Abstract Work Alienates

And the Importance of Craft

Abstraction Makes us Human

Of all the wonders of history, how we humans sprung up from the landscape of evolution is perhaps the greatest. The question of consciousness and its cause is still largely unanswered and with it the human condition that ensues. One skill that seems to make us uniquely human is our proclivity for abstract thought. We seem to be the only species that can turn multiple concrete instances into generalized abstract entities that can then be applied to other novel concrete instances.

This thinking has dominated most disciplines throughout history, especially those spurred by the Enlightenment. Science, for example, seeks to divorce all human intuition from natural phenomena and dig towards the fundamental rules of what governs the natural world. Mathematics is a similar pursuit, albeit less tangible. One might even consider philosophy a science that is focused on the fundamental laws governing the metaphysical and ethical realms.

In fact, it seems that the pursuit of all these disciplines is to organize, analyze, and manipulate concrete instances in such a way as to arrive at the law that governs all other laws. In a sense, this law would be the most abstract law — all concrete instances are derived from it (or embody its qualities.)

This trend towards abstractions isn’t limited to “rational” or natural pursuits, either; the arts produce works that are necessarily abstractions. That a painting can communicate a feeling of the sublime [1], or music one of existential dread, requires that the art communicate elusive concepts with our subconscious. It seems to me that the greatest achievement in art is creating a work that intimates reality on the broadest scale; hence, it is necessarily abstract.

Abstraction is Necessary to the Society in which we Live

Our ability to think abstractly has enabled the evolution of civilization and society, especially (perhaps too much) our modern one. We’ve defined values that we decide to aim at (such as justice, freedom, etc.) and organized them into ideologies. We’ve conceptualized the flow of time as a commodity that can be saved or wasted, and used it to organize our lives.

We develop technologies of great complexity that increasingly rely on our understanding of them in an abstract manner. One couldn’t possibly understand the value of a modern-day laptop strictly at the level of electromagnetics; layers upon layers of representation are etched into our brains, the final layer being the assertion that electrical impulses within the tiny channels of a microchip represent abstract information that can be bought, sold, discussed, and judged.

Abstraction isn’t relegated to engineering products, either — it’s how we live our lives today. We spend “money” by moving some electrons around very carefully in our computers and do the same to some other computer far away via electromagnetic radiation. Three days later, a fully assembled product shows up at our door. The means of production and transportation are unknown to us — and why should we care? We pressed some buttons, sent “money” into a “black box”, and — voilà — the black box outputs a new coffee mug. How great is that?

This system, in fact, is so great and wonderful and solves all of our problems that we’ve decided to invest almost all of our resources in it. Companies merge into larger conglomerates, the supply chain is broken down more and more into individual cogs of an industrial behemoth, and each person’s actions increasingly contribute to a larger and more indifferent abstract “society.” Concurrently, their contributions to this society become almost infinitesimally small.

While the division of labor [2] may have excellent consequences for growing economic wealth, it has the ability to reach too far and detriment the competence of individuals, as we see today. For example, in his “The World Beyond Your Head,” Matthew Crawford elaborates on the digitization of cars. Our modern automobiles don’t have the real, direct, analog feedback of mechanical components, where we feel the infinite granularity of metal working together. Instead, we are told the conditions of the machine through a pretty LCD readout with nice integer values. [3] The digital readout is an abstract representation of what is really occurring within a machine.

Crawford explores the idea that we “think through the body,” and I happen to agree. The problem with abstract representations of real phenomena is that when we do not perceive machines through direct sensorimotor perception and allow machines to think and represent for us, we lose grounding with the real world. We lose our “situatedness” in reality.

Faults of Abstraction

The issue of representations veiling reality is an instance of what I perceive to be the two main downfalls of abstraction, the consequences of which will be discussed later.

I believe Aristotelian metaphysics describe the process of abstraction in the most accurate and useful way. Rather than Platonic metaphysics [4], which conceives a perfectly abstract “World of Forms” that is inaccessible to us and informs all of concrete reality, Aristotelian metaphysics conceives our mental abstractions’ existences as predicated on concrete reality itself [5]. From here, we imagine the existence of concrete objects first, followed by our own mental abstractions, which can grow and change in sometimes perverse ways. This assumption will be a foundational pillar of our discussion.

The first fault of abstraction occurs when an idea strays too far from its concrete instances. This might occur when an abstraction expands across its boundaries to include a great deal of ideas and become convoluted. This leaves us unable to create a strong connection between the abstraction and reality.

The second fault of abstraction occurs when the concrete instances that support an abstraction become murky and shrouded, which leaves the abstraction floating in concept space. This prevents the abstraction from being reliably tied to concrete reality and diffuses the abstraction into unwanted cracks in our psychology.

A perverse consequence of abstraction is obviously not binarily the first fault or the second; the two are considerably intertwined. In fact, these faults might be considered instances of violating a law that for abstraction to be useful, it must be reliably tied to grounds that do not shift in chaotic ways. This is what makes abstractions in science, art, and our experience possible in the first place, as the natural laws that we explore are somewhat predictable. When abstractions are based on other abstractions and on man-made laws of reality, however, it tends to lose their value.

How do the Faults Manifest in Society?

The faults of abstraction can be directly observed in the workplace, particularly in abstract “knowledge work.” We’re told that executive and managerial positions have the greatest impact and influence on a company and the economy, but I disagree — at least in the sense that this claim is typically made.

One of the consequences of creating larger corporations (as noted above) is their proclivity to produce more tiers in the occupational hierarchy. This means more middle managers, financial analysts, HR specialists, corporate lawyers, and bloated university administrations, each complete with their set of assistants.

When an organization performs the same function that it always has but hires a glut of “executive” VPs and administrators, one would expect each individual to contribute an equal part to the whole growing effort. However, distributions of labor responsibility tend to follow Price’s Law, [6] which states that in a given domain, the square root of the number of people within the said domain do 50% of the work. In a small company with 4–5 people, this equates to 50% of the employees doing 50% of the work, which seems to be about as it should.

Within large companies that hire countless executives, however, a serious issue arises. If a company has 10,000 employees, 50% of the labor burden falls on 100 employees, with the rest distributed among the other 9,900. Furthermore, this burden tends to fall on those employees in the lower tiers of the hierarchy — those who are actually making, building, repairing, and transporting products.

So…what exactly are all of these “highfalutin” executives contributing? After all, they have fancy titles and get paid far more than the 100 burdened employees; is this not constituted by their highly-skilled abstract positions? Perhaps their value comes from their vision to “dramatically transform cloud-centric channels,” “fungibly incentivize interactive technologies,” “continually implement robust alignments,” or other such nonsensical notions garnished with verbal confetti. [7]

If their contributions are truly abstract in nature, these jobs leave the worker with no idea how his or her work actually benefits the company, and the worker becomes alienated from the work itself. Furthermore, as the reach of the organization expands to a global scale, the worker becomes alienated from the effects that his or her work has on other people. Finally, as the worker feels no connection to the act of work or to its effects on fellow man, he will become alienated from himself as an individual.

I’m drawing heavily on one of Marx’s few spot-on conjectures: his Theory of Alienation [8]. This issue transcends economic system ideology — Marx predicted its appearance in Capitalist systems, but the same things occurred in the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the economy that dictates our lives looks less like a Capitalist system and more like an oligarchical (or feudal) system. It seems to me that this alienation manifests itself most in work where the results are disconnected from the labor, yes, but also within work where the rules & constraints are set by people, rather than nature.

To conclude, I have described a manifestation of a fault of abstraction. When the laws of one’s work are dictated by office politics and man-made rules, such as banking, law, finance, and government administration, the abstract regions in a domain grow into absurd laugh riots to an outsider. The abstract work that is performed as a result of this perverse growth then loses its meaning to the worker, alienates him, and leads to disastrous psychological consequences.

The Consequences of Abstract, Alienated Labor on the Individual

Jobs in which we perform obscure and trivial duties where we never break a sweat and make the numbers on the screen of the banking app increase (a.k.a. earning money) seem to be a paradise. After all, aren’t we driven to extract the most value for ourselves for the least effort due to human nature?

I say no. Our conception of humans is one of the abstract agents that act in purely rational and self-interested terms. This is clearly incorrect. Man wants to perform work that has meaning and positive consequences for him and the world around him.

This is supported by the endless testimonies of real workers’ commentaries in David Graeber’s “Bullshit Jobs.” Graeber’s interviewees describe the soul-crushing nature of jobs that are so “…completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.” [9] It’s as if they are describing exactly what it is like to experience the process of becoming alienated from themselves and everything they do.

One would expect this sentiment from poorly paid service workers, but the vast majority of respondents occupy positions within middle-management, business, and corporate law. To answer our earlier inquiry of “What exactly are all of these “highfalutin” executives contributing,” the answer is very often: “Nothing positive at all.”

The abstraction of our employment, then, not only alienates us from ourselves, others, and work, but divorces the meaning from our actions with the knowledge that we contribute nothing. Such knowledge leaves us in a depressive state of impotence.

A neuropsychological explanation can be sought from the ideas expressed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.” Csíkszentmihályi describes how important it is for us to experience the state of “flow,” where the boundary between us and the world dissolves and our actions engross us completely; it is a state in which we are the cause, where we are the prime mover. The prerequisites for a flow state are that an activity must essentially have :

• Clear goals
• Immediate feedback
• Control of one’s actions
• A level of difficulty commensurable to the agent’s skill level

This state of “flow” can be conceptualized as being “in the zone,” visible in athletes, craftsmen, and line cooks. Csíkszentmihályi also describes how, if denied the state of flow, the brain’s chemical balance will deteriorate and psychological decadence will ensue. [10]

It’s no surprise, then, that so many workers never enter a flow state at work. The abstract work that they perform is in direct conflict with flow criteria. The goals of lofty positions are spiral-shaped, immediate feedback is almost non-existent, one’s actions are often at the whim of the “boss” or the abstract “public,” and most jobs are mind-numbingly simple and able to be automated away.

The Consequences of Abstract, Alienated Labor on the Collective

Abstract and alienated labor leads to the breakdown, not development, of the individual. However, we humans crave growth and the feeling of our power/abilities increasing.

It’s clear that this growth cannot be realized in much of today’s soul-sucking knowledge work for many of the reasons depicted above. Therefore, we seek to supplant our individual degradation with external growth. This manifests in technological development, infrastructure building, the expanse of national influence, and the exploitation of more and more natural resources.

Such growth is unsustainable. Not only is this growth limited, and often a zero-sum game (as opposed to many forms of growth where this is not the case,) but it produces more bureaucracy and conglomerates that churn out more alienated and depressed workers.

As Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying describe in A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, there are ways to deal with periods of surplus that do not jeopardize periods of lacking. For example, many tribes in South America celebrate an agricultural surplus by having an elaborate feast and use a material surplus to develop public works like temples. [11] That way, surpluses are not spent making more babies and therefore more mouths to feed that will end up spreading resources too thin during lacking harvests.

Weinstein and Heying argue that we should mimic these tribes by investing our economic surplus in public works. However, I believe that the energy that we put towards growth should be directed in the development of the individual. One can spend just as much energy, focus, and discipline developing a conglomerate banking empire as they can developing their inner abilities and identity.

I’m not arguing that one should simply read books and be a nice person — I speak of the development of artisan skills that are developed over long periods of time and represent a deep mastery of one niche aspect of reality. I speak particularly of craft.

The Importance of Craft

One of the many problems with Graeber’s “Bullshit Jobs” is that he heavily attacks the notion that any type of deep meaning can be extracted from labor. Instead, he assumes labor to simply be a means to an end and any virtue derived from it to be a subconsciously Capitalist power structure fabricated by the economic elite. This is absurd; one’s actions (work) is what defines their identity. The forms of mental decadence that we see in the workplace evidence the fundamental importance of our work on our psyches.

Craft is a solution that bridges the broad issues of unsustainable growth of the industrial behemoth on a collective scale and the psychological decadence from alienated labor on the individual scale. Unlike the fields of law or business, the rules of the discipline are set by nature. As described in Constrained Autonomy [12], unwavering constraints that are based in the concrete domain allow one to have autonomy within one’s work.

Furthermore, one is able to interface directly with one’s work. There is no such alienation when one’s hands freely shape the end product. The body and mind that we typically divide conceptually become one and we are truly engaged with the work. As Robert Pirsig describes in his “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” we mustn’t think of our actions with a subject-object dichotomy. A maker and his project will “grow towards Quality together or fall away from Quality together.” [13]

Pirsig’s “Quality” is essentially a modern formulation of the Greek arete, or excellence of a thing. This implies value judgments in the realm of ethics. From this, we can see that excellence in a craft can develop excellence in a person. This is perhaps why Pirsig then formulates an idea of individualism preceding political or social change, as he argues that “The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outwards from there.” [13] One engaged in craft must necessarily work outward from there and will do so in a non-alienated way.

When one instantiates his or her mind in a concrete object, they will be closely bonded to not only the object but also its effect on others. The evaluation of one’s excellence in their craft must be somewhat triangulated between them, their product, and other autonomous agents. One can likely see the direct result of their craft on the user, and cannot ignore user-centric issues.

As craft requires one to exercise legitimate autonomy, judgment, and a genuine caring for their work, they will necessarily develop a healthy morality that is subordinate to nature’s constraints and aimed at excellence, rather than growth. The way to solve the problem of labor alienation, political bloat, and social decadence is not through abstract government programs or directives; this top-down approach will not heal the root of the issue. The solution is through the individual. You must “make yourself perfect and then paint naturally.” [13] Craft and meaningful labor is one conduit through which this moral excellence can flow.

References

[1] Example of “Painting the Sublime” https://www.artsy.net/artwork/caspar-david-friedrich-wanderer-above-the-sea-of-fog

[2] Smith, Adam. “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” Published 1776. Retrieved 6/20/2022. https://www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_WealthNations_p.pdf

[3] Crawford, Matthew. “The World Beyond your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Enlightened Age.” Published 2014. Retrieved 06/26/2022.

[4] Plato. “The Republic.” Published ~375 B.C. Retrieved 06/26/2022. https://123philosophy.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/Plato-Republic.pdf

[5] Aristotle. “Metaphysics.” Retrieved 06/26/2022.

[6] “Price’s Model”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%27s_model

[7] https://www.atrixnet.com/bs-generator.html

[8] Marx, Karl. “Economic Manuscripts of 1844.” Published 1844. Retrieved 06/26/2022.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm

[9] Graeber, David. “Bullshit Jobs.” Published 05/2018. Retrieved 06/26/2022.

[10] Csíkszentmihályi, Mihaly. “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.” Published 1990. Retrieved 06/26/2022.

[11] Weinstein, Bret and Heying, Heather. “A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century.” Published 08/2021. Retrieved 06/26/2022.

[12] Hofmeister, Mark. “Constrained Autonomy.” Published 4/16/2022. Retrieved 08/22/2022. https://mark-hofmeister.medium.com/constrained-autonomy-6463e0538044

[13] Pirsig, Robert. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Published 1974. Retrived 08/22/2022. https://www.bartneck.de/projects/research/pirsig/zen.pdf

Crawford, Matthew. “Shop Class as Soulcraft.” Published 05/28/2009.