The following is a literary analysis of 'The Troubled Craftsman', the first chapter of The Craftsman.
‘The
Troubled Craftsman’ discusses that true craftsmanship is doing quality work for
the sake of doing it and not as a means to an end. All craftsmen have a skill
which they have practiced thousands of hours when they reach a stage where they
can feel fully and think deeply about their craft. The satisfaction of working
is its own reward.
In the
beginning, the author portrays three images of the craftsman. First is the traditional
image of a carpenter, in a neat shop engaged in precision work. His profession
is troubled by the automated furniture factory down the road. The proximity is
ironical to the difference in their approach to work: quality over quantity.
Second is the example of a lab technician, pondering over the procedure,
weighing the procedure with her execution, trying to find the error in either. Third
is the visiting conductor working obsessively with the string players. All of
them are working not because they are supposed to, because of the satisfaction
they derive from working on their craft. Hence, they are referred to as
craftsmen.
Under ‘The
Modern Hephaestus’, the author discusses a hymn to Hephaestus, the master God
of craftsmen which praise him as a maker of civilization. In archaic times, craftsmanship
was respected and brought together people to form a community in which skills
were handed down from generation to generation. The craftsmen were mostly
middle class wedged in between a few aristocrats and a mass of slaves, between
great and negligible recognition. In this era, one’s birth marked one’s
profession rather than innate skill. Their inherited skills determined their relation
to society.
By
classical times, in the writing of Aristophanes, the craftsman was thought to
be ‘stupid’. In the writings of Aristotle, he praised professionals who
formulated plans over those who executed them. Thought was praised over action.
In the classical society, gender distinction was made between the skills a man
or woman could use. The author marks that this gender discrimination is still
present in our society as we relate domestic and industrial crafts with females
and males respectively. Among the philosophers, Plato upheld the ideal of
Hephaestus and wrote that all craftsmanship was quality driven work and the
professional distinctions prevented people from realizing how much they shared.
In the next
section, the author compares Linux programmers with the traditional idea of
craftsmen. Linux is an open source software which means that anyone can access
it which differs from the archaic society where only heirs could practice their
skills. The community is focused on achieving quality, but it becomes difficult
to hold the work to a standard of quality when it is an open community. The code
is constantly evolving as there is an instant relation between problem solving
and problem finding which can improve its quality. In the online community,
there is no gender distinction. The worker is not important, only their work is
subjected to discussion which gives the a freedom of expression.
In the ‘Weakened
Motivation’ section, the author discusses the communist and capitalist society and
how they have not been able to serve the craftsman’s aspiration for quality.
The communist society seeks to motivate its workers by encouraging them to work
for the community’s greater good. This led to a material indifference and lower
productivity as is apparent from the dilapidated state of suburbs of Moscow. There
was no accountability for one’s work, no opportunity for leadership as the
decisions were made by state authorities. However, the moral imperative to do
good for the community worked in Japan’s case where the work was subjected to a
standard of quality and managers were involved in the execution. The
subordinates had freedom of expressing their views to the leaders which
encouraged them to work for the communal good.
The belief
of the capitalist society, individual competition and personal gain can spur
quality, is inspected through the example of the production of mobile phones.
Motorola and Nokia got rid of professional distinctions between their employees
which encouraged an exchange of ideas and knowledge between business units. This
approach ultimately led to their success. By contrast, Ericsson rigidly
organized employees into offices that competed with each other. It led them to hoard information from others
and retarded the company’s growth and ultimately Ericsson fell away.
The corporations
that succeeded were those that were constantly involved in problem solving and
finding which allowed them to evolve, instead of those that set clear standard
of achievements and required closure. Companies lacking in collegiality, which
lacks in a competitive workspace encouraged by capitalism, ultimately
demotivate employees. They lack freedom of expression of ideas to their
employers and ultimately disconnect themselves from their work. The rewarding
aspect of capitalism is reserved only for those at the top of the hierarchy as
is apparent from the statement, ‘in 2004 the CEO earned 350 to 400 times as
much’ the median-level employees. Thus a capitalistic society has created a
social divide by increasing the economic difference between employees of the
same organization.
In such a
situation, middle-level skilled workers don’t stay loyal to their companies as
young workers or peers from India and China can work for lower pay and are
ultimately preferred over them. Their experience loses ‘institutional value’. As employees are treated as a means to an end,
they too apply a similar approach to their work. In all this, the quality of
work is compromised as it is ‘disassociate labor’.
‘Neither
corporatism nor crude labels get at the institutional issue’ as ‘the craftsman’s
ethos of doing good work for its own sake is unrewarded.’ Organizations, that
have created a balance through employee’s freedom of expression, leader’s
involvement in the process and having a vision for the communal good, sustain
an environment in which a standard of quality can be subjected to the work.
In the ‘Fractured
Skills’ section, the author explores how the divide between planning and
execution can negatively impact the quality of the work. He is in favor of
training and rejects the idea of raw talent responsible for success in a
particular craft. He illustrates this through the example of Mozart and how he
had to undergo years of practice to ‘train his great innate musical memory’ before
he could ‘produce music spontaneously.’
The author
favors repetition organized according to the individual’s attention span as a
method to gain and build skills. Training that involves a circular rhythm of
problem solving and finding allows for a skill to be nurtured. Novices in a field
are deprived of such training due to micro-computing that can fulfill the
mechanical demands of a task. ‘The smart machine can separate human mental
learning. When this occurs, conceptual human powers suffer.’
The
intellectual threat that is posed by the modern machines is illustrated through
the use of CAD (computer-assisted design) in the profession of architects. The
swift and precise CAD software has many benefits in architectural offices. The
model can be lengthened, shrunk and rotated to view from different angles. It
can even incorporate the effect of light, wind, or seasonal temperature. This
facility rids the architect of refining their concepts and designs through
hand, to get deeply involved in it and mature thinking about it. The site thus
becomes ‘ingrained in the mind.’
The
traditional way of drawing architectural plans involved rough sketching, then a
detailed drawing, modeling, going to the site and then returning to drawing. ‘You
think and you do at the same time.’ The craftsman’s approach, thus, marries
thought with action.
‘This
attaching, circular metamorphosis can be aborted by CAD’ as ‘the algorithms do
the drawing.’ It encourages a closed system and is ‘a static means’ which ends
the ‘circularity’ of the process. As the software allows instant erasure and
refiguring, ‘the architect Elliot Felix observes, “each action is less
consequent than it would be on paper … each will be less carefully considered.”
Incorporating the texture and material of buildings in hand drawing prompts the
designer to ponder about the materials used and ‘to engage with their solidity’
against the plane of paper. CAD also prevents the designer from judging the
scale realistically as the object onscreen appears as ‘the relation of clusters
of pixels.’
‘What
appears on-screen is impossibly coherent, framed in a unified way that physical
sight never is.’
The author is
also not in favor of blueprints as erasure was quite messy which left no room
for reconsideration of initial plans throughout the process. It widened the gap
between use of head and hand in design as the idea of the building was complete
in ‘conception before it was constructed.’
The shortcomings
of CAD software is explained through the design of Georgia’s Peachtree Center.
Though the design is pedestrian-friendly, the outdoor seating of the cafés does
not take account of the intense Georgia heat and they are mostly empty from
late morning to late afternoon. The plan was made in an ideal setting,
reinforced by the computer simulation. Another example would be that rooms of
the hotel made by John Portman look outward over parking lots. ‘CAD is often
used to hide them (problems). The difference accounts for some of CAD’s
commercial popularity; it can be used to repress difficulty.’
Modern computer
programs learn the mechanical tasks through data feedback but the people using
the software miss out on learning and become a passive witness to the growth
process. ‘When the head and the hand separate, it is the head that suffers.’
In the
parking garages, the lower edge of each bumper at the end of the car stalls was
sharp and had been smoothened manually by steel grinders, as evident from its
irregularity. ‘The craftsman had thought for the architect.’ Painters, of the
white strip lines to guide drivers, were improvised to guide in and out of
irregularity pools of light. The manual workers could think about the designs
more realistically and thus improvise. They were ‘bearers of embodied
knowledge’, gained through action and experience, rather than mere thought.
‘The hand
and the head are not simply separated intellectually but socially.’
In the
‘Conflicting Standards’ section, the author contrasts correctness of a craft
with its functionality. It is possible for one to do good enough work but it
would be in conflict with the principles of craftsmanship . ‘To the absolutist in
every craftsman, each imperfection is a failure; to the practitioner, obsession
with perfection seems a prescription for failure.’
According
to Isaac Stern, the more people practice, the more impossible their standards
become. The author illustrates the difference between practice and practical
through the Britain’s National Health Service’s (NHS) numerical measures
for determining how well doctors and nurses do their jobs. But the numerical
measures diminished the quality of care. The reform of the quality of work of
NHS brought forth the studies of nurses that remarked what it meant to be a
craftsman, ‘To do good work means to be curious about, to investigate, and to
learn from ambiguity.’ In other words, a constant cycle of improvement through
problem solving and problem finding. The numerical standards imposed on the
doctors and nurses did not account for the experimentation that is involved
with improving the quality of work. Many reforms have been ruled for the NHS
but actual practice and forming a routine of the reforms takes time. This is
necessary as it forms an anchor to judge other suppositions of good quality
work.
As the
conclusion, the author defines what it means to be a craftsman. It means to
deploy relational thinking about objects and to be patient throughout the
process of producing quality work. ‘It emphasizes the lessons of experience
through a dialogue between tacit knowledge and explicit critique.’