The World Beyond Your Head

I cannot emphasis how much I loved this book. The book opened my mind to some of the deepest issues and problems in modern society and completely changed the way that I think about identity and the self. Crawford, known for his first book "Shopclass as Soulcraft" uses the modern inability to give attention as the jumping off point to explore identity formation. Very briefly, Crawford argues that one of the inheritances we have from the Enlightenment (largely thanks to Kant) is that we think of our identities as formed entirely by mental processes. This fallacy leads us down many dark roads. The main philosophical argument can be summed up as the following (only articulated in the middle of the book):

- We are encouraged to free ourselves from all authorities, including the authority of others;
- This leads us to emphasize radical self-responsibility (as a matter of politics and epistemology);
- We can only do this by locating the source of truth from our external world to our inner world - by constructing representations of life;
- To accomplish this, we must demote attention as a value as it takes us outside of the mental realm which is the center of all authority.

Once you understand it, you begin to see the web that binds us to these means of identity formation. The way out is to conceive of identity formation as a relationship between us, our environments, and the people around us. And it involves a dynamic relationship between our own creative powers and the tradition we receive.

This book wanders far from its title, sampling politics, Kant, compulsive gambling, and pipe organ restoration. It is written to a college reading level, when the average adult american is closer to a 9th grader - and this hides what few good points the author does have. An excellent review of this book referred to it as "argument salad". Not recommended.

The introduction and much of the first part connect to the topic of attention, and there are some interesting observations. The desire for an "attentional commons", or rather the right to not be bombarded by advertising, is a good one, but not novel. He also notices the economic differences here - the quiet airport lounge for the high spending traveler, compared to the noisy (and ad-filled) common lounge. At one time, people worried that billboards would fill America and block out the view; now they are vanishing daily - because other forms of advertising are more effective.

The discussion of how a line cook can focus without distraction is also pretty good, but here is where the author drags in politics (left-wing dismantling of cultural jigs?), virtue, and economics, and eventually ends up in college-level philosophy (primarily Kant). The wandering (and the occasional conspiracy theory) continues through the rest of the book.

I heard good things about his first book, [b:Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work|6261332|Shop Class as Soulcraft An Inquiry Into the Value of Work|Matthew B. Crawford|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442839731l/6261332.SY75.jpg|6444549], but this just feels like a pessimistic collection of rants and miscellany. A generous 1¼ stars (out of five).