Shop Class as Soulcraft_ An Inquiry Into the Value of Work - Matthew B. Crawford [22]
It’s true, some people fail to turn off a manual faucet. With its blanket presumption of irresponsibility, the infrared faucet doesn’t merely respond to this fact, it installs it, giving it the status of normalcy. There is a kind of infantilization at work, and it offends the spirited personality.
To maintain decorum, the angry bathroom user does one of two things. He may seethe silently, succumbing to that self-division between inner and outer that is the mark of the defeated. In that case, the ratchet of his self-respect makes one more click in the wrong direction. Alternatively, he makes an effort to reevaluate his own response as unreasonable.1 In either case, he is called upon to do a certain emotional work on himself. Often the murky fog of prescriptions that gets conveyed implicitly in our material culture would have us interpret as somehow more rational a state of being manually disengaged. More rational because more free.
There seems to be an ideology of freedom at the heart of consumerist material culture; a promise to disburden us of mental and bodily involvement with our own stuff so we can pursue ends we have freely chosen. Yet this disburdening gives us fewer occasions for the experience of direct responsibility. I believe the appeal of freedomism, as a marketing hook, is due to the fact it nonetheless captures something true. It points to a paradox in our experience of agency: to be master of your own stuff entails also being mastered by it.
The Motorcycle as Mule
Riding an early motorcycle entailed a certain preparation that went like this: Set the throttle at a very small opening (there would likely be no spring returning the throttle to idle position), set the choke at a position judged the appropriate one for the ambient temperature, and retard the spark timing manually by several degrees. Then approach the kick-starter with due apprehension, bracing yourself for yet another blow to your chronically bruised shin. The thing about kick-starters is, they tend to kick back. This is especially likely if you don’t retard the timing far enough, as then the motor backfires mechanically, as it were, through the kick-starter, sending your shin to its fated meeting with the foot peg. With the bike balanced on the center stand, and you on one foot, use your whole weight on the kick-starter to ease the motor slowly through its power stroke and well into its exhaust stroke, judged by listening for air escaping from the open exhaust valve. Having positioned the piston at the start of its intake stroke, you are ready to kick-start the bike. But first check to make sure there are no attractive women present to witness your display, nor any of your rivals, for it is likely to be a drama of strenuous impotence.
Before taking that first kick, it is traditional to light a cigarette and set it dangling at an angle that suggests nonchalance. While you’re at it, send up a little prayer for fuel atomization. You wouldn’t be riding a motorcycle if you weren’t an optimist.
Ten or twelve kicks later, sweat dripping from your brow, you might get to ride the motorcycle. A quickening wind against your hot, flushed face is the reward for your labors. Sweeter still, the rush of acceleration carries you away from the scene you have made. But still you are not carefree. The spark timing must be adjusted manually for varying loads and engine speeds. What’s more, the engine must be lubricated.
On Lubrication: From the Hand Pump to the Idiot Light, and Beyond
Writing in Motor Cycling in 1937, Phil Irving informs us that “In the early days,” motorcycle designers “were content to fit a hand pump which, when operated by the rider, discharged a small amount of oil into the crankcase.” Further,
it must be admitted that, while engine speeds remained low and before aluminum replaced cast-iron as piston material, the system did work much better than one would expect. . . . Another reason for its success was that