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On Beautiful Things.

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I recently finished reading the book The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew B. Crawford. I was decompressing in a Barnes & Noble (as one does) & just earlier in the day I was talking with my fiancé about wanting to get out of my head. It felt almost serendipitous when the stark white cover caught my eye in a sea of the various reprints of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

I had just gone through the worst month of my life (so far!) & was 3 days into a self-imposed social media exile. So this trip to Barnes & Noble was a distraction from the mind-numbing boredom I now found myself in. At least reading this book could be a productive distraction, right?

Well, 257 pages & 19 sticky notes later, I can definitely say it was a productive, but boy was I wrong about it being a distraction. I went into Beyond Your Head expecting a self help book standing on top of a wellness book wearing a philosophy trench coat. What I got were philosophical arguments critiquing the Enlightenment period & its unintended consequences on western American society & culture.

But there also were, of course, some helpful tips on paying attention.

And Isn’t It Ironic

Crawford talks about Immanuel Kant’s belief of freedom, or as Kant calls it, “autonomous action” done by “rational beings” who abide by a universal “moral law”. If trying to decipher philosophical terminology isn’t your thing (imagine trying to do this without Wikipedia), Kant basically says that true freedom is when everyday people are free to choose to do anything they like, abiding to principles of reason & logic, not emotion (keep that in your pocket for later). This, to Kant, is the foundation of moral responsibility. This is the most responsible person. This is the most “good” person. This is the ideal.

I’m going to rest of the fucking owl this & just tell you that Immanuel Kant (& the Enlightenment period at large) has had a profound influence on American society. I mean, Christ, the Enlightenment Period basically caused the Revolutionary War & the French Revolution. Here we are, struggling under the divine rule of a monarch, someone appointed to their position by the will of God. Here comes the Enlightenment Period preaching all about individual responsibility, freedom, ruled by the people themselves, the social contract.

Kant’s definition of a rational being, one who makes decision using rational thinking (logic & reasoning), requires one to expunge all emotional reasoning. All attachment to ourselves, to others, to our environment (I mean environment more as in the people, places, & things we interact with not, like, the climate or the oceans). To become, in my own definition, a selfish being, not a rational being.

As Crawford put it best:

Whether you regard it as infantile or as the highest achievement of the European mind, what we find in Kant are the philosophical roots of our modern identification of freedom with choice, where choice is understood as a pure flashing forth of the unconditioned will. This is important for understanding our culture because thus understood, choice serves as the central totem of consumer capitalism, and those who present choices to us appear as handmaidens to our own freedom.

Maybe I’ll get into this in more depth at a later time because I’m not in the mood to raise my blood pressure ranting about the absolute failure of the concept of a “social contract” in today’s day & age & the idiocy to think that a lack of emotion is what makes a person “good”. (1) I can’t discredit everything Kant has said because much of his philosophy & beliefs were applicable for his time. I’ve found that researching our culture & society’s history through a holistic lens is an eye-opening & profound experience. Nothing ever happens in a vacuum, & it’s interesting to see how Enlightenment philosophers like Kant, Rousseau, Locke, & Montesquieu’s arguments on logic, ethics, & reasoning were heavily influenced by Aristotle, Cicero, & Plato’s arguments on those same topics.

Just know this, America is the way it is because some rich guy from 2,500 years ago thought the world should be ran by philosopher-kings. I’m pretty sure that world qualifies as a new 10th circle of Hell, someone should tell Dante Ahligieri.

Let’s Get Physical

Beautiful things. That’s something that Crawford mentions a couple times in his book. At first, I had a difficult time understanding how something beautiful like my baby boy (2) could help me pay attention. Over time I came to find out that Crawford’s idea of beautiful things is a big more esoteric than that.

To Crawford, a beautiful thing is something you lose yourself in. A skilled practice (like organ making or hockey as Crawford presented) requires us to deeply engage our attention with it, a hockey player isn’t going to do well if they’re paying attention to the fans waving signs, for example). This grounds us firmly in reality, requiring us to engage with the physical world, as apposed to these new digital worlds we inhabit. Think of it this way, you know how when you’re driving you can “feel” the road through the steering wheel & the pedals? How you just kind of know where the corners & bumpers of the car are when you’re parking? It’s like that but on a whole other level. Hockey players mention how when they’re in the zone during a game, their body isn’t thinking about striking the puck, or where the hockey stick’s blade is positioned on the ice. Their not calculating the position of the blade, the speed of the puck, the angles needed to hit the puck in the desired direction, the calculation of where are your teammates located, the force necessary to strike it to them without blasting it right past them. At that moment, the hockey stick is a part of them, just like their arms & legs. Crawford calls it, the erotics of attention.

This deep focus, losing yourself in something meaningful outside of ourselves, is intimate, pleasurable, nearly erotic to those within it. Much in the same way that something like sex between lovers forces us to focus on just the other party. We lose our sense of selves in the act, we communicate without speaking, relying on body language, previous understandings what they will or won’t do. When you put it this way, the chefs at most restaurants you eat at are probably gettin’ mentally freaky in the food prep station without even knowing it. In a larger restaurant you’ll have 7 to 10 chefs, sous chefs, line cooks, prep cooks, & more performing a dance routine every night in the back of house. Not to mention the 10-15 servers & hosts on the floor. A server carrying $120 worth of food dodging & weaving as the line cook twirls between the grill & the prep station. Behind! The trust fall as that server walks backwards through the swing doors to the busy restaurant floor. Door! The silent communication as your server knows these particular cooks intimately enough to know how long it will take them to finish your dish. In this space, you do not exist to that server. They’re too busy mentally ménage à vingt-ing with the back of house staff, (3) & that’s going to be the best food you’ve had all year.

I understand why Crawford called it the erotics of attention.

‘Cause We Are Living in a Material World

There’s much to say about how our recently rapid shift to a more digital life post-COVID has broken something deep within us. I’ll be adding that to my list of topics to discuss later. If I haven’t said it before, I highly recommend Crawford’s book to everyone. Frankly I believe it should be required reading to be an adult. Are there discussions to be had about his view towards immigrant labor & the autistic community? Absolutely, & I might cover that later. (4) But if you’re someone who can look beyond his biases & analyze his more well-researched arguments, it’s very informative & eye-opening in many more ways than I was expecting.

One thing I will say about this rapid shift, this book has pushed me to come back to the real world, in more ways than just getting off of traditional social media. I’m someone who always has some project going on that I can talk to you about. Making a podcast about food. (5) Trying to make a video game (or at least a Notion page about the video game). Drawing (characters in the game). Trying to build a business with an app I made using Glide when I worked in real estate. To watching a 4 hour long critique of Pokemon Sword & Shield, a game I don’t even care about. (6) One thing about all of these projects is that they’re very digital. There’s very little impact these things have on the real world, on my environment. I can’t feel the progression with these projects, I guess that’s the best way I can put it into writing right now.

One project I did for about 6 months when I was in my mid 20’s was making bowties. Looking back on it now with the wisdom of the years is that it was probably one my the most fulfilling projects I ever did. Granted the fabrics were whatever I could find on sale, or steal, from Hobby Lobby (hey, if they can smuggle stolen ancient artifacts from Iraq for a bible museum, a square yard of fabric is fair game in my opinion), using a (mildly) broken $70 sewing machine, & I used a hot pot of water & a towel as a makeshift iron to get out creases because I didn’t own one. (7) But, I felt fulfilled every time I finished a new bowtie. I knew that the problems & issues I were facing were because of the physical limitations of the cheap fabric, my broken tools, & my growing skills in sewing.

I may not have explained well enough Crawford’s arguments about achieving individuality. I also completely skipped over his dissection of the concept of individuality from the philosophy of individualism. But this excerpt from his summary near the end of his book best sums up everything I’ve said so far.

We discovered that individual_ism_, as a doctrine about how we acquire knowledge, arose in a certain political context, that of the Enlightenment, with a polemical intent to liberate us from authority. But the radical self-responsibility that the enlighteners offered as the basis for knowledge seemed to be incompatible with what we had learned about the social nature of knowledge. Therefore we had to ask, is it possible to understand individuality differently? To place it on a different footing from individualism? With the help of [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel, I suggested that it is by bumping up against other people, in conflict and cooperation, that we acquire a sharpened picture of the world and of ourselves, and can begin to achieve an earned independence of judgement.

What A Wonderful World

So, I’ve decided for a change of pace in this period of my life. To do away with as much of the representations, as Crawford puts it, that have been a primary factor in most of my projects. We’re going analogue baby. No more trying to cram all of my thoughts into Instagram’s 2,200 character limit (this blog is 11,006 as of the closing parentheses at the end of this sentence, I checked!) No more paying for a third digital journal. No more burying myself into my computer to work on a project that I know I won’t feel satisfaction from, just to feel the rush of deep focus.

I’ve been keeping a physical notebook for the past two weeks, I practically bring it with me everywhere. It’s called a “Traveler’s Notebook” or a “Midori Notebook” after being created & popularized by the Japanese brand Travelers Company (previous a part of Midori, a stationary brand). Although the specific one I bought is from Paper Republic, specifically the grand voyager XL in olive. This type of notebook is characterized by a leather cover that has the flesh exposed on the inside, with elastics running along the center, & another elastic in the center of the notebook to hold it closed.

It’s an okay design, I understand the desire for simplicity, & it does give it the distinctive “Traveler’s Notebook” aesthetic that is what attracts people to this notebook system. (9) But there is so much room for improvement with this design that can still maintain the distinctive characteristics of a traveler’s notebook.

So when I found out that a whole half hide of the leather that Paper Republic used is available for only $40 more than I bought the damn thing for, I’m going to make my own leather journal. With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the journal! jk.

I already have some ideas written down in my notebook, like cutting the leather a bit longer so there’s more leather to make a spine for the notebook. As well as sewing an additional layer of leather in that spine to provide more reinforcement. Adding grommets to the holes the elastics run through for more stability. Really, I want to make a journal that I could pass down to my nieces & nephews, with proper care of course. This is mainly due to my notebook (with two book inserts, four regular notebook inserts, a card holder insert, & a little bag insert) being too bulky for the leather to protect the edges of the notebooks, & the lack of a proper spine causes issues with misalignment & books being squeezed or pushed up, poking out of the side more. I also just foresee issues with the leather tearing or wearing quickly with how tight the elastics are pulling on it.

A part of me was hoping to work on the project in a more physical sense this weekend (I wanted to take a trip to a leather store about 45 minutes away from me to buy materials), but thankfully I was too busy this weekend to do any of that. I want to sit with this project some more & prototype with way cheaper materials first, & really go through any other modifications I’d want to make. So I can calculate materials, tools, & cost for all of this.

I have a trip coming up in the last week of July, so I’m going to use that as my transition point. Before then, this project is going to be something I just sit & work on without commitment. Explore it. Nurture it. See what happens. I don’t need to go into this project with big dreams of a traveler’s notebook business with a robust insert & accessory business. After the trip, we’ll see how I feel about it.

The last line of Crawford’s book is:

Only beautiful things lead us out to join the world beyond our heads.

This is just me wanting to make a beautiful thing.

To new adventures,

Keoni

Footnotes

1. This is one thing I’ve been learning more & more lately as I’ve gotten older, there are no “good” or “bad” people. Childish, I know, but this is my first time alive, cut me some slack.
2. Baby boy in question.
3. “Vingt” is French for 20. Also, I thought “ménage à trois just meant threesome. It’s actually a term for when someone in a committed relationship has a second lover & they all three agree to a domestic sexual relationship together. Did the French invent polycules?
4. Goddamn it that’s like three new things on my to-do list.
5. IDK why all my Season 1 episodes are gone. I still have the files on my hard drive somewhere so I might re-upload them later. Damn it, now that’s four things on my to-do list.
6. Okay this isn’t a project but I’d actually highly recommend you watch some of RadicalSoda’s videos if you have some time to burn. Or just like having something playing in the background while you work.
7. Listen I didn’t know how to cook back then & I was in my 20’s so all my money went to UberEats & vodka Red Bulls. (8)
8. Read footnote 1, sentence 2.
9. Yes, it’s a whole system with a pretty robust accessory industry built around it on Etsy. Surprised me too.