Why Mechanics Are Artists

It's no secret many people feel good mechanics are like artists. I've always felt that to be true, especially when it comes to my own computer troubleshooting and repair efforts. Now, thanks to my book club having selected Matthew Crawford's Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into The Value of Work as it's next read, I know why.

Crawford quotes English philosopher Iris Murdoch as describing good art as seeming mysterious "because it resists the easy patterns of the fantasy." Explained differently, Murdoch writes "Good art shows us how difficult it is to be objective by showing us how differently the world looks to an objective vision."

This is where the word idiot comes from.

In Greek, Crawford writes, idios means private. Rather than serving a public role, in which an individual gets outside him or herself to grasp a public role, "which entails, or should, a relationship of active concern to others," an idiot is not involved. Crawford argues the point, specifically in this case, using an example from Robert Pirsig's wonderful Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Crawford continues, stating, "But getting outside her own head is the task the artist sets herself, and this is the mechanic's task, too. Both, if they are good, use their imagination 'not to escape the world but to join it, and this exhilarates us because of the distance between our ordinary dulled consciousness and an apprehension of the real.' This is the exhilaration the mechanic gets when he finds the underlying cause of some problem."

To be a good mechanic, Crawford concludes, one must possess attentive openness and constantly be open to the possibility that they are mistaken. It's kind of counterintuitive, but I believe he's spot on.