Tim Blair, conservatism, motorbikes, and the art of world maintenance

Tim Blair here:

Further proof: the 1960s was a sick decade, and its creepy stars were some of the saddest, vilest people this side of the United Nations.

What next? You know, in the way of making a political point of a truly sad vile kind out of someone's personal, familial misfortune?

How about this?

Further proof: the thirties and forties were sick decades and its creepy rulers were some of the saddest, vilest people this side of neocons waving their feet around in a toilet in an airport somewhere.

Still it's an ill wind and all that. If you go here, you can enjoy all Blair's attempts to link to David Penberthy at The Punch. Gee cross promotion at News Corp is a hard game, as the last time I checked only the cached version produced a result in this flurry of attempts:

The Punch‘s David Penberthy – from Adelaide, originally – has written a very thoughtful and clever piece about the Collingwood football club. I urge everybody to read it.

UPDATE. Link fixed. Apologies.

UPDATE II. Oops! Got that link wrong again. Click.

UPDATE III. How embarrassing. It should work now.

UPDATE IV. We appear to be suffering some technical issues. Try here.

UPDATE V. Now?

UPDATE VI. I can’t imagine what might be the problem.

UPDATE VII. All fixed! Enjoy!

UPDATE VIII. The tech people say it could be a software glitch. Click twice to see if that works.

UPDATE IX. Maybe there’s been a fire or something. Here’s a cached copy.

UPDATE X. At last!

UPDATE XI. Let’s try this one more time.

(No, I couldn't be bothered inserting all the links that didn't work).

Clear implication?

Further proof: the noughties was a sick decade, and its creepy Collingwood supporters were some of the saddest, vilest people people this side of Carlton supporters.

Now prepare for a little leap here, but it still involves Tim Blair, and it revolves around the most recent example - this time in my back yard - of a piece of junk from China failing, the warranty useless, the only option to throw it away and buy a replacement.

In the old days - god how I hate people who start a line with 'in the old days' - a conservative was someone who wanted to conserve. (Latin: conservare "save" or "preserve" - here). When I got my renovated second hand bicycle as a child, I was pleased to get it, I used it for years, and it was passed on, so it could keep on keeping on.

These days you throw the bike away and buy another one from K-Mart. It's too dear to fix. So many things are too dear to fix. Throw it away, dispose of it, maintain the growth, never mind the junk. I usually spend a little more in the hope that things might last a little longer, the quality reflecting the price premium. But nope, they're just more expensive junk that can't be fixed.

There's something to do with the opposite of disposability - a kind of conservatism - that is splendid, glorious and sensible. The New Yorker not so long ago ran a story by Kelefa Sanneh, Out of the Office, which looks at some of these strands (sorry, not sure if you need to register, but hey have a go, and see where it takes you).

Ostensibly it's about motor cycle maintenance, and associated crafts, but it's also about values. The sense of a good job well done. Sanneh's piece hinges on a book by Matthew B. Crawford, who is clearly a fetishist, a descendant of Robert Pirsig, a book for which I still have much fondness, even though I haven't read it for years. A Pirsig sample:

The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of "style" to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it's not just depressingly dull, it's also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized homes. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It's the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don't know where to start because no one has ever told them there's such a thing as Quality in this world and it's real, not style. Quality isn't something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.

Ah stylized typewriters. Those were the days. These days we have stylized computers. But back to Kelefa Sanneh:

(Crawford) quotes a long scene from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” in which the narrator has a frustrating encounter with careless mechanics who can’t be bothered to correctly diagnose his bike. Crawford’s stern verdict: this is “at once an ethical and a cognitive failure.” Such mechanics show, in their disregard for the motorcycle, how little they care about their profession, and, by extension, their fellow-citizens. Crawford says that big corporations—including, for instance, the ones that produce cheap motorcycle engines that aren’t worth fixing—tend to encourage this kind of anomie, by forcing workers to stick to mindless tasks or insipid scripts, thereby making it hard for them to take pride in their work. But Crawford is no Marxist. For him, the solution to big business is small business; he pits the work ethic and scrappy spirit of “small commercial enterprise” against the “softly despotic tendencies” of “outsized corporations.” His book takes up a variant of William F. Buckley’s old conservative rallying cry: it stands athwart capitalism, yelling, “Stop.”

It seems that every generation discovers anew what Crawford has discovered: that work is—that we are—stupid and getting stupider.

There's a lot more, but rather than me rip the text off, why not visit and have a read. I'm not saying that I agree with everything Crawford's saying, but the day I read Pirsig I understood the value of things that last, and doing things that help things that last to last longer. Which doesn't mean I can tell a spanner from a handsaw, but I can tell now the value of things that work, and keep on working (and if you want to read Stanley Fish on all this, go here, though again you might have to register).

When you look at America, and its current, via Wal-Mart and the like dependence on cheap crap from China, you do have to wonder whether the world has taken a turn for the worse. Because we too are like America, and I too have been known to lurk in $2 stores knowing that whatever I buy can't be good, and can't be good value, but I buy it all the same ...

What's all this got to do with Tim Blair? Well a little while ago, he created an open thread inviting readers to Confess Your Biggest Eco-Sin!

It was an adolescent - childish is probably more accurate - invitation to indulge in a bit of anarchist stupidity so removed from genuine conservatism as to be genuinely startling.

Blair isn't in fact a conservative. He's a destroyer, one who wants to celebrate the destruction of things that might last, of a world and things worth preserving, in the conservative way, as opposed to the temporary pleasures of the moment. Because he could never contemplate the moment when conservatism, hippiedom, Zen Buddhism, and the art of motorcycle maintenance might arrive at a consensus.

The responses were - as required - predictably childish, defiant, petulant, indulgent, frivolous, and, it almost goes without saying, greenie bashing. There was much triumphant talk of flying all over the planet, and installing quadrillion air conditioners (probably from China and requiring replacement soon enough after the warranty's expired).

There was, as expected, a triumphant joy in fucking over the world, but it also goes without saying, none of the loons mentioned that they bought a lot of their inexpensive "throw it on the useless heap of shit pile out the back" from China. Which will fall apart in three months when the warranty suddenly terminates.

Which is really funny when you think about it. Six pages of comments and not one of the dunderheads pauses to reflect about the way their extravagant pursuit of conspicuous consumption supports the hegemony of the Chinese communist party. As well as filling the world with dumps full of useless, unrecycled shit.

In the end, the cockroaches will win, because we are stupid, and getting stupider. Each time I read Tim Blair I know that for a fact. And sadly true conservatism is lost to the world, and we are left with idiots.

Which leaves me with one last corollary:

Further proof: the noughties was a sick decade, and its creepy neo-commentariat columnists were some of the saddest, vilest people this side of the Chinese manufacturers who kept on selling crap to the world ...

Now for the love of a lord whom I currently find hard to believe in, can someone find me a decent bicycle which will last for a decade or more, like the crispy bacon we used to have before the war ...

Come back Malvern Star, all is forgiven, and there's a nice thumbnail set of bicycles here.