How ignorant most of us are by contrast, surrounded by machines and processes of which we have only the loosest grasps; we who know nothing about gantry cranes and iron-ore bulk carriers, who register the economy only as a set of numbers, who think — even now — that it is only about money, who have avoided close study of switch gears and wheat storage and spare ourselves closer acquaintance with the manufacturing protocols for tensile steel cable.
The problem is that we have been told over and over that the sort of work referred to here is dehumanizing, etc. And the people who do that sort of work don't read the approved books or hold the approved opinions (or so many are inclined to assume). What this really is about is the extent to which art has become divorced from life as it actually lived by most people.
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