Reddit reviews The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

Very Ivan Illichy, and perhaps someone can tell us/remind us what Illich saw as a way forward.

Kevin Kelly, cited in the Amish technology article, also had a chapter called 'The Unabomber was Right.' Cal Newport, whose article I posted, was more optimistic...he thought we could each take the Amish approach, but with our own values instead if those wacky Amish ones ( I think that's a little too individualistic).

I want to look at what is right about the Kelly/Unabomber perspective, then, what's missing.

What's right: if you frame things in terms of technological determinism v. Individual free will, then free will is dead in the water.

What's missing? First, there are specific actors at work here. Facebook is a huge culprit here. God how they lie and manipulate to insinuate themselves, capitalise on the network effects the above article talks about.

I recently read a great book The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford. One chapter describes how Casino operators justify their existence in terms of patrons' 'free choice' - yet systematically set out to erode said freedom of choice. The vision of punters sitting slack-jawed, pissed-pants, toothpick in the machine so it plays automatically, watching their balance until it runs to zero....it 's dystopian, but it's by design. Executives sit around and think about how to get people to 'play to extinction' this way. And Facebook are the same. The arseholes.

Crawford advocates taking 'free will' out of the debate, and I'd agree. Newport's 'personal values' won't save us, but I think such thing as a community of resistance is possible - you need to have others to connect with to create a kind of reverse network effect. That's why I read Newport, to hear about those people and businesses who are breaking out of the cycle.

There's a neat chapter in WBYH about a business involved in refurbishing and making authentic church organs....and their whole ethic is geared towards, 'what's this going to be like for the folks who come to refurbish this again in 400 years' time'. That's h a great community with an interesting hi-tech/lo-tech combo in the service of collective values...perhaps a better example than Amish. https://www.amazon.com/World-Beyond-Your-Head-Distraction/dp/0374535914

> The World Beyond Your Head

Thanks for the recommendation! Just checked it out and it seems very intriguing (from what I've scoped out based on the description and reviews).

Before I begin, let me say this: in asking this question at your age, you are several spots away from the bottom of the totem pole.

This is not to say "oh don't worry about out, you're still young." You need to be serious about becoming competent, but very few people are competent at anything meaningful at your age, and very, very few fields require that you be already competent by age 19 (most of the fields that do require this are things like sports or music, which are so competitive that you basically have to grow up with it). So you're not behind. I think the above comments have been useful, but incomplete. Yes, your mentality is of the upmost importance here, but you do need things to do. Especially if you have interest in trades.

I'll tell you a little bit about myself. When I was 19, I was finishing a degree in automotive technology. I was working as an entry level technician and a cook, and I had plans to attend the University of Northwestern Ohio for a Bachelors in High-Performance Motorsports, which would have put me among the most elite technicians in the country, where I would have been able to get into just about any kind of motorsports I wanted.

Now I'm 23. I have a Bachelors, but not from UNOH. I completely switched fields. When I was 20, I found myself drawn toward Philosophy and Literature, and so I completely dropped motorsports as a career path. I'd spent 2 years getting my associates, I'd spent tons of money on tools, I'd studied to pass ASE certifications test, but I dropped it all, went back to school and got my Bachelors with a double major in English and Philosophy. I'm now working for a while, and I'll be going back to graduate school next year to get my PhD. I'll probably be 27-28 years old before I have real, meaningful competency. This time frame has been a real challenge, since I'm impatient, and don't want to waste my 20's. Here's how I handle it: I love what I'm doing in the academic world (I'm starting a podcast soon just because I can't get enough of philosophy), and so hypothetically, I would be okay with doing it even if it never paid off financially (and it's a humanities PhD, so that's not unlikely).

Your goal, at least for the next couple of years, should be to figure out what you either already love, or what you are likely to come to love if you tried it. Very, very, very few people do this, and so they end up being moderately competent in something that they don't hate, and require all kinds of other things to make their life meaningful. Let me emphasize that this is absolutely, not a bad thing, and if you really think that creative pursuits are your thing, you may want to find an additional career to pay for your creative work.

In any case, you can almost certainly find things that you love without college (though you may need it once you get started). In fact, college often gives a distorted view of what the field is really like. Take psychology, for example. The world of acutally practicing psychologists is radically different than psych-academia, and if you used college classes with postmodern profs to gauge whether you'd like psychology, you might falsely assume that your practice will consist of talking to transgendered sexually abused black handicapped gay attack helicopters rather than the real client base. If you find you want to be an academic, then...sorry fo ya.

What I would do is expose yourself to as much as possible. Try something as simple as youtube. If, for example, you find that you like watching youtube videos of motorcycles, maybe you should try going to a race or a bike show, or reading a book about it. Keep in mind though, that it takes real engagement (more than just youtube) to see if it's something you could learn to love.

Notice I said "learn to love." The reason for this is that its perfectly likely that you won't absolutely love anything. Most people are like that. It's maybe 1/1000 people that naturally know instantly that they love something that they end up doing for the rest of their lives. Let's go back to motorcycles. Maybe you know nothing about them, but you know that you're analytical, so you might like diagnosing them, and you have an adrenaline-junkie streak, so you might like riding them, but right now you know so little about them that you don't really feel any particular way toward them. You need to have the self-awareness to know what kinds of things you might like. If you're analytical but don't have the adrenaline junkie in you, then maybe you need to try being a boat mechanic, because of how much you've enjoyed time on the river, and the people you've met who are also into boats.

One last thing. You may have noticed that I have a soft spot for mechanical things. I noticed that you said you may be interested in the trades. If what I've been saying resonates with you, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend reading at least one of the following books by Matthew Crawford: either Shop Class as Soulcraft or The World Beyond Your Head. They're truly unconventional ways of thinking, and unlike what your high school counselor or typical self-help are likely to teach you.

>so hedonism?


No, hedonism is all about thrill-seeking, ephemeral pleasures...

It's more about the "journey being the reward"...
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Which isn't JUST about travel but also applies to the joys of designing, building & making things (everything from meals to skyscrapers).

To wit: a passage from Tolkien's Silmarillion:

>"...but the delight and pride of Aulë [*] is in the deed of making, and in the thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work."

[*] "Aulë" is the "blacksmith/maker/craftsman" (a minor "god" - Valar/powerful angelic being in Tolkien's mythological pantheon)

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If you have trouble comprehending that side of things -- which alas far too many young men do these days (never having really been given even the opportunity to "make" much of anything) -- then there are a couple recent books you might read by guys who had a similar problem, and found their way through it, like "Shop Class as Soul Craft" or the same author's more recent (2015?) follow-up book "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction"...

I mean there are plenty of other books (as well as even more non-book "paths") to finding & figuring out some OTHER fulfilling joys and purposes in life... I suggest those two because they're decent works on the subject, and written by a guy who has fairly recently faced the same kind of "malaise" that many other young guys are -- plus the dude QUIT being an academic to become a motorcycle mechanic.

Not saying he's some "uber guru" -- just that reading his works MIGHT help you to figure out your own path.