A poet addressing an audience of 14,000? It happened. The speaker: T.S. Eliot. The year: 1956. The place: a Minnesota athletic stadium. How things have changed! Today, beyond athletic events and rock concerts, stadiums are permeated by what has become most pervasive: advertising. Best slogan for the last 60 years: from poetry to advertising.
Poetry is thick with allusions, references, ambiguity, the blend of sound and sense. Its aim: revelation. The poet has something to tell. Advertising relies on stripped down language. It’s aim: manipulation. The advertiser has something to sell.
Food studies people pay attention to advertising and its impact on health. Now we have a philosophy book whose reflections begin by noting how ads are everywhere (see urinals, airplane tray tables, gasoline pumps). Not only that, the book uses the example of a cook both prominently and positively. Matthew Crawford is the author. The World Beyond Your Head is the title.
Crawford’s concern is with “attention,” especially how our attention has been colonized by those with something to sell. He realizes, it’s a philosophy book after all, that this state of affairs was prepared by a general understanding of who we are, a particular “philosophical anthropology.” This anthropology describes humans as minds (the “head” of his book’s title). Things and events become neutral items providing data for the mind. We call these data “objects,” items in the “world beyond your head.” One outcome of this picture is expressed in ordinary language as “it’s all subjective,” or the food-related “there is no disputing about taste,” i.e. the individual mind is the source of value. Examined psychologically, such assertions reflect laziness and self-interest. They combine an unwillingness to scrutinize value judgments and the self-satisfaction of the status quo. To say “there is no disputing about taste” is, in effect, to say, let’s not bother thinking about this, let’s leave things as they are. Examined philosophically, as Crawford does, such assertions are part and parcel of a picture which, forgetting hands and stomach, artificially characterizes the human situation as “head” and “world outside your head.”
In the realm of food it is a commonplace to recognize that as the stomach-hand connection is interrupted, the more “de-skilled” we become. One example: the less we are able to cook. In turn, this de-skilling renders us vulnerable to those who would gladly (a) provide the service and (b) shape our judgments. Attention can be colonized because the de-skilling is accompanied by a loss of what alone can provide a defense: standards and measures for discrimination.
Crawford’s concerns are similar. The realm of “it’s all subjective,” thrives in the absence of justifiable, generally accepted criteria. Why? Without agreement on standards, we are empty, blank slates, ready for colonization. The colonization provides substitutes. On one hand, as qualitative criteria disappear, quantitative benchmarks, often “narrow economic considerations” become the default. On the other hand, we are told to reach within and find our true selves, i.e. accept uncriticizable subjective feelings. “The fact that these preferences are the object of billion-dollar, scientifically informed efforts of manipulation doesn’t square with the picture of the choosing self assumed in the idea of a “free market.”
In all of this, an overarching norm takes center stage: conformity. Why do the hard work of selecting quality-driven exemplars to emulate? An obvious and easy (laziness again) standard is now available: opinion polls. “We cannot look to custom or established authority, so we look around to see what everyone else thinks. The demand to be an individual makes us feel anxious, and the remedy for this, ironically enough, is conformity. We become more deferential to public opinion.”
The best way to liberate attention from its colonizers is to multiply engaged activities, like cooking. We then attend to our surroundings in ways that, (1) encourage us to recognize factors of significance built-in to surrounding conditions, factors open to reasonable discussion and debate. Their significance may be related to ongoing
Ours is a world dominated by those who have something to sell. Conformity is crucial for them. Confusing “norm” and “average” helps their cause. Having a de-skilled populace is a great boon. Cooking and other hands-on activities allow openings for our liberation. Crawford seeks to blend hands and mind. To his credit, he wants to make room for those who have something to tell.
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