Although ordinary Samoan houses are built by their inhabitants-to-be, custom demands guest houses be built exclusively by carpenters. Since these carpenters need to find clients, they are in business as artists; and they begin to make personal innovations and changes for no reason except that prospective clients will judge their work for its inventiveness.

The form-makers assertion of his individuality is an important feature of self-consciousness. Think of the willful forms of our own limelight-bound architects. The individual, since his livelihood depends on the reputation he achieves, is anxious to distinguish himself from his fellow architects, to make innovations, and to be a star.

The existence of a performance standard and the association of a numerical value with a misfit variable (eg. maintenance costs per year, acoustic reduction in decibels), does not mean that the misfit is any more keenly felt. There are many, many misfits for which we do not have a scale. Some typical examples are “boredom in an exhibition”, “comfort for a kettle handle”, “security for a lock”, or “human warmth in a living room.” No one has yet invented a scale for unhappiness or discomfort or uneasiness, and it is impossible to set up performance standards for them.

> The reaction to failure, once so direct, now becomes less and less direct. Materials are no longer close to hand. buildings are more permanent, frequent repair and readjustment less common. Construction is no longer in the hands of the inhabitants; failures, when they occur have to be several times reported and described before the specialist will recognize them and make some permanent adjustment. Each of these changes blunts the hair-fine sensitivity of the unselfconscious process' response to failure. Failures now need to be quite considerable before they induce correction.

— Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form

> The operation of such a process hardly taxes the individual craftsman's ability at all. The man who makes the form is an agent simply, and very little is required of him during the form's development. Even the most aimless changes will eventually lead to well-fitting forms, because of the tendency to equilibrium inherent in the organization of the process.
> All the agent need do is recognize failures when they occur, and react to them. And this even the simplest man can do.
> …
> The changes may not always be for the better; but it is not necessary that they should be, since the operation of the process allows only the improvements to persist.

— Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form

> It is the fast reaction to single failures, complemented by resistance to all other change which allows the process to make a series of minor adjustments instead of spasmodic global ones: it is able to adjust subsystem by subsystem, so that the process of adjustment is faster than the rate at which the culture changes; equilibrium is certain to be re-established whenever slight disturbances occur.

> The forms are not simply well-fitted to their cultures, but in active equilibrium with them.

— Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form