Toward a Coherent Life

What, exactly, would a coherent life look like? How can we make all the parts of a life add up to something that hangs together and seems logically connected? And how can we earn a decent living, all at the same time? Matthew B. Crawford takes an interesting stab at questions like these in Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work.

Crawford teases his reader with only the barest of glimpses into his own life, but it seems as though it went something like this: Grew up with mom and sis on a California commune, did not attend high school (which may explain his later success), took his undergrad in physics (just like his dad), earned a master's degree in philosophy (unlike his dad), then terminated with a doctorate in the philosophy of politics; worked for an information services firm, ran a thinktank, and now makes his living as a motorcycle mechanic, the only job he's ever really enjoyed. "[F]ixing bikes is more meaningful," he writes, "because not only the fixing but also the riding of motorcycles answers to certain intuitions I have about human excellence" (196).

Here we see the concrete supporting the abstract--a competent wrench supporting grace on wheels and the need for speed. Contrast this with his previous positions, first as a writer of abstracts for an academic database of journal articles (most of which he could not understand and was not given enough time to even try to understand), then as the director of a thinktank whose mission it was to make arguments against the case for global warming appear to be scholarly. There's simply no room for that kind of bullshit in motorcycle maintenance--either the power and handling are there, or they're not.

My point, finally, isn't to recommend motorcycling in particular, nor to idealize the life of a mechanic. It is rather to suggest that if we follow the traces of our own actions to their source, they intimate some understanding of the good life. This understanding may be hard to articulate; bringing it more fully into view is the task of moral inquiry. Such inquiry may be helped along by practical activities in company with others, a sort of conversation in deed. In this conversation lies the potential of work to bring some measure of coherence to our lives. (197)

I would suggest that this conversation in deed is one conversation in which we all should engage. And I would recommend letting Matthew B. Crawford lead the discussion.