April 14, 2010
- Quotes from Ann Seeker’s Blog -
“Whatever I perceive assists in revealing a secret identity for which my ordinary identity is a sign….Since I attend to perception as a witness, it can be said that I am attendant to my own birthing.” – David Appelbaum
“We think we live in subject-object orientation, but do we? If we watch our attention we are all object; that is, our attention is completely identified with the object. Or we are all subject, completely identified, indwelling, full of self-concern. But because you are now being introduced to the idea and practice of having a double attention – having a recognition of both the subject and object simultaneously – it was suddenly realized how swallowed up you were.” – William Patrick Patterson
from Ann’s post here.
This is the idea I was trying to work through with my earlier post.
‘The moral significance of work that grapples with material things may lie in the simple fact that such things lie outside the self. A washing machine, for example, surely exists to serve our needs, but in contending with one that is broken, you have to ask what /it/ needs. At such a moment, technology is no longer a means by which our mastery of the world is extended, but an affront to our usual self-absorbtion. Constantly seeking self-affirmation, the narcissist views everything as an extension of his will, and therefore has only a tenuous grasp on the world of objects as something independent. He is prone to magical thinking and delusions of omnipotence. A repairman, on the other hand, puts himself in the service of others, and fixes the things they depend on. His relationship to objects enacts a more solid sort of command, based on real understanding. For this very reason, his work also chastens the easy fantasy of mastery that permeates modern culture. The repairman has to begin each job by getting outside his own head and noticing things; he has to look carefully and listen to the ailing machine.’
Matthew B. Crawford, ‘Shop Class as Soulcraft’, Penguin 2009, p. 16.
Comment by speedbird — April 16, 2010 @ 12:40 pm
That is profoundly deep. I had to read it three or four times and I still don’t think its sunk in completely. Thanks for sharing.
Looks like the book is sort of a “Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” that stays well clear of the rabbit hole, so to speak.
On a related note, and article (that I admittedly have yet to read all the way through) on how that whole “narcissist views everything as an extension of his will” thing starts in the first place:
Your Computer Really Is a Part of You
Comment by Ian — April 16, 2010 @ 2:14 pm
>> I had to read it three or four times and I still don’t think its sunk in completely.
Me too! That’s why I just typed it in without any comment of my own.
I have this hunch that if I could get this to gel with the things McLuhan said I’d really be getting somewhere.
The whole book’s pretty good. I mean, heck, that’s page 16. ;D
Comment by speedbird — April 16, 2010 @ 4:52 pm
Yeah! That’s a good point about McLuhan. I guess, in order to be a repairman, you have to be able to voluntarily take your consciousness out of its symbiosis with a media, and look at it as a simple object once again. In the view of the passage above, only the narcissist is affected by media as McLuhan claims we all are, though in practice, I’m sure its not as cut and dry as either position seems.
What I find interesting is considering what our consciousness must be, if we can exists in both a narcissist state and a repairman state…?
Comment by Ian — April 21, 2010 @ 10:29 am