I've just finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, having read it in bits and pieces over the past few months. It's not so much a novel as a frame around a philosophical discussion; but it's nowhere near as dry as some of the philosophy books I've read--the author really cares about what he's saying, he's not just indulging in hair splitting.
Josh and I were watching Master and Commander, and in one scene, the ship has smoke billowing around it. All I saw was the ship, smoke and water; however, Josh, who has worked with art and illustration software, nudged me and said, "See that smoke? I know how to do that. In fact, look at the edges--I can do better than that." In Zen's terms, I was a Romantic: I didn't know how the smoke had come about, but I could enjoy the way it looked. In contrast, Josh's view was Classic: he could analyze the smoke image and knew the process by which it was made, but he didn't think it looked good. A Romantic will admire a motorcycle because it's sleek and fast, and all he wants to know is how to operate it--turn the key, accelerator, brake, away we go. The Classicist will want to break it down into assemblies and sub assemblies and components--the power system includes fuel, electrical and drive, and the fuel system includes the gas tank, line, pump and injector--but he's probably going to be thinking "There's something off in the timing, how should I adjust it" rather than "This is a fun ride."
The author's solution to combining those two is Quality. You can know the details of how something works, but if it's done with excellence--craftsmanship--you can still appreciate the beauty of it.
There's plenty more to be said about Zen; Amazon has over five hundred reviews, and there are guidebooks and studies. An adventuresome soul might even go so far as to read the book himself.
One side point particularly stuck with me which is that some people seem to be thorough Romantics. When something isn't working, they don't go through a reasoning process to try to figure out what's wrong with it; they just call for help. Sometimes it almost seems like panic--"I don't know what to do, so I'll stop doing anything." Sometimes the problem is with a balky sewing machine, or a car that's making strange noises, or a computer that just won't do what it should.
And sometimes that misbehaving machine is yourself.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
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It's a funny world - I just re-watched Master and Commander not more than 3 days ago.
I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in High School for a very challenging book review. The question posed by the instructor was not 'what does it mean?' but 'how does it mean?'. I found it a fantastic book with a great deal of depth. As one university friend of mine put it:
My bedside table has two books on it. Machiavelli - to tell me how to live life. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - to tell me why.
I heartily recommend it, even if it takes some work to grok in its entirety. I think I'll have to re-read it again soon. That and Cleary's translation of Sun Tzu.
I think I'm a halfway between Romantic and Classicist. And I think as a definition of Quality, understanding how something works and appreciating the skill and beauty in its execution is pretty much how I percieve quality.
A running joke about Engineers - the archetypal Classicists - is that they percieve the world as feature poor and incomplete. Whenever they see a system, they instinctively look for ways it could be improved - sometimes not because the system is bad, but just because it can almost always be made better. It's an instinct to build and improve.
Picking at the other thread: Friends and I went to see the new Star Trek. At the end, they do some special effects that exibit lens flares. The entire thing is digital - no analog lenses to produce lens flairs. It's a total bit of fun from the cgi geeks. My digital artist friends were all lampooning this. For the rest of us, it just looked like a cool effect that we didn't dwell on.
Understanding something sometimes takes the romance out of it. I think the real trick is understanding a thing while keeping the inherent joy in the essence of the thing.
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