I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about Quality lately. Thanks to finally delving into Robert Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A novel with such a now-kitschy title, one that spawned countless other Zen & …. books.
I think one of the reasons it took me so long to get to is that, despite knowing the name since childhood, the title suggests a sort of dry, perhaps overly-drafted essay. Accusations towards the latter may stand, but I must immediately allow room to say that it is in fact, of the genus of philosophical treatise wherein a narrative is used to prop up the author’s ideas. In some sense it is dualistic. The overtly novel side being the Present, a road trip between Pirsig and his son, and Pirsig’s friends. The overtly philosophical side being a recounting of Pirsig’s past. To delineate what is and isn’t fictionalized, well, to quote The Life of Pi, “which is the better story?”; I don’t find that it’s particularly material to know.
What is material is that in retrospect, the dynamic between Pirsig and his son is too familiar, though not in a father/son relationship sense. Pirsig’s approach to once-removed observation and prediction, to try and overanalyze Chris’s (his son) behavior is the common trap of an engineer brained individual. I would say this drives so much between them, and the culmination of the novel is to show the breaking down of this barrier, that Pirsig finally opens up and confesses to his son. It’s a long time coming by the time it happens, and it’s cathartic.
The other relevant consideration is the core of the novel, the explication of Robert’s philosophy on “Quality”. This terming doesn’t even show up until halfway through the book, the lead in is slow and careful treading. In some regard, he’s incredibly thorough to explain every inch of thought that led to his eventual conclusions, in others it can drag a little bit, as he delves into a side street. All of his points do eventually marry. The overall conclusion is directly connected to thoughts and concerns I have had for years, it was like following my own thoughts into their future forms. A good shortcut.
Quality, as Robert puts it, is the transcendental thing that exists right now. The eternal present. He argues that the perception of Quality is the very thing that makes, over time, subjective/objective reality cohere. Rather than saying that any given thing has both a romantic quality (affective) and a classical quality (technical/rational), he argues these are the same thing at different time scales. That the vibe of a thing and the technicals of its form are the same, just stepped differently. The vibe (affective effect) is the immediate sense you get as the qualia are registered and the subject/object dualism kicks in. As it solidifies, a priori[Latin] information (that is to say, past experience) becomes a measuring stick, rational understanding, for what we are now perceiving moment to moment. One of the core issues he identifies with perceiving quality, is that we live either in the romantic and classical, or the future and the past. It is impossible to appreciate the Quality of the thing itself fully if one does not have a comprehensive view.
I am most interested in how quality work is produced, because quality work begets a better experience in life, something my experience in all facets attests to. It is one of my core bones to pick in a life philosophy quarter.
One of the components I have come to realize is crucial to quality work is good process. Good process, as Pirsig points out, requires attention to the reality of the situation. To explain better, there is a distinct difference in the quality of work, between a person who has only memorized a system of diagnostics can output towards fixing an object, versus a person who has internalized (and therefore has intuitive knowledge of) the ideas and considerations for the object. In all areas of human effort, there are organic and chaotic circumstances that will cause a memorized list of checkpoints to break down and fail to get you somewhere towards a fix. By the same token, even an intuitional knowledge will have gaps, that is the nature of mental models.
It is only by being present, and addressing the thing-itself directly, setting aside concretized process and intuitional models, that novel problems can be solved. There is this sense of opening up to new possibility and the perception of the thing that is right in front of you, that even a good map of the territory may actually obscure. To me the ability to be open is what I will call Care.
Care is the virtue by which we can approach things on their terms, to see reality now as we expect, or want, to accept it as it is. Any given perceptible solution or process towards actualizing something in the world is ultimately addressed by applying Care to it. The act of Caring is to be open, to be interested, to be disciplined{maybe not disciplined tho it helps}, and to be dedicated to something. When someone is able to provide commensurate Care towards a process, it generates a flow state and quality prevails.
The detriment of Care is to fail to be interested. In the definitional sense, interest refers to many things, but in abstract, to consider something to relate to you. If something relates to you prominently, good or bad, you spend time and effort considering it. When you consider things to be completely removed from you, you cease to care. The more duress a person is under, whether they are aware of it or not, the less energy and wherewithal they have to Care about other endeavors versus the source of the duress. In some sense, the ability to care is inverse to having needs met. The more needs are met, the more expansive Care can be. Even if needs are met, there has to be an expanding of the awareness or interest in things. This, for those chronically under duress, may seem patently undoable. From personal experience, I can say that my ability to unfold myself was only realizable when my environment and circumstances allowed for it. I can also say that my ability to care wanes when shit hits the fan.
To me, Care and Quality are ideals, but to fail to meet them is not usually the direct fault of the individual. Many are caught in what are effectively a dead end circumstance due to a variety of factors, including the tacit agreement at large that our government has to not particularly give a shit. A government without Care leads to a low-quality of life.
To be able to regulate one’s environment, circumstance, and therefore ability to Care is probably the height of prefrontal function within commensurate circumstance. Put another way {I would like to direct the conclusion that quality comes from good process, and good process comes from care. That more people could care about more things in the world, I think the movement to ease life in general is paramount.}
[a section about how the novel’s split between present narrative of the road trip, and past explication of the philosophy, blends and are inextricably bound to the conclusion of the novel. That to miss this is to fail to see the forest for the trees, and to fail to grasp the expression of the novel intended as a product of Quality itself.]
[perhaps a section about process, the role of tools in bridging process with more determinism, and therefore more speed over time, regardless of bespoke or mass-scale process. This may be a separate essay]
[The role of care in the use of tools and also process in general.]