Idiocy v Attentiveness

IN the chapter of Matthew Crawford's book Shop Class as Soulcraft entitled "Education of a Gearhead," the author outlines two basic and opposing concepts. Attentiveness is fairly self-explanatory; it means paying attention to the task at hand, or to one's life and actions in general. It is the opposite of idiocy, which is a lack of involvement (and thus attention) to what's going on and what one is doing. Crawford does not use idiocy in a derogatory way, though he certainly views it as a negative trait, but rather in an attempt to identify and explain part of the problem he sees in many individuals within modern society. This leads to the important distinction in Crawford's use of the term -- both come down to a level of individual, personal virtue. Crawford argues that moral and intellectual virtue are truly one and the same thing, and that laziness of the mind -- a lack of attentiveness, or idiocy -- automatically leads to or is a part of immoral behavior, such as butchering a motorcycle engine without ever really looking for the problem, and not caring about the result.

I completely agree with Crawford's assessment of idiocy in today's society. It seems like much of the modern world is geared towards diminishing or eliminating any sense of personal responsibility: kids are over-diagnosed with ADD and ADHD because parents don't want to take responsibility for disciplining them (not to mention the fact that such diagnoses, when made presumptively, also excuse behavior that should be the child's responsibility), customer service representatives at major companies provide dismal service because they will never talk to the same customer again and aren't really monitored, and people cheat all the time as a way of performing the motions without any real investment in the results. Attentive people are the only reason anything gets done.