Introduction I recently completed yet another reading of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. There is a section near the end of the book where Pirsig, in his attempt to point the root of our current metaphysical crises, reaches the philosopher of ancient Greece. I’ve always experienced both a draw to […]
Tag Archives: quality
Realms Beyond Reason
n” … the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can’t be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem … the solution to the problem isn’t that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of […]
Posted in Quality, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Also tagged Robert Pirsig
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Shodo – Getting Started
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A couple(?) of years ago Iulia went to a calligraphy workshop in Cluj and the papers she came back with shimmered for me. It stayed with me for a while. Eventually, I did some research into it and that led me to Shodo: THIS spoke to me. I seem to be drawn to Japanese culture. […]
Sequence: The Difference Between a Novice and a Master
nThe experienced carpenter keeps going … every action he performs, is calculated in such a way that some later action can put it right to the extent that it is imperfect now. What is critical here, is the sequence of events. The carpenter neves takes a step which he cannot correct later; so he can […]
Posted in A Pattern Language, AltEco, Design, outside, Quality
Also tagged Christopher Alexander
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The Order of the Language
nDesign is often thought of as a process of synthesis, a process of putting together things, a process of combination. According to this view, a whole is created by putting together parts. The parts come first: the the form of the whole comes second. But it is impossible to form anything which has the character […]
Posted in A Timeless Way Of Building, AltEco, Design, outside, Quality
Also tagged Christopher Alexander
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Attention to Reality
nAnd it is in the end only when our feelings are perfectly in touch with the reality of forces, that we begin to see the patterns which are capable of generating life. That is what is hard – because so often people choose to put their own opinions forward, in place of reality. … Yet […]
Posted in A Timeless Way Of Building, Design, outside, Quality
Also tagged Christopher Alexander
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EXTRA Ordinary (Deepest Insights)
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We have a habit of thinking that the deepest insights, the most mystical, and spiritual insights, are somehow less ordinary than most things – that they are extraordinary. This is only the shallow refuge of the person who does not yet know what he is doing. In fact, the opposite is true: the most mystical, […]
Posted in A Timeless Way Of Building, Expanding, inside, Quality
Also tagged Christopher Alexander
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Wholehearted
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A man is alive when he is wholehearted, true to himself, true to his own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations he is in … … it is a state of being in which all forces which arise in a man can find expression; he lives in […]
Posted in A Timeless Way Of Building, AltEco, Expanding, inside, outside, Quality
Also tagged Christopher Alexander
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Spaces for the Soul (a Ruth Landy documentary about Christopher Alexander)
nDear Ruth, thank you for this precious work, it is vital that this story be told, and for it to be told it is vital that it be available. While I understand your motivation for having it taken down, please don’t. Please let it live and ripple.
Posted in Nature of Order, Quality
Also tagged Christopher Alexander, Wholeness
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Christoper Alexander – What is Wholeness?
n“How can we tackle the task of making good sense of this intuition of unity and wholeness? First, wholeness is a structure, and can be understood as such … Second, the thing we call wholeness – the feeling, or the intuition, of what the wholeness is – always extends beyond the thing in question … […]
Jeff Bezos: They know it when they see it
nIn Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig describes teaching students to write and how much clarity and agreement there was between students about what constituted good writing (and how impossible is to define what “good writing” is) … and … wholeness anyone? Jeff Bezos confirms: “In a letter to shareholders, founder and […]
Christopher Alexander – A Universal Personal
n… from the point of view of the world picture in this book, ‘personal’ is a profound objective quality which inheres in something, It is not idiosyncratic but universal. It refers to something true and fundamental in a thing itself.
Posted in Expanding, inside, Nature of Order, Nature Of Order Book 1
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Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 6: Good Shape
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good shape … comes about when the whole is made of parts that are themselves whole in this rather simple geometric sense … is not only making things more beautiful; it also makes them work more profoundly, more effectively.
Posted in Design, Intellect Run Amok, Nature of Order, Nature Of Order Book 1, outside
Also tagged Christopher Alexander
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Inside Grand Seiko
n“This is the minimum requirement in making a beautiful watch: First, each individual part must be beautiful.”