Years ago a hippie colleague of mine out-of-the-blue recommended a book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig. I'm sure many here are familiar with it, perhaps others are not.
The book is a bit weird in that it mixes automotive mechanics alongside thinking and philosophy...two things we'd likely not expect to be mixed. But, it's great. It became a favorite to me. The "where does value?" discussion I've read recently on Hive brought it back up in my mind. It was evidently fermenting in mind and was there, half ripened, when I awoke this morning. And so I write...
Particularly, two things in "Zen" seem apropo here for Hive.
Two things from Zen to share with Hive
First, I particularly enjoyed how the book promotes logical, rational thinking. Pirsig and the lead character in the book are both thinkers (the book is semi-autobiographical). While on a motorcycle and camping trip with his son, the protagonist vacillates between two storylines: the logical discipline needed to troubleshoot and fix motorcycle maladies that will inevitably occur on an old motorbike traversing America, and a "Chautauqua"--a mental school of learning--on classical philosophy. Thus, the title. Being a bit robotic, I especially liked the emphasis on logic.
And as I write this, I just realized why the Zen book popped into my mind last night! Yesterday, I had to quick-fix a neighbor's lawn mower. The clear-thinking, trouble-shooting logic engaged. Compression? Yes. Ignition? Yes. Combustion? No. Air? Yes. Fuel? Yes, but tainted. It got fixed. And, while mowing, the value discussion on Hive was running through my mind. Right there lies the essence of the Zen book--I vacillated between the logic of fixing a machine and the Chautauqua of what is value?
Secondly, as I recall, the book begins with a quote directed toward "Phaedrus". Phaedrus, was apparently a real person, is a fictitious character in Plato's dialogues. There, he serves as a person off of whom Socrates could ricochet ideas back and forth. It takes two to dialogue, after all! In Zen, Phaedrus served as something of a spirit-guide to the book's lead character. The initial quote follows:
“And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good—
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
The Zen book is a little hard to nail down as to its overall takeaway--at least to me. But, the thesis seems to boil down to one thing, and to one word: quality. Pirsig writes about the "quality moment". I admit I did not exactly understand what he was getting at here. Yet, it refers back to the Phaedrus's quote. In it's essence, quality is something that you really can't define, but you know it when you see it.
Pirsig, and the lead character, reflect back to their professor days at a small college teaching English 101 to freshmen. In all of the essays that were submitted for review, many were average, some were garbage, some had quality. Anyone reading the essays, even the freshmen peers, could quickly shovel the garbage out, or recognize the average essays as so-so, but would also say, "This one. This one has got it."
What that "it" actually is cannot exactly be defined. Still, you know it when you see it. It has quality.
Back to that Quality Moment
The Zen book sways between the motorcycle trip and the Chautauqua thought experiment. These two narratives serve as his medium for illustrating what he labeled as dualism and romanticism. By dualism, he's referring to what I'd just call logical thinking. It is Socrates' methodically and rationally breaking down the person with whom he's having a dialogue. It is troubleshooting and fixing an old motorcycle. By romanticism, it is the feel of things independent of logic. The quality moment is, somehow, on one of those rare occasions, when the two magically come together. It's where the logical scientist feels in her gut some intuitive urge directing her toward a hypothesis, then objectively sets out on an clinical, feelings-free experiment. When the logical and romantic mesh, then, Pirsig says, there is quality.
An example from Zen:
The protagonist (I cannot recall his name!), rides a beat-up old motorbike that he's constantly fixing and re-fixing. And he loves it...both the old bike and the process of fixing. His partners to start the ride are yuppies. They ride on a brand new BMW motorcycle. It is expensive and it has the panache that goes with the BMW brand. (I know, it's a bit trite: a hippie on an old bike and yuppies on a BMW, but Pirsig wrote this in the early 1970s, before the yuppie movement of the '80s established the hippie/yuppie dichotomy. Pirsig was an originator.)
The yuppies' bike is awesome and the couple aboard are supremely proud of it and supremely confused about why their friend rides the piece of junk he does. The yuppies apply a romantic view to their BMW bike. It embodies everything they like: it has style, it has that umph that accompanies the logo, it glitters in the sun, it's expensive, yes, but that's part of the whole deal. To them, the value lies in what the new BMW represents. The perception is a very large part of the value.
Similar side note: I once heard of a study involving cheap wine and expensive wine. If taste-tested blindly, people reported no taste difference between them. If taste-tested with the price tag showing, people reported the expensive wine as tasting much better. Perception matters in value.
To the hippie protagonist, this was nonsense. He operated in the rational, dualism mode. Logically, a well-cared for old bike is equal in value to a new BMW. They run exactly the same...they have the same utility. And cheaper too. Plus, when the yuppies (who have no mechanical knowledge and therefore cannot properly upkeep the bike) allow the BMW to slowly deteriorate, the BMW's value will drop drastically. No one wants a poorly motorbike, especially not a poorly BMW where the romantic value, the perception of "the ultimate driving machine", is much of the overall value.
Early in the trip, the yuppie couple brag on their incredible bike. But,there is one exception...there is an annoying vibration that resonates up through the handlebars into the rider's grips. It's a constant reminder in the mortality of the supposedly ultimate machine. They'll take it in to the dealer when they return home for inspection. The logical hippie's brain goes to work. How could they fix the vibration on the fly, on the road? His bike does not vibrate. There must be a solution. His conclusion: cut open a beer can and use it as a shim.
To the hippie, this was a perfect solution. The can was in their possession. It was free. It was easily cut and easily placed into position. And, it would work. Aluminum is corrosion-resistant, won't rust, and is soft enough metal. Placed between the two hardened steel contacts causing the vibration, it would simply absorb much of that energy to smooth out the ride. He came from the logical, dualism angle.
To the yuppies, the idea was appalling. To use a beer can to "fix" their expensive BMW bike was blasphemy. The romanticism of the elite motorcycle would have been undercut knowing that it was hurling down the highway held together by a Budweiser beer can--the drink of the commoner. In the story, they did not make the repair. The couple turned around and went home.
The quality moment did not happen on that occasion...the logical and the romantic did not come together.
Two Hive posts on value
Two posts in particular got me to thinking about value and Hive.
The first was by 
The second was by 
Both addressed, among other things, the question of where value comes from? There are nuances to this question. For instance, what adds value to the Hive blockchain? Or, what makes a post in Hive valuable? In terms of earnings? In terms of quality content, independent of earnings? Or, where does value in the HIVE token come from anyway?
The "exploration" post by
The "voting circles" post by
I don't like circle-voting. It was a big turn off to me when I joined Steemit in 2017. I simply couldn't understand why some of the stupidest things I saw had hundreds of dollars in earnings. I think it's better (less rampant) now. Yes?
I'm okay with auto-voting. I like freedom. My thinking is that you should be able to do whatever you'd like with your money and your vote. If you wish to auto-vote, that's up to you. If not, don't. And, like the "exploration" posts suggested, low quality work should eventually be weeded out, i.e. dropped by the auto-voter. Something tells me that
And what is value? Phaedrus,
I think value can be defined in various ways. It can be weighed subjectively. A cheap trinket can have loads of sentimental value to a person who romantically assesses the trinket in terms of the memories it conjures. Suppose the trinket was given by a long lost lover. Here, the trinket might focus on the relationship that the trinket stands for in the owner's mind, the interactions, the engagement, and the feelings. It has quite some value to that person.
The trinket's value can be weighed objectively. That trinket would yield next to nothing on an free and open market that coldly assesses the trinket's characteristics of cheap materials, commonality, mass production assembly, lack of utility, etc. It is a trinket. It has little value.
Maybe Pirsig was right. Maybe quality (value?) comes when the two come together in that quality moment.
Finally, a case study
I'll try to illustrate an instance where both the logical and the romantic might have come together. I'm intrigued by cryptocurrency. One crypto that I casually follow for its entertainment value is BADcoin. Last year, when it was new, I decided to test out the real-world value of BADcoin. Like bitcoin's "pizza day", I set out to sell a physical, tangible item for BAD--the currency of BADcoin. I documented that endeavor here. I wanted something small, lightweight for shipping, and cheap. The bottom line is that I held an auction and sold a little plastic toy, which I had found somewhere on the ground, for 60,000 BAD.
Afterwards, I did a value comparison to similar toy items that were listed on ebay. At 60,000 BAD, the little cowboy cactus toy was worth about $9 USD. There's no way that little toy was logically worth $9. The cheap materials, commonality, mass production assembly, lack of utility, etc. dictated that. But...
I'd created a story behind the little guy. In the two weeks the auction went on, I posted tales of the little cowboy. He got into a fight with a gingerbread cookie man (who is now a headless gingerbread cookie man, see the link above for the animated gif action), he rock climbed, picked up trash, went to an outdoor symphony, hiked, swam, and he fell in and out of love. People grew to like (love?) the little guy. The community, interactions, engagement, and feelings, the romanticism, added value.
The romanticism added value, but the logical thinking kept that romanticism in check...it sold for $9, not $900. Still, the logical and romantic meshed.
So, where does value for Hive come from?
Quality.
And what is quality, Phaedrus?
I don't know. But you know it when you see it.