my then 5 year old daughter asked me, "Daddy, what do you do?" Just at that moment an F-4 launched from the flight line, roaring it's way gloriously...