This video from fashion critic Bliss Foster provided some clues to a question that has been troubling me for a long time: what on earth is this thing called quality? What does it mean for something to have quality? Why are some things obviously quality and others not?
Growing up, I sometimes felt I was split between two worlds: my parents were quite poor, and my grandparents were incredibly wealthy. Like many kids, I was foisted off to the grandparents as often as reasonably practicable. And during those many weekends, I began to develop a tacit awareness that some things were nice and some things weren’t as nice. Aside from the difference in price, what exactly was the difference between two objects on either end of the quality spectrum?
As I grew older and began to understand the economic realities that shape our world, the quality mystery only became more confusing—price became less and less a reliable indicator of quality. Expensive things became worse and worse. Cheaper things were sometimes of surprising quality. What was going on? Yes, of course, my relationship with things was itself changing, but the things themselves were also changing quality all the time.
The more I thought about it, I realised the question was broader than just concerning tangible goods. Why did I prefer coffee from one coffee shop over that from another coffee shop? Why did I want to visit one country over another? Why did I build friendships with one sort of person more rapidly than other types of people? Part of the answer to all of the above was quality. All of these things were quality.
Bliss’s video, which itself is heavily influenced by Robert Pirsig’s classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, provides (part of) an answer to the quality dilemma.1I read Pirsig’s book when I was far too young. I should like to read it again one day.
Quality is inseparable from care. Higher quality goods are made with care. Their creation is done in an environment of empathy, respect, and attentiveness to human needs. This spirit of care permeates and guides the creation of quality goods. And the opposite is true: when goods are made without care, they are often poor quality.
In the weeks since I’ve watched the video, I’ve been thinking this thesis through, and I am convinced there is something to this argument. The things in my life that I think of as being of high quality fit within this framework—at least, to the extent I can observe. 2That is to say, I cannot ever know if, for example, the craftspeople that laboured over my pen were specifically and individually caring, but I can tell that the company as a whole does seem to care.
It is easier to see the impact of care in the world of hospitality. Visit one café for whom coffee is just on the menu because, well, that’s the point behind cafés, no? And then visit another café for whom coffee is the raison d’être. You’ll have two almost incomparable experiences—and I don’t only mean one will give you a better cup of coffee; I mean that the whole experience of that coffee will be higher quality in the place that specifically cares about coffee.
You can experiment with this yourself. Make a meal when your heart is not into cooking, when you’d rather be doing anything else, and not only will you have a miserable time with the process, the end result will not have quality. It will be fine at best. And then make a meal when perhaps you’re cooking for someone you love, or maybe you’re making your favourite recipe and you’re having a lovely time: the end result will be radically different. Even if you cook the same recipe using the same ingredients in both cases, you’ll end up with two different dishes. That is the power of care. It is a thing that suffuses creation and can result in quality.
It is easy to get caught up in the objective features of things. And for a lot of my life, that is exactly how I thought of quality—buy the expensive ingredients or materials, and the end result must, I thought, be of a high quality. And yet as I began to work and to be able to buy things, I realised that it was not that simple at all.
The reason I had trouble with the idea of quality is because it is not purely an objective thing based on only tangible factors. Yes, these tangible considerations of materials and process matter to quality, but it is only a part of what quality is. The intangible factors, such as care, are just as important in the process. This is the lesson at the heart of the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
It is, as always, not that simple, though. In the late-stage capitalist hellscape we find ourselves in, it is incredibly difficult to trace the question of care through complex supply chains that (intentionally) obfuscate the truth. The product designer may care deeply about quality, but the CFO might care only about maximising 👏 shareholder 👏 value, whereas the contracted worker somewhere in the global south might only care for enduring backbreaking labour so they can afford to feed their family—what could the end assessment be of a goods quality given that complex web of care and not-care?
Is it even ethical to expect care in our capitalist society? The local sandwich shop might indeed care about making a good sando, but they charge almost $20 for the end good. Is it fair, then, to expect the global clown-based burger empire to care when they make their $4 cheeseburger? Who gets to access quality goods? Who gets to create them?
Does quality even matter these days? The explosive growth of quality-agnostic (and I think that is being kind) platforms like Temu, Shein, and Amazon suggests that consumers are not willing to spend on things made with care. As Bliss’s video points out, quality can be elusive even at the higher-end design world of fashion. Our endless desire for more is inimical to production with care as the norm.
While these questions continue to rattle around my noggin, I’ve nonetheless found considering the idea of care very helpful in making purchasing decisions and how I spend my time. I encourage you to think about the element of care in the things in your world.
Notes
- 1I read Pirsig’s book when I was far too young. I should like to read it again one day.
- 2That is to say, I cannot ever know if, for example, the craftspeople that laboured over my pen were specifically and individually caring, but I can tell that the company as a whole does seem to care.