Craftsman v. Gardener

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants. There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, "dizzy with success", to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society - a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals. The Pretence of Knowledge

Nobel Laureate Freiderich Hayek , author of the tract above (taken from a speech made in December 1974, 35 years ago) recognized the limits of even his level of insight, skills, talents, and experience - and notably, the limits of his colleagues and the entire science of Economics. Isn't that a good definition of "wisdom," recognizing one's limits? As in "Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread."

It could be argued that there are two competing worldviews among leaders these days. One view says that man is capable of all things and can master anything if only we work together, feed technology and innovation, and do things the right way. If only we can learn to avoid our human pitfalls (no need to elaborate those, you know them all too well). Call this the Craftsman View. 

The Gardening View says we are more like gardeners, subject to forces beyond our will, from the vagueries of the weather to the various "pests" of the animal kingdom that compete to consume what we grow before we've reached our objectives. Complete mastery may not be attained, but that's OK, because the goal is more Harmony than it is Victory. 

The Gardening perspective recognizes natural cycles and laws and accommodates them, working around them with strategies to bend, so as not to break. Gardening teaches humility, patience, cooperation. Gardening is about co-existing. Mastery submits a task to the will of the ... task master. The goal is to break the task to one's will, to defeat the problem with a clever solution. Mastery reinforces pride, efficiency of time, and competition. Mastery is about winning.

There's room, of course, for both mastery and gardening. We can blend them, mastering skills while growing our garden. This would, I guess, be treating life as an art rather than a science (but that's a subject for another post).

As I master a craft, I marvel at my skills and how they're developing - or as is more often the case, I marvel at the difficulty of the task and how slow I am at it, how puny compared to the masters who have succeeded where I only seem to fail. Some prefer those crafts that are quickly mastered, providing as they do rapid feedback of success. It feels good, instant gratification. But as I grow older, I appreciate those tasks and crafts that take a long, long time to master. What is hard earned is more appreciated. What good is it to master a simple task that anyone could do? Better to set the bar high then work long and hard to get over it. 

So, I've come to enjoy tasting wine - I sometimes despair that I will ever master the nuances of smelling the wine and discerning subtle scents - is it plum, or cherry that I smell? Then, swirling the wine over the tongue and trying to identify the taste elements. After twenty years of trying, I still feel as a novice when I read tasting notes. It's the same with golf. I'm still hacking away, just a little better than I was thirty years ago when I picked up a club for the first time. The equipment has gotten much better, the golf courses more fancy, the fairways more fair. But the game and its player are still the same. It's still a matter of applying myself, enjoying the game, and taking from it what it will give me.

Gardening, while altogether different than a craft, still takes lots of hard work, just as mastering a task does. But the outcomes from gardening are forever beyond our grasp. Dependent as gardening is on events that lie beyond our mastery, we do our best and hope for good outcomes. We can't control the weather, after all. But we can get good at the skills involved with gardening, which have more to do with accommodation than control.