On Quality: In Our Things, and In Our Lives

     My can opener broke, and because the ones sold at the stores (like the one presently in my trash) are crap, I looked online, and found people rhapsodizing about the merits of an apparently quality can opener. What are they doing with their lives? Well, I'm writing about looking for one, so probably the same thing as me. I am not sure whether it is a remark on our consumerism, or on the old love of good quality and design- the human fetish for things that endure, even if it is just a household object. 

     Ironically, planned obsolescence of consumerism makes good quality and design more rare for common products, rather than less. Consumerism is not the democratization of design, but about the elitism of quality- in which quality is not just pricey (it has probably always been), but a price we are trained to be unwilling to pay. Why are we trained this way? Because paying for quality means paying more, at least in the short-term.

     It is that way with food, too; the average American household spent considerably more money on food (with the appropriate conversions for inflation, and such), as recently as the 1950s and 1960s, than is the case today. They were getting better-quality food, and there was less obesity; now, we take for granted that good-quality food is for the rich, and have a trained aversion to eating right as something that is snooty, tedious, pretentious. Yet, look at our healthcare costs- everything has consequences. There may or may not be a free lunch, but there is certainly no such thing as a cheap Big Mac.

     There is an elitism of quality, in material things- and a leveling of taste and lowering of expectations among everyone who is not willing to stand out, and claim the elite status of healthy living or durable goods as their own. To do so, our society implies, is to nominate ourselves as 'better' than other people, rather than merely sensible, and enlightened in self-interest. This is strange; isn't self-interest the motivation that supposedly drives our decisions in those reductionist economic models? Isn't it a good thing, and supposed to be the exception rather than the rule? 

     Only if you're blind, deaf, and dumb. Advertising, egoism, and impulse-buying work contrary to our individual best interests on a daily basis, and keep our economy afloat on a sea of people made insecure and shallow, systematically, by the 24-7 psychological artillery barrage of the media- liquefying the human will into pourable form. Even people who can afford better have been trained not to choose better, both with individual goods, and with their lives is general. 

     Is it that we love things so much that we have to make them as low-quality as possible- so we have an excuse to buy them again, or buy more of them? No, I think most of us are systematically trained to buy the cheapest things in the name of 'good deals,' so we can be sold the same can opener three times- and trained to buy the cheapest food, so we can be sold more of it, with an angioplasty on the side. So often, good quality ends where good deals begin; so often, self-reliance and contentment are ruined by our learned acquiescence to a society with a systematically impaired approach to the relation of ourselves to each other, and ourselves to our things. Can we unlearn that? Yes, if we want to.

     A good quality can opener is a good thing, but there are far greater goods than the goods sold in stores, and far greater quality than quality in design; the greatest of all quality is in ourselves, and in our capacity, but it is not a default. We can make it daily, there is no other way to make it. We make it by our efforts and our discipline, by our selective gaze, by the care of our choices. A good life does not happen by accident or by accessories. It happens by approaching our lives as stewards, rather than as owners; as gardeners, rather than as rabbits rummaging for what we can get. Let us focus on a good life over good things, and review our choices more than we review our products. More than we wonder what else we need materially, let us wonder how we can realize great things in daily life. It is that which we need; more self-reliance, spiritually, and more simplicity, materially. These things can be chosen and embraced, and what higher quality is there than such a choice, such an embrace? 

     To riff on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: The real can you are trying to open is yourself. How can you use yourself to open yourself? You are not both at the same time, but you are one and then the other. Be whole and entire, moment by moment; know that the person you work on today is furnished by who you were yesterday. As William James would have it, introspection is immediate retrospection; we do not observe ourselves directly, but in hindsight, through the memories of the states of mind that came before.

     Know that you are only one and whole a moment at a time, and you will find more peace if you can only remain in the moment more often. Make habits that will help you prepare for the future without having to consider them. Do the right things without a second thought, and you will make the future a good one, with less worry. Until they are habit, mindfulness and openness are a daily effort; and when they are part of your daily life, may they endure and grow. These qualities- endurance and growth- are the greatest marks of worth. Do not only maintain the good, but change it into a greater good. Adapt constructively, and take the next good step. 

     Contrary to this flexible and adaptive approach to reality, we find ideology; a rigidity so great that life in any fresh or vibrant sense is absent. In particular, I think a reactionary, stultifying form of conservatism fossilizes the good. Not only does it fail to preserve the most enduring aspects of the past in any living sense, it also kills what is left with its mindless clinging to the recent past, and sometimes to what is worst in it. No, do not be a keeper of the letter, long after the spirit has fled; do not guard a torch that was put out centuries ago, unless you are going to relight it. Dare you relight it? Do not be a conservative in the usual sense, but do not be a liberal in the usual sense either. Critique the structures of power, but live what you feel the world should be. Live in the moment, not without structure, but with habits and attitudes you established in days when you were not in the moment, with your head full of history and memory; and make decisions about how to live, in part, on the basis of prospective futures, and what you think is sustainable for yourself, your society, and the world as a whole.
     Most days, you live it out, rather than second-guessing it- ideology recognizes this, but its habits of thought and action are not chosen by you, to fit your life, but chosen by default of your familiarity with them. Live in the moment, so you are there to pay attention to other people; emphasize compassion and respect in each moment as primary, and other principles as secondary. An ethics that involves sacrificing compassion or respect in the name of principle is not much of an ethics; we see this whenever the ends supersedes the means, however moral those ends may seem. Also, live in the moment so you are there to step into the opportunities you cannot predict, and attentive to each that comes; this way, you will not be taken by surprise. We must be aware of these questions of value and expectation, for they govern our lives.
     Do we base our values in the assumption that values are (a) Inherent qualities (or, perhaps more accurately, the realization that consequences are inextricable from the things whose attributes are necessary for those consequences continuing), or (b) Qualities divorced from things- consequences, without loyalty to the source of those consequences? How we answer this question provides the template for our approach to life and other people. 'a' is associated with consistency, and a sufficiency mindset, acceptance of things as they are; 'b' is associated with the shifting of instrumental reason- always trying to change how things will be, and align the consequences differently.
     Expectations, similarly, become self-fulfilling prophecies- we do not do what we think we cannot. We, today, are the foundations of our tomorrows, and part of who we are is what we think. We must also be aware that expecting things is a way of stepping outside of the moment. Expectations and waiting can erode us, and take away from our lives.
     Stepping out from where you are and examining your assumptions (including your expectations) can help you gain perspective, and evaluate your priorities and habits to see if you wish to change; but, in most of life, it is best to inhabit your own moments from within them, as an actor, rather than as an audience. Live fully from within your skin and state of mind, rather than imagining yourself outside them- that always has something of an artifice to it, and precludes spontaneity. Einstein said that few live with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts. I.e., people take their seeing and feeling second-hand. And, in this case, I am taking the words of someone else; but such borrowing is okay, I think, as long as they fit your experience and are useful to your attentiveness, rather than to your sleep. Insofar as you can, take your own for your own; step into yourself, rather than from yourself, and inhabit your own being.

     Each moment, its actions and its thoughts, is a preparation for something, or a prelude to something we have not considered. What are you preparing for? What am I preparing for? What is in today that is the prelude for our tomorrow?  Let us live our own lives with integrity and self-respect, centered in ourselves; surely that is a preparation for a better future than looking to other people for our cues, when the purposes that justify those cues for them may not match our own. Certainly, the kind of foundation we provide for ourselves is largely learned, and taught by what is common among those around us; yet, this does not mean the people presently around us wholly determine our lives. With the glimmer of a rare or read-about example, sometimes we begin to see differently, and thereby to live differently as well, than the overwhelming majority of people we know. It is still an example, but a minority example; we can choose to live by the example that is different from the rest.
     We teach ourselves to live by learning how to process our experience. We first learn how to process what we experience from other people (e.g., explanatory styles, the mental templates we use to make judgments, etc.), yet we can learn how to live on the basis of conclusions we draw from attentiveness to our experience itself, and paying attention to what is in it. We are never without influence, but we can learn to choose our influences. The process we bring to our seeing may be the same as that of another person, or ten million other people, but our sights are our own; our experiences are similar, but not the same. Let us live our values, expect less, and make better habits of thought and action. When we think without the script of our habitual thoughts, let us think based on what we know, or think we do. Let us live on the basis of a less explicit script, a barer script- a more open-ended way of approaching life in our thoughts and actions- one that has fewer and less specific expectations, but ones that are carefully selected. Expectations of ourselves, first, and expectations of other people, second. Only then do we have the structure in which improvisation and spontaneity is fruitful and possible.
     It seems to me that a mindful life is the highest quality there is- but only when we live it, rather than talk about it. In the meantime, trying to transmute our words into actions, habit is so much of our nature. Of course, I am not saying we are not constrained within a range of possible outcomes by our nature as well, for we are; but we can only test the limits of that range by entertaining the possibility that the envelope of our freedom can always be pushed open a little wider, that we can choose things that enhance our freedom, piece by piece. When we say, 'that is my nature, it is just how I am,' we overestimate the inevitability of that state of affairs or state of mind continuing. And surely, the conviction that something is impossible is the end of possibility.

     When I'm not writing, I sometimes open cans. With the right habits, and the right tool, it is second nature. But life, as we find it in ourselves and our surroundings, is the real can we are trying to open. Mindfulness- a carefully used, incisive awareness, located in the present- is the quality tool we need if we wish to open it. Conveniently enough, we find both life and mindfulness in the same place, and that is precisely where we are. In that sense, they are both durable indeed; they last as long as our present. Our time may seem limited when we step outside the present, but timeless when we step into it. Knowing when to step into it and when to step out of it, so you can check your steps- now, that's quality.