[Hac-announce] September 2016 Book Discussion: "The World Beyond Your Head" by Matthew B. Crawford

[Kevin Gough or Paula Jones]

Our book for September is The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming and Individual in an Age of Distraction by Matthew B. Crawford. The discussion will take place Saturday, September 17, 2016 at 2 pm in the library of the Unitarian Society of New Haven at 700 Hartford Turnpike, Hamden.








>From the frontispiece:
In his bestselling book Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford explored the ethical and practical importance of manual competence, as expressed through mastery of our physical environment. In his brilliant follow-up, The World Beyond Your Head, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind.

We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defense against this, Crawford argues, requires that we reckon with the way attention sculpts the self. He examines the intense concentration of ice hockey players and short-order chefs, the quasi-autistic behavior of gambling addicts, the familiar hassles of daily life, and the deep, slow craft of building pipe organs. He shows that our current crisis of attention is only superficially the result of digital technology, and becomes more comprehensible when understood as the coming to fruition of certain assumptions at the root of Western culture that are profoundly at odds with human nature. 

The World Beyond Your Head makes sense of an astonishing array of familiar phenomena, from the frustrations of airport security to the rise of the hipster. With implications for the way we raise our children, the design of public spaces, and democracy, this is a book of urgent relevance to contemporary life.

Here is a link to a Point of Inquiry podcast on the book with the author: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/dealing_with_distraction_in_the_modern_world_with_matt_crawford/
 


The book is readily available in numerous libraries around the state.

 
Refreshments will be served.














 
 

 





































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