"... and maybe center their mind on something that they don’t usually go to mentally. And often things for maintenance are done by Japanese with a great deal of ceremony. Just changing the lights of a street lamp. There’s guys in uniform. They have a special routine. They do with a ladder where they go up the pole and do a little formal thing at the beginning and another little formal thing at the end. And it turns a simple task into a somewhat more complex dance. Moving together in time is one of the profound things that humans have been doing for a very long time. So ritual is one way to make really, really repetitive maintenance less onerous...."
Says Stewart Brand, who has a new book, about maintenance. He's talking to Ezra Klein:
Brand is promoting his new book, "Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One" (commission earned)(only $10 in Kindle). If that sounds a lot like "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," that's not hidden. The next thing Ezra says is: "You quote quite a lot from 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' which is a classic book.”
I thought he died. There was such a big to-do about him in the media a year or two ago. Maybe it was just the anniversary of something connected with him.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a "classic book" that is more famous for its title than anything written on the page. It's a "classic book" that nobody reads anymore, and nobody really read in its heyday. I've read it and found it was OK, but not remarkable, excellent, or memorable in any way.
If AI is pushing us out of white collars and into blue, we will need a secular liturgy of work to make us all feel better. The Japanese have figured out how to operate a country with nearly 100% native born people, in spite of the same technological pressures and an even worse birth slump. I was gobsmacked by this during a brief layover in Narita Airport. Holy crap, all the workers here are Japanese! We can learn a lot from them. CC, JSM
You do need some almost ceremonial checks at the beginning and end of any trades task, for safety, making sure you actually did the job, cleanliness, not losing tools, etc. and of course there are all the singsong mnemonics for various bits of trade wisdom. Pretty close to a liturgy or mantra. CC, JSM
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; I've tried to read it multiple times. The last attempt was a long time ago. I can't remember why I can't get through it. I still have it; maybe someday I'll give it another go.
On a visit to Osaka, I noticed three guys who's job was to manage cars entering or exiting a couple of parking lots. This wasn't a dense area, but the part of town with hotels and shopping.
To an American, their jobs seemed completely superfluous. Wait a minute for traffic to open up, then pull out. Wait for a car to pull out, then pull in to the lot. No challenge.
These guys were doing the shit out of their job. They had uniforms with a white belt and chest belt, white gloves and officer caps. You would want to respect their instructions because they respected their jobs.
It looked like a make-work job, but they didn't treat it that way.
Every time I've tried to meditate I just fall asleep. Which is mentally refreshing, I'll admit. . . . .
Tried Zen and Motorcycle once or twice, didn't find it interesting. However, I've been engrossed in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones for the last couple of years.
I vaguely recall a couple of quotes regarding tedious maintenance activities and meditation, like it's a form of prayer in and of itself. Matter of fact, if you watch the pilot of the old Kung Fu show, one of young Caine's duties was sweeping, in any weather.
The Master and Grasshopper is about all the zen I can handle. “If you can tune the spoke tension harmonics and true the wheels beyond factory spec, it will be time for you to go.”
What Fred said. "If you dwell on that shit too long, it can really fuck with you..." - advice from a friend back in the day who saw me reading ZATAOMM.
The idea is absolutely great, but the book is very disappointing. Somehow it is so internet-contaminated that feels more like a bunch of blog posts and a few comment threads printed out on very nice paper and put between high-quality covers. The opening treatment of maintenance and the solo yacht race in the '60s starts off good, but it concludes not with deep lessons on maintenance (and making it easy) but with the very dramatic personal stuff of the three men. The section on AK-47y vs M16 is long on repeated anecdotes and complaints from soldiers and very low on details of the maintenance issues except that the AK is much less complex. What are the trade-offs? Why did the US Army do what it did with the M16? What is the current state of military assault rifle quality and maintenance? There's a very roughly inserted bit about Russian maintenance failures in the Ukrainian war, but it's all very familiar to anyone who has the slightest interest in that conflict, and the maintenance talk gets dropped too quickly in favor of "plucky Ukrainians defending their homeland" platitudes and a few predictions that turned out to be wrong, The section on Tesla reads like a press release, and the justification for everything is sales numbers. That Tesla's are often prohibitively expensive to repair though they do require less regular maintenance is mentioned, but no space is given to the reasonable engineering critiques of the unibody, battery fires, weight, etc., etc. A book on essential maintenance that did case studies on the maintenance of a lot of different machines, synthesized the PATTERNS, and came up with some general principles would be a GREAT book. There really isn't such a thing now, though the info is out there: mechanical engineers talk about maintenance—and, perhaps even more importantly, designing for easy maintenance—all the time. The big engineering schools would regularly assign a deep, thorough, and insightful synthetic book on this topic.
But this book is not that book. It is superficial engagement with a really important topic that probably blocks the publication of the book we actually need. That shallowness really bothers me (If you couldn't tell) because it seems like it is the result of internet-writing cancerously spreading to other, better forms.
Re: Prof Drout’s book review: Not surprised that this book is a failure, after seeing the recent Stewart Brand documentary where he appears pretty out of it. It’s so sad to me, being a dedicated reader of his work from the first Whole Earth Catalogs, through the CoEvolution Quarterly years, and well beyond. His dedication and capability to getting real, important knowledge out there publicly from his Sausalito base was in many ways the intellectual side of what was happening 60 miles south in Silicon Valley. Hell, he pretty much laid out the path that became what I’m posting this comment to right now.
Thanks Ann for posting the interview. Tho Stewart is 87 I found it wonderful and heard lots of reiterations of his points and views from over many years, which were true then and remain so now.
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22 comments:
Attitude is everything.
A meditative focus while doing maintenance is valuable. Distractions can cause deadly errors.
I thought he died. There was such a big to-do about him in the media a year or two ago. Maybe it was just the anniversary of something connected with him.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a "classic book" that is more famous for its title than anything written on the page. It's a "classic book" that nobody reads anymore, and nobody really read in its heyday. I've read it and found it was OK, but not remarkable, excellent, or memorable in any way.
"Zen and anything" = hard pass.
I couldn't make it past page 14 or 15, and I tried.
If AI is pushing us out of white collars and into blue, we will need a secular liturgy of work to make us all feel better. The Japanese have figured out how to operate a country with nearly 100% native born people, in spite of the same technological pressures and an even worse birth slump. I was gobsmacked by this during a brief layover in Narita Airport. Holy crap, all the workers here are Japanese! We can learn a lot from them. CC, JSM
You do need some almost ceremonial checks at the beginning and end of any trades task, for safety, making sure you actually did the job, cleanliness, not losing tools, etc. and of course there are all the singsong mnemonics for various bits of trade wisdom. Pretty close to a liturgy or mantra. CC, JSM
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; I've tried to read it multiple times. The last attempt was a long time ago. I can't remember why I can't get through it. I still have it; maybe someday I'll give it another go.
I have extreme difficulty meditating. But I do try. The beach without distractions works for me.
I ride motorcycles and work on them a lot. Currently restoring a 1973 Yamaha MX360.
I recall reading "Zen" years ago. I thought it was pretty boring.
There's another book, "Shop Class as Soulcraft." It's written by a local motorcyclist/philosopher, and it's a much better read. It's on Amazon.
On a visit to Osaka, I noticed three guys who's job was to manage cars entering or exiting a couple of parking lots. This wasn't a dense area, but the part of town with hotels and shopping.
To an American, their jobs seemed completely superfluous. Wait a minute for traffic to open up, then pull out. Wait for a car to pull out, then pull in to the lot. No challenge.
These guys were doing the shit out of their job. They had uniforms with a white belt and chest belt, white gloves and officer caps. You would want to respect their instructions because they respected their jobs.
It looked like a make-work job, but they didn't treat it that way.
Guess it can go farther down than Reefer Madness.
There is a reason for the return of Steward Brand, psychedelics, and short-short-short skirts.
But mum's the word. My soul's been Psychedelicized!!
Every time I've tried to meditate I just fall asleep. Which is mentally refreshing, I'll admit. . . . .
Tried Zen and Motorcycle once or twice, didn't find it interesting. However, I've been engrossed in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones for the last couple of years.
I vaguely recall a couple of quotes regarding tedious maintenance activities and meditation, like it's a form of prayer in and of itself. Matter of fact, if you watch the pilot of the old Kung Fu show, one of young Caine's duties was sweeping, in any weather.
A Meditation on Zen Cleaning by Shoukei Matsumoto
The Master and Grasshopper is about all the zen I can handle. “If you can tune the spoke tension harmonics and true the wheels beyond factory spec, it will be time for you to go.”
Come on, Pirsig's book is an easy read.
What Fred said.
"If you dwell on that shit too long, it can really fuck with you..." - advice from a friend back in the day who saw me reading ZATAOMM.
How many Japanese does it take to change a light bulb?"
I"ll bite. How many Japanese does it take to change a light bulb?
More than one, apparently.
(There's no punch line. It's a Zen joke.)
The idea is absolutely great, but the book is very disappointing. Somehow it is so internet-contaminated that feels more like a bunch of blog posts and a few comment threads printed out on very nice paper and put between high-quality covers.
The opening treatment of maintenance and the solo yacht race in the '60s starts off good, but it concludes not with deep lessons on maintenance (and making it easy) but with the very dramatic personal stuff of the three men.
The section on AK-47y vs M16 is long on repeated anecdotes and complaints from soldiers and very low on details of the maintenance issues except that the AK is much less complex. What are the trade-offs? Why did the US Army do what it did with the M16? What is the current state of military assault rifle quality and maintenance?
There's a very roughly inserted bit about Russian maintenance failures in the Ukrainian war, but it's all very familiar to anyone who has the slightest interest in that conflict, and the maintenance talk gets dropped too quickly in favor of "plucky Ukrainians defending their homeland" platitudes and a few predictions that turned out to be wrong,
The section on Tesla reads like a press release, and the justification for everything is sales numbers. That Tesla's are often prohibitively expensive to repair though they do require less regular maintenance is mentioned, but no space is given to the reasonable engineering critiques of the unibody, battery fires, weight, etc., etc.
A book on essential maintenance that did case studies on the maintenance of a lot of different machines, synthesized the PATTERNS, and came up with some general principles would be a GREAT book. There really isn't such a thing now, though the info is out there: mechanical engineers talk about maintenance—and, perhaps even more importantly, designing for easy maintenance—all the time. The big engineering schools would regularly assign a deep, thorough, and insightful synthetic book on this topic.
But this book is not that book. It is superficial engagement with a really important topic that probably blocks the publication of the book we actually need. That shallowness really bothers me (If you couldn't tell) because it seems like it is the result of internet-writing cancerously spreading to other, better forms.
Re: Prof Drout’s book review: Not surprised that this book is a failure, after seeing the recent Stewart Brand documentary where he appears pretty out of it. It’s so sad to me, being a dedicated reader of his work from the first Whole Earth Catalogs, through the CoEvolution Quarterly years, and well beyond. His dedication and capability to getting real, important knowledge out there publicly from his Sausalito base was in many ways the intellectual side of what was happening 60 miles south in Silicon Valley. Hell, he pretty much laid out the path that became what I’m posting this comment to right now.
Thanks Ann for posting the interview. Tho Stewart is 87 I found it wonderful and heard lots of reiterations of his points and views from over many years, which were true then and remain so now.
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Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.