The book was Pirsig's masterwork Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and I'm not sure why but somehow I knew that it would be an important part of my education and help to shape my thinking and my values going forward for the remainder of my life.
A few weeks later, a brand-new copy of the book appeared in the mail, sent to me by a fellow serviceman, with a note saying that he had felt an unexplained need to get the book to me.
It was many years later when I learned that Pirsig's manuscript had been rejected by 122 publishers before it was finally accepted. I still have that gift copy today, although it shows the wear of all the handling it has endured through the several readings I have given it. And of all the memorable passages it contains, there is an especially meaningful one that I have marked and that I have returned to many times for a variety of reasons, which reads:
"I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature. … or with programs full of things for other people to do. Programs of a political nature are important 'end products' of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think what I have to say has more lasting value."
For more than a decade I have been actively involved in a variety of projects all around the country that are intended to create programs designed to serve as templates for green building and sustainable development. Some of these are proprietary, one-size-fits-all rating systems belonging to and administered by national organizations and others are more local or regional in scope, most commonly initiatives created by, and for, members of particular home building groups and associations as well as other stakeholders, responding to the needs of building professionals who are attempting to address their specific set of circumstances and the political, cultural, economic, and environmental realities peculiar to their own markets.
In most cases, the content of these programs is organized around a predictably familiar set of criteria … energy use, water management, indoor environment/air quality, material selection, construction waste management, and, to varying degrees, land development, operations and maintenance, and global impact.
More recently, I have had the opportunity to participate in the standards development process, namely in the creation of the National Green Building Standard (ICC-700) which earned approval from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in January. That effort directly led to my current involvement in the code development arena as a member of the Sustainable Building Technology Committee (SBTC) seated by the International Code Council to draft the International Green Construction Code, which is expected to be ready for adoption in 2012.
Along the way, I have continually been haunted by a concern that these efforts can potentially result in little more than a "point chase" in which the design team, building professional, and the project owner focus on making sure they aggregate enough points on the chosen program score sheet to attain certification at a desired, pre-determined target level rather than self-evaluating the intent of building the project in the first place and then truly measuring the larger set of outcomes.
Sure, these programs have value. They provide a foundation of collective experience and knowledge that would be very difficult, perhaps virtually impossible, for us to generate individually. They build on one another over time and provide a basis for learning what works as well as what doesn't. They give us a common platform to operate from and benchmarks by which to measure our successes and failures, and perhaps most important, they give us a framework in which we can engage new technologies and products so that the risk of innovation is spread across a wider, more forgiving playing field than if we had to go it alone.
Programs also serve as models for ordinance and regulation, giving the public sector sorely needed guidance in how to deal with the built environment as it relates to all other aspects of society. They describe a set of parameters in which we can comfortably operate, and measurable performance standards that we can aspire to achieve. And they provide the vehicles for reliable communication and verifiable marketing that facilitates penetration into the world of consumers. Programs do have a place in the world, even if they are "full of things for other people to do."
But by themselves they don't teach us how to "fix a motorcycle," not in the sense that Pirsig talks about it anyway, which is to be interested and thus be involved in one's work, which ultimately comes down to caring about it. He suggests that is where "right values" result in "right actions," which then produce "right work," something we could certainly use more of in the world.
In a brief "author's note" at the beginning of his book, Pirsig asserts that it "should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice" and also that it is "not very factual on motorcycles, either." In general, I feel the same way about programs. As useful as they may be, they ultimately have very little relation to who we are truly hoping to be or to the world we should really be attempting to build.