Tag: Robert Pirsig

Under New Management: The difference between the back of the train and the front

It was a good accident while I was shooting the video for this article, when a train came by.  I tried to wait for a previous, huge train to go by, but about 10 minutes later, another came, almost as if the trains wanted to help me make my point.  Because I was discussing the Metaphysics of Quality, a favorite topic of mine from Robert Persig’s famous book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I think it’s one of the most important books that the human race has ever produced because it puts its finger on a very allusive idea, which is why some people are better than others, especially in the field of business management.  And these days, now several years out of Covid, and a world obviously not prepared for Trump to be in the White House, a lot of companies are flat-footed on this current economy.  There was an assumption during the COVID pandemic, and all the way up to last week, that different rules would govern the world, a kind of socialist administrative state where work was bent to the preferences of the workers instead of the needs of the business.  And people are shocked by these very capitalist rules.  All over my town, signs are going up to let the public know that their companies are under new management.  Most of them are restaurants that have been too slow and understaffed for too long. Many people thought they would be able to work from home to stop the spread of COVID, which, in retrospect, was a laughable endeavor.   Yet the entire world tried to think it and actually put it into practice, which was one of the dumbest things ever.  To my point, which is why I can say that our COVID response, even as it was artificial, was really dumb. That train helped me make the point right on time, leaving a perfect demonstration of what the heart of the problem is with all these restructurings. 

What the world needs, especially from every company and every family, is a leader who leads from the front, where all the action happens.  Using a train metaphor, the front of the train, at the cutting edge, is where all the critical decisions are made. For instance, how fast should the train be going? Does it need to turn onto a different track in case something falls across it, posing a danger to the entire train?  Operating the train needs to happen from the front, where all the controls are, and the leader can see what’s coming before anybody else.  However, most leadership cultures, and I can say this after dealing with many tens of thousands of people, most of whom have advanced degrees and extensive experience in high-tech sectors, are behind-the-scenes people.  People who sit in the caboose collect data and report the contents of the train as it moves along.  The information they process can be helpful, but by the time they see it, the front of the train, especially on a very long one, has already passed the point where something was observed.  For exemplary leadership, by the time the people in the back of the train see it, it’s too late to do anything different.  Most management in the world, whether it’s a small company like a private restaurant, or a large company, or a government, functions from the back of the train because that’s where it’s safest, and people generally don’t like danger.  That is why good leadership, let alone outstanding leadership, is so rare in any industry.  It takes a lot of guts to run things from the front of the train. 

When people say they are under new management, they are trying to tell their customers that things are different and that they’ll get more responsive service from the organization, and they allude to this leadership quality.  As if to say that their management is new, and therefore the opportunity to be better is in the future.  But to be honest, the ownership is usually just throwing darts in the dark, and they don’t know the difference between good leadership and bad, because they are too afraid of the cutting edge at the front of the train to make decisions there.  It’s scary at the front, and most people in the world, more than 99% of them, would rather be in the back of the train.  I have literally dealt with consultants at every level who proclaim to know a lot about these things, who are in that consulting business because they are afraid of life at the front of the train, where all the scary stuff happens.  They don’t want scary things in their lives, so they do what many people do who aren’t very good at life: they teach.  Nothing is safer than putting the train on pause and studying its contents while it’s not moving, in a classroom environment where there are no dangers of driving through day-to-day life.  And this isn’t some fluke opinion; it’s actually a flaw in the way we teach generations of people in a classroom environment, and why those who survive the schools of hard knocks are actually better prepared for authentic leadership.  Leadership isn’t taught as much as it is learned in the challenging places that the world presents. 

The problem with all the COVID protocols and the obsession with moving the world into an administrative state management condition, where people could sit in their living rooms in their pajamas and tell others things from a Teams call, was absurdly stupid.  Yet, that is why so many companies are now struggling to meet customer demands.  The marketplace did not go the way it was expected to, and virtually everyone is struggling to catch up.  Many organizations are seeking new management to replace the old one, and they are posting signs to let their customers know that they are trying to find effective leadership, even if the kind of leadership they are looking for is actually one of the rarest commodities in the world.  Good leadership thrives at the front of the train while most of the world desires to hide in the back.  They might make a lot of noise back there and bark out commands, but on a fast-moving train, by the time they see them, the train has already moved well beyond the point of decision-making.  And that is the core of the problem; it takes courage to run things from the front of the train.  And our schools don’t and can’t teach courage.  They teach people to be in the back of the train, where the bootlickers and con artists reside. They are that way because they lack courage and have to fake it to make it.  They learn to appease the teacher in a static classroom, and once in the world, they do the same from the back of the train.  And that is why most management in the world is ineffective.  But then we marvel when we see individuals who have great success at almost everything they do.  This is why it’s called “Metaphysics of Quality” by Robert Pirsig, and it’s one of the most outstanding books on the subject of business that has ever been written or thought about.  I’ve read numerous books on business, including some of the most popular titles on Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma.  All that means nothing if your organization doesn’t have a leader at the front of the train.  And you can put all the signs out about new leadership, but it doesn’t matter if all that leadership is where most leadership is in the world today – at the back of the train, hiding, where it’s safe.  Leaders need to love danger and to make decisions unafraid as they face it moment by moment.  That is the difference between success and failure.

Rich Hoffman

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Why the World Needs Many More Darbi Boddys: Without Dynamic Intellectualism the Quality of Static Order cannot be known

There have been a parade of angry emails and comments sent my way by people upset that I support Darbi Boddy, the newest Lakota school board member, so emphatically. They say about her that she is evil, unprofessional, reckless, disruptive, and diabolically a menace to our community. And to those comments I must laugh.  Evil to evil of course is evil, and I can live with that. But to the rest of the assessments, those are all values that I have which are essential to keep the Static Quality of society in its proper balance. Darbi Boddy should be hated by the static order of a corrupt orthodox, and that was always the point.  And obviously, we need a lot more disruption of that condition to get a properly functioning government school, if there could ever be such a thing. But more broadly considered, this is exactly why Steve Bannon is so hated in society, and President Trump. I am quite used to this reaction because I spend most of my time dealing with it, in all aspects of life.  I see great value in what disrupters to a static order provide in keeping corruption in check, but unfortunately many don’t understand why its so necessary.  They enjoy what a Static Quality provides to their life and once they know the rules of that static order, they are comfortable to find their place in it. But the values I’m speaking of come from outside that order.  I use a number of business techniques from well written books over the years, and I’ve incorporated my own version of my experience into my Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, to make it easier for people to bring some of these positive elements into their own process improvements.  But personally, I have some special weapons that I draw on often that have been with me for many decades and one of those is the work of Robert Pirsig and his Metaphysics of Quality as outlined in two books, the first, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and the second, the sequel to the first, Lila.  Understanding those books will explain why people like Darbi Boddy and Steve Bannon are necessary in the world, and why they are so hated by all static orders.

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author Robert Pirsig defines what the meaning of quality is.  His problem as a teacher which instigated this question and answer was why do we give kids good grades? Is it to evaluate their knowledge, or reward them for a standard correct answer, even if that answer was constructed to protect insane notions of reality.  Looked at another way, when a psycho analyzer might ask a patient what an inkblot means to them, do we get a correct answer as to the condition of the mind being asked, or do they select their answer based on a socially acceptable criterion.  Robert Pirsig found himself to identify most with the philosopher William James who had an IQ of 250 to 300.  I too find William James books enjoyable, but like the work of Robert Pirsig, they are mostly rejected by static order society because they are out of reach for common experience, which cares very much what their peers think of them, which keeps them chained to static order thinking.  Pirsig took his quality concept from Zen and further broke down the concepts into two primary categories, Static Quality and Dynamic Quality. I for my own use rename these terms Static Intellectualism and Dynamic Intellectualism because people find the word “intellectualism” more accommodating than “quality” which requires some baseline understanding of measure which many people lack. What is good quality, telling society what they want to hear, or understanding the contents of a problem and reporting it without fear of what that definition causes.  Both could be true depending on the value system of the culture.

Static Intellectualism are the rules of society, and its value system.  In the movie the Matrix, this is referred to as a “blue pill” existence.  Its football on weekends, good restaurants to eat at.  Saving up money to send your kids to college. Mowing your grass once a week.  Things that society values and lives to.  Dynamic Intellectualism are influences that might be called a “red pill” existence by the Matrix, they are influences outside the static order which challenge the assumptions of value.  In the magnificent book Lila, Pirsig’s characters find themselves on a round the world sailboat trip.  The owner of the boat picks up a crazy woman on his way down the Hudson River to pick up royalty checks in New York before heading out into the open sea for a trip around the world.  The boat captain is a particular man, highly organized and methodical.  But when he picks up a middle-aged woman to go with him on part of the journey, he finds her to be radically different than he is.  She has a very promiscuous life, she’s very random and challenging about everything and it drives him crazy as he’s locked on a small boat with her for several days.  This is where he tries to apply his Metaphysics of Quality on her and finds he must provide more detailed answers to these kinds of questions.  He determines that even though the woman drives him crazy, her challenging of his static order has provided valuable insight into his own state of quality, and his life is therefor much better off.  And generally, it is always determined in any culture that the relationship between corruption in a culture is its lack of Dynamic Intellectualism to test the Static Intellectualism of a culture.  Because without challenges, there are also going to be elements of that society that will seek to leverage conditions to their desire to cheat the system by rigging it in their favor.  Dynamic Intellectualism prevents this from happening by providing a measure that reveals corruption where it otherwise wouldn’t be seen.

When looking at an inkblot poured onto a piece of paper and folded over once, what does it mean?  Well, to the progressive psychoanalysis investigator asking a patient wanting very much to get a good grade and provide a compliant answer might say that it looks like a heart and that it reminds them that the world should be full of love. That would make the institutionalist and protector of that static order very happy, and they would record the answer with great enthusiasm.  But if one were to ask William James, or Robert Pirsig that same question, they would say, “it’s an inkblot folded over where the ink smeared.”  To the Static Intellectualism of that culture that would be the wrong answer and that would inspire the analyzer to give the patient a bad grade, and maybe even to declare the test taker, “insane.”  This is exactly what happened when the governments of the world tried to shut down our lives with Covid or told us that there was no election fraud.  It was the inkblot test, and the Static Intellectualism of the current order wanted an unchallenged answer to the question, what is a threat and who decides it is. By experience, the Static Quality of something cannot measure itself. It must be challenged by Dynamic Intellectualism in order to determine its “quality.”  And that is in essence the Metaphysics of Quality as defined by Robert Pirsig.  A lot of people have trouble with Pirsig’s books.  But they are worth reading and I can promise positive results if you do read them, even if it’s after 20 times. It is because of Dynamic Intellectualism that I value Darbi Boddy at Lakota schools. Why I value President Trump in the White House. And why people like Steve Bannon are so important to keeping checks on the media. Without Dynamic Quality, static systems quickly become corrupted and out of control. And without a measure, you can never know if something is good or not. Which is exactly why the world needs more Darbi Boddys. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Meaning of Life: How to accept the new roles of colonizing distant planets in relation to governing policies

You know, philosophy and science didn’t end with the American inputs of William James, Robert Pirsig and Ayn Rand. Even though the institutions of our modern society are tempted to think that they are the end of the line and that they must now teach what they have learned to anybody willing to pay them $100 thousand for an education that really it’s the labor unions supporting them that’s talking, again from a long dead philosopher in Karl Marx who is irrelevant to modern thought, because his beliefs were more a wish for the lazy than an observed fact of existence. No, there is a lot more to learn and to think about and as it so happens to be, we are living in the most dynamic time for that kind of thought in the history of the entire world. So if you are like me, which is conducive to the reality of the moment, the old static thoughts of old need to give way to the dynamic intellectualism of the creative moment and for that I’m going to say something very important, something that nobody else will tell you presently on the face of earth, but it is the most solid footing that mankind could hope to have, and that is in the rock, paper, scissor game of human development, the way to determine the value in something is in how we can monetize it, because that determines the value of something. Science by its very nature is needed to study where we’ve been but they cannot be allowed to step in the way of human advancement.

I’m thinking of space and colonizing Mars, the Moon, and several other moons circling the moons of the big gas giants at the center of our solar system. In their natural state they are just there doing nothing waiting for the sun to explode destroying everything in its gravitational pull. Humans have been given a tight window to develop life of just a few million years and we need to take full advantage of it presently. That means that all the scientific protestors like Green Peace and PETA, along with the political protestors such as the Karl Marx inspired ANTIFA must either be destroyed or given a seat at the back of the bus and told to shut up. They may have rights to express themselves under the American Constitution and if other countries want to adopt the philosophy of American thought and create laws based on that, so be it. But soon we are going to be returning to the wild, wild west of space travel and frontier pushing that will last pretty much for the rest of human existence, for many millions of years to come and always there will be a frontier to push. It is the nature of human thought to use the necessity of adventure to advance human needs and desires and the governing practice that keeps everything in check are not the laws of institutional thinking, it is the value of the conduct.

I used to read National Geographic magazines and books voraciously. Going to the museum for me in Washington D.C. was like visiting heaven on earth. But over the years I have grown to understand that they have a very limited perspective on the world and of human existence altogether. What makes human beings so important over other life forms is the creative impulse to see what is around the corner and to use their imaginations to get there. No other animal anywhere does this and it can be argued through applied scientific observation that this is the meaning of life—of all life—to feed this trend in existence. National Geographic still has the progressive vision of its founders, Alexander Graham Bell and many others who weren’t wrong to ask questions about the role science played in human experience, but the value of their work only has relevancy to people. Give a National Geographic magazine to an elk in Alaska or a beaver in Colorado and they’ll just look at it. The animal rights activists that might learn something from reading National Geographic are wrong to assume that they are meant to act on behalf of nature because again the ability to contemplate the “nature” of things is purely human. The forces that made the Rocky Mountains could and would destroy every last human being ever created without giving anything a thought. So the contemplation of value is purely human. When in the very well-produced television series titled Mars, produced by National Geographic the assumption is made that there needs to be a governing body in space just as there is on earth, they’d be incorrect. Value is determined by what humans do with the nature that is around them—at every level. A turtle can’t dig in the ground and pull out raw ore and make something economically valuable about it. Only humans can, and thus on the wild frontier of space where huge companies will set up residence and take over the colonization of Mars and many other planets at a rapid pace, science and conservation must take a back seat. The scientists cannot be allowed to become governing elements in the dynamic need to destroy static assumptions. When we get to Mars and set up huge cities of minors and construction workers, the science of understanding what happened to Mars takes a back seat. The funding for their science comes from business investment and economic expansion, so they need to accept that and get away from assuming that their static reality of observation can be allowed to slow down even a little the curiosity of mankind and its never-ending quest for economic development.

Monetizing a planet, or a moon is not an evil thing, it’s quite the opposite. When something is monetized it is suddenly graced with a value that it didn’t have before. Mars in the state that it is now is just sitting there with all its history. The scientist might find all that fascinating just as they may enjoy watching Humpback wales breeding off the coast of California. So what, when did a whale or a dolphin ever build a space ship to colonize a distant star? The value of existence isn’t just in doing what some version of God started as a pattern of life, to breed, to eat, to reproduce then to die in a long cycle of existence, it is accepting that jump-start into consciousness, then to do something with the intellect that emerges. Death or preparing for death for the rest of our lives as the Buddhists do is not a value conducive to the human experience, nor is living in harmony with nature. The meaning of life as defined by human beings is to accept their role of a dynamic force in a very static universe. It is not for the scientist to sit in the back of a caboose studying history, it is in the entrepreneur at the front of the train, at the cutting edge as Robert Pirsig put it in his work so well, that is where the value for all things are.

At the heart of all this is the debate on gun control. As humans move into the vast frontiers of space away from the governments on earth that central question of who controls who and how and why comes up. In America the right to have guns and to use them has decentralized the process of justice. People can live in the middle of nowhere and not expect to be robbed of their values because they have guns to defend themselves. The same application of order will be used heavily on the far distance bases in orbit around Jupiter or scattered all over Mars as a continuous stream of rockets full of payload travels between the earth and those destinations raising the stakes with each visit as those environments become much more earth like in their living conditions. And as all this happens there will be no room for the nosey scientist or the environmental protestors who assumes that their work is the most important to conduct in the universe. The way to determine that is to measure the value that work has in the scope of human progress. If it isn’t valuable, then it must be discarded for something that is, because it is the tools we come to use as humans that matter as we reach out and expand our curiosity to the next corner of the galaxy. It may be interesting to consider where things have been historically, but what matters is tomorrow, and our always driven yearning to find it. That is the meaning of life.

Rich Hoffman

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