[Reflection] #31: Ode to Craftsmanship and Intuition
Recently, I read a magazine that explained why so many people are drawn to craftsmanship.
“[the world of work] has deprived us of our ability to thrive and has trampled on our “visceral need for recognition” that Hegel talks about. For what characterizes human nature is to seek to express our unique abilities, and for these to be recognized. We then experience a feeling of dignity and self-esteem. […] The world of work only ends up responding to imperatives that are beyond us, and only ensures survival logic, depriving human activity of all meaning possible”. Whereas “craftsmanship, on the other hand, relies on know-how. Those capable of bringing out the best in ourselves in the exercise of our activity. We feel even more satisfaction because we master the production process, feeling fully actors of our actions“.
Revue Limite, no. 25, Series: The Song of the Craftsmen, January 2022, 07/01/2022
This echoes the ideas of William Morris that I summarized here (or you can discover them in this YouTube video).
Following is an article so well written and explained that I cannot paraphrase it. I’ll just let you read it. It mentions the book Eloge du carburateur (Amazon link) which I can’t wait to read.
Like all other technologies, AI has become a black box… displaying messages without letting us see the inner workings. That’s why those who succeed are those who know how to “hack” AI and use it innovatively because they understand the “code”, the source. Before, the Universe was also in open source, but over time, we lost the keys to decode it and can no longer understand it; it has become as magical and closed as AI. Only people like sages, shamans still communicate with it through rituals or meditation.
Whatever the profession, being competent requires having a sixth sense, an intuition… you access it through a gift, or a state of flow obtained through craftsmanship. Among doctors, the best are those who make the right diagnosis, and that requires a lot of intuition, I’d even say a gift. That’s why many good doctors are born into families of doctors, because this gift is passed down. In Vietnamese, there is an expression for this talent in a doctor, “mát tay”. I know Bourdieu wouldn’t have agreed with me; he would have called it “social reproduction”. In a world of specialists, doctors also specialize, and forget to treat the body holistically. A doctor with a “gift” will see symptoms at point A but know the origin comes from point B. When I go to see my healer in Vietnam, she always massages far from the area where I’m in pain, and when she reaches the painful spot, I no longer feel pain because she has treated the source. When you choose your practitioners, opt for someone with a gift, and when you hire someone, choose a person with luck.
