It is hard to describe how it affected me when I first listened to the audio version of Matthew B. Crawford’s essay from the New Atlantis proposing that manual labour nurtures a psychological maturity, cognitive refinement and simple “job satisfaction”. It is difficult to describe because I first heard it while I was engaged in manual labour myself and it was a strange sensation to hear through my iPod earbuds a voice confirming something deep in me. Something that was aware enough to push me to quit school in anticipation of the boredom of a desk job, but something that was too subconscious for me to explain. Here is an excerpt from Crawford’s Essay:

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