A Noahic Reflection

Several years ago I saw an advertisement from an automobile company boasting that one of its models had been completely redesigned that year, and that to do it, its engineers had been encouraged to “think outside the box.” I knew that car. I had rented one and driven it several hundred miles. I knew, moreover, what Consumer Reports frequency of repair records said about it, and was convinced on both accounts that whoever was responsible for producing it hadn’t been able to think within the box to begin with. Encouraging its designers to leave the box was something like encouraging dogs to eat meat. It was a piece of slick-looking junk, and, several years later, the repair records on the redesigned version indicate that it remained so.

Recently I stumbled upon a refreshing critique of this way of thinking from, of all places, the advertising world. Bob Garfield is a philosophical chap who writes (or at least was writing in 2003) for Advertising Age, inter alia. In his eloquent and amusing And Now a Few Words from Me, he says,

. . . Proust, the nineteenth century French novelist/sleep aid, made a striking observation. It was about poets, “whom the tyranny of rhyme forces into the discovery of their finest lines". . . . Loosening by tightening; Proust wasn’t the only French thinker to observe this paradox. . . . Montaigne noted that the sweet sound of the trumpet results from the physics of constriction, ‘as the voice, forced through the narrow passage of a trumpet, comes out more forcible and shrill, so, methinks, a sentence pressed within the harmony of the verse, darts out more briskly upon the understanding, and strikes my ear and apprehension with a smarter and more pleasing effect.’ . . . For crying out loud, you needn’t turn to Shakespeare or Proust to understand this lesson. Just talk to any child psychologist. Children need rules. . . . So why in advertising . . . this preposterous cult of rule-breaking? Rule breaking, in fact, if we are to take seriously all the industry’s widespread and ostentatious claims of iconoclasm, has itself become the rule.

Yessiree, baby, if you wanna be bad, set out boldly to break the rules. Then you can hardly fail. For instance, several of the [rule-flouting] agencies I just mentioned are long out of business. And, of course, who can forget Burger King’s 1989-90 ad slogan, “Sometimes You’ve Just Gotta Break the Rules”? The spectacular crashing, burning failure of that campaign, leaving the client in flame-broiled cinders, is testament to the abject vacuity of the proposition. Yet . . . every creative director and his brother speaks of smashing barriers, violating taboos, pushing the envelope. Why? Who says the envelope needs to be pushed? . . . . The path to market-share hell is paved with brands that actually had relevant, differentiating news to deliver—the kind of brand benefit news most marketers would sell their mothers’ kidneys to be able to exploit—only to indulge in some eccentric notion of inspired malfeasance” (pp. 1-7, passim).

The lesson of the poets and of Montaigne’s trumpet, which here Mr. Garfield applies to his own field of knowledge, is that those who regard the “rules” (which are based upon laws established in the world by its Maker) as holy and strive to obey them, may by grace gain freedom from the laws by finding their transcendental telos. The poet may find poetry, the trumpeter, music, the maker of machines may produce something truly elegant, durable, and harmonious. But not by deliberately thinking or acting “outside the box.” This simply makes one a lawbreaker, a slacker deserving of contempt. One begins by honoring fully to that to which honor is due, that is, by learning “the box.” 

Comments

[Lars Walker]

I've believed this for a long time. One's freedom to paint comes from an agreement to use paint and not stone. If you use stone, you're doing sculpture. One's freedom to play chess comes from submitting to the rules of chess. Without the rules you're just pushing pieces around on a board. There's no challenge and no thrill.

Once you've learned the rules, you may be able to transcend them now and then. But that only works when you understand the rules deeply and know what they're for. Otherwise you're just amusing yourself.

[Angie]

"Very much is said in our time about Apollo and Admetus, and the impossibility of asking genius to work within prescribed limits...Minor poets cannot write to order; but very great poets can"

---G.K. Chesterton from "Chesterton on Dickens"

[dilys]

It's difficult to describe, but there's confirmation of this in the personal practical coaching I do, positioned as it is somwhere in the arena of logic, nagging, inspiration, and sotto voce prayer.

If there is something the person, everyone agrees, should or should not be doing, then their reasons for resisting what is right are extremely fruitful for self-examination and real change. Without orienting to the "box" of natural law, ethics, morals, or even beneficent custom, the process would be mapless, and no one could figure out amidst the contradictory human paradox which is the productive impulse, and which the entropic.

Just one more way in which the Commandments are a gift.

[Peter Leavitt]

I recently read Halberstam's incisive biography of Bill Belichick, the Pat's coach. Here is a very hardworking and disciplined person who knows how to brilliantly analyze the strengths and weaknesses of other teams and develop and execute first-rate game plans. Essentially, building on a foundation of discipline and excellent form, he is able often enough to develop and execute winning game plans that have earned him the reputation of being the best contemporary football coach. Belichick, also, tries hard to sign players with character who will be teamplayers rather than rule-breaking prima donnas.

As a weary and wary Episcipalian, one is aware of the prima donna bishops and priests who are presently being "creative" with church doctrine. In darker moments I think that the whole Reformation is responsible for the lack of discipline and Christian orthodoxy and good form that are the root cause of the ubiquitous decadence of the West.

[Judy Warner]

Having been trained to rebel against the rules from childhood, it took me until mid-adulthood to realize the truth of this post. Ever since I came to believe that rules should be obeyed, I have found more happiness than I had thought possible. There is no area of life to which this does not apply, I believe.

Unfortunately, most of children's education today encourages them to rebel in the interests of self-expression. But when they grow up like that their characters are so unstructured that they have nothing to express.

[smh]

Reading this over again, I would add one comment: Having grown up in the Detroit area and worked, when I was younger, on one of its (General Motors truck) assembly lines, I do not wish to place all the blame for inferior vehicles on the design engineers. They bear a good part of it, of course, but the production of bad, industry-killing, cars is a fully cooperative effort in which labor and management share the blame. Not quite equally. As in the Episcopal Church, most of the fault is in bad management, especially upper-level management.

[T Mahoney]

I wonder about Outback Steakhouse's long-running campaign, "No rules, just right." That company seems to have been fairly successful with this pitch, though I don't have hard data.

[smh]

"Unfortunately, most of children's education today encourages them to rebel in the interests of self-expression. But when they grow up like that their characters are so unstructured that they have nothing to express."

I have never heard this better said.

[Dcn. Michael D. Harmon]

Don't confuse Outback's advertising slogan with its actual practices. No company grows as it has without strict accounting and production policies. Its ad agency may be in tune with its customers' faulty worldview, but I guarantee its employees are taught a different ethic.

[Craig Galer]

I was struck several years ago when reading a book about jazz, how often mention was made of thus-and-such a musician having been "well-schooled" in the "basic rules" of jazz. I had always thought of jazz as the ultimate, "no-rules", free-form, improvisational art form, so this notion of "basic rules of jazz" was surprising, to say the least. But of course, once the basic rules are firmly in place, the musician has wide, free-ranging latitude for the most beautiful creativity.

On a different note, I am reminded of a car that was built in the early '80s, in which the radical step was taken of mounting the engine transversely (ie, parallel to the axle). This afforded all manner of design and performance benefits to the vehicle. Unfortunately, for the V6 engines which were most commonly specified for the car, it was impossible to change half the spark plugs without pulling the engine. Obviously, in their burst of "outside-the-box" thinking, the engineers should have thought things through just a little bit more.

[Gene Godbold]

Re: jazz
I was listening to, I think, Winston Marsalis in an interview on NPR a long time ago. He was talking about how strict and demanding his teachers had been (was his father one?--I can't remember). The beauty that jazz musicians create, their wonderful synthesis, only comes about because of extreme discipline in regards to the rules of music. They've internalized the rules and made them habitual and so their conscious minds can freelance.

[Noah Nehm]

What an interesting thread.

First, poetry. I was told by a Pakistani man that the most beautiful poetry written in Urdu was of a particular form that not only had a very strict meter rhyming scheme, but also had to conform to rules concerning how the script was written (using arabic characters). One would think that such rules would stifle creativity, and yet they enhanced it.

As far as Jazz goes, there is also a set of rules that must be observed (free Jazz, that failed experiment of the 70s, being the exception). It's often said, and is true to my experience, that good Jazz musicians must know music theory backwards and forwards. One needs to know which scales fits the harmonic structure of the tune (i.e., the chord changes), what kinds of complicated chords can be substituted for more simple ones (e.g., tri-tone substitutions), when and for how long one can completely step out of the harmonic structure before resolving, etc. And, if that weren't enough, one must be aware of when and how to add rhythmic tension in the solos by either playing slightly behind or ahead of the beat. So the beauty and freedom of Jazz, is made possible by respecting the structure of the tune, that is, by following the natural rules inherent in the musical genre.

[Ethan Cordray]

Here at Wheaton College we have the "Community Covenant," which proscribes certain things, including drinking and smoking. I can tell you, when my friends flaunt these rules, it's not because they just love tobacco or beer too much to control themselves. Usually, they do it as an intentional way to show their disdain for "the rules" or "the administration." It's that attitude rather than the action that bothers me.

And a friendly a heads up to Gene Gobold: it's Wynton Marsalis.