In his novel “Lila,” Robert Pirsig continued his inquiry into Quality first begun in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. His main character in “Lila” (which was, again, himself, but this time as a more distant assessor of the once-mad Phaedrus) evolved throughout the story a very different understanding of Quality as Pirsig had adopted previously. Pirsig concluded in “Lila” that: “Good is a noun. That was it. That was what Phaedrus had been looking for. That was the homer, over the fence, that ended the ball game. Good as a noun rather than as an adjective is all the Metaphysics of Quality is about.” (p. 409).

I think his latter understanding is spot on. Quality IS. It’s not a state of mind, a recognition, a motivation, or any particular assemblage of attributes. It is, literally, the Good — which, I readily concede, sounds quite pompous. But like Evil, the Good is for humans a transcendent truth that, together with Evil, sets the opposing boundaries of morality. The closer a product or service can come to “the Good side” of that spectrum, the more Quality we ascribe to it.

And now my head hurts. Time for a glass of wine. Cheers!