A list is perhaps the most fundamental method to record or document an inquiry into values.
Origins/Etymology
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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References & Notes
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What is an Inquiry Into Values?
Origins/Etymology
The word “list” is most commonly used to refer to a catalog, inventory or written collection of items or things. Usually, when we think of a list, we think of a vertically-oriented, written column of words. This column-like image of a list suggests its origins.
The contemporary English word appears to derive from an Old-French version of the word “liste” which referred to a border, edge or strip. There’s also an Old-Italian, Old-Norse and Old-Germanic versions of the word. All of these suggest a Proto-Indo-European root-word such as “leizd”, which meant a border or band.
A secondary meaning of the word list is to “to tilt, lean, incline to one side.” This sense of the word is most frequently observed via depictions of boats or ships. This sense of the word appears to derive from the idea of leaning toward something; if this leaning toward were to be something of desire – the related word is lust. A Middle-English version of the word was lysten (lustjan) and meant to “please, desire, wish or like”. The Old-English “y” in lysten is pronounced as the “u” bury , blush or church. So perhaps it should be spelled as lusten…and reveal that connection to the word lust.
It seems inevitable that there is a relationship between lysten (lustjan) and our modern word listen – which is to attend or focus one’s (auditory) attention. When we listen to someone, we are inclining our attention to them. This too, seems to have a Proto-Indo-Eurpoean root (las -to be eager or wanton).
Hlystan and hlysnan were Old-English variants of listen where “kleu” seems to have been the Proto-Indo-European root-word – meaning to hear.
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Today I want to talk about what a list is and the role that it plays in our lives.
In the previous Zensylvania Episode (Ghosts and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), we reviewed a few features of Chapters Three and Five of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. During that episode, we skipped over Chapter Four as it really didn’t have much to offer for that episode. But this time, we’ll be able to explore the chapter to see what it may offer.
As always, I will do my best to provide a reasonable quantity of information from the chapter to support exploration of the ideas without resorting to reading the entire chapter…and also without revealing too much about future chapters in the book. Also as usual, you may wish to review other episodes of the podcast (or the original essays on the website) for further explorations of what I call motorcycle zen.
Chapter Four of ZAMM opens with the narrator waking up early in the morning on the second day of the family and friends motorcycle trip from Minneapolis to California. The first day of the trip had started fine and included a number of the narrator’s memories and thoughts. Eventually a storm caught up with the riders and the day’s ride ended at a motel in an un-named town somewhere between Breckinridge, Minnesota and Ellendale, North Dakota. The riders ended the day sitting in metal courtyard chairs and drinking down a pint of whiskey over conversation about ghosts and the Pirsig family’s current mental health concerns.
After such a gloomy and disconcerting chapter, Pirsig has inserted a chapter which seems like much more homely and familiar territory. The narrator is the first of the group to rise and before waking the others, shares his list of items use for motorcycle trips like this.
Before we go too much further, I have to admit that I am not camper. There have been time when I thought that I ought to take-up camping. Certainly I have known lots of people who love the exploration and adventure that it provides them. But it has never really been my thing. As an adult, I’ve only camped once – it was a summer weekend trip to Mont Tremblant National Park. Kelly and I had rented a little white Pontiac LeMans in Ottawa and puttered over to Mont Tremblant with a pup-tent and woefully little else and spent the night. To paraphrase Pirsig’s comments from an earlier chapter, we were overloaded with enthusiasm and underloaded with the gear to properly enjoy the trip. I suppose the point is that we could probably have benefitted from a better list.
A list is perhaps the most fundamental method to record or document an inquiry into values. A list is a statement of what is important or even considerable in a given situation or context. The list presented at the beginning of Chapter Four is the narrator’s statement of what is important or considerable for a motorcycle trip across a vast territory of the United States of America.
Pirsig’s list may stand in for any list you may wish to consider. We humans readily fall into the habit of making lists, whether written out or merely in our thoughts. Lists probably make up one of the most common features of our daily conversation and yet we rarely talk about these lists. Grocery store lists…is there anything we need or would like to have from the store? In our employment we may be responsible for product inventory, enumerating the features of a product or organizing the dollar spent in the annual budget. Perhaps we evaluate the quality of products or services or we write (or follow) technical procedures for something to be done. Maybe we list of our “top ten” favorite…….whatever…..These are lists…they are statements of value, preference and priority.
In the Zensylvania episode title Footnotes to Minimalism: A Grey and Colourless Philosophy, we examined minimalism and I observed that many people will create a minimalism inventory list as a tool to guide the scaling-down of their personal stuff to some arbitrary and magical quantity. Pirsig’s camping trip list is akin to the minimalist’s inventory as it attempt to establish the barest priorities for (in Pirsig’s case) a specified period of camping life or for the minimalist, a commitment to an idealized life. You may wish to review that episode for some exploration of that, particularly as it relates to minimalism driven by need and minimalism driven by aesthetics – which it seems to me are potentially quite different.
Pirsig’s camping trip list is an interesting mix of necessity and aesthetics. Pirsig is not, as far as I can tell, the member of a nomadic tribe. A motorcycle trip is a form of luxury. His bodily survival does not depend upon it the way a nomadic or impoverished person’s might. Emotionally and spiritually, there may be a slightly different matter.
The mundane and boring items on Pirsig’s list seem to address bodily survival. Clothing, bedding, tools, and other so-called gear. Most, though not all, of these kinds of items receive very little commentary. It is the second category of gear – or said differently, the category of gear which Pirsig imbues with more emotional, spiritual and intellectual weight which receive extra commentary in the book.
Within the list, Pirsig is fulfilling the subtitle of the book. It is an Inquiry Into Values. Items that do not fulfill an immediate bodily survival need seem to require explanation…or where an item fulfills both a bodily survival and a secondary level of meaning carry a higher value.
The narrator extols the virtues of his motorcycle gloves but not (for example) his boots, scarf or long underwear. Which does seem to have been something of a missed opportunity considering how cold the second-days rides begins and how much value is placed on warmth and long underwear in particular by John and Sylvia, the narrator’s co-riders.
There is also an extended justification and explanation of the value that the narrator places on carrying three books: Thoreau’s Walden along with two motorcycle maintenance books.
As you might expect, I am especially interested in the comments about Thoreau’s Walden.
First, I have to admit that at least two decades and perhaps three have passed since I read Walden: Life in the Woods (to call the book by it’s full name). When I purchased the book, I had expected to be impressed by unexpected insights and profound observations. After all, it is a book which has always been regaled as a fundamental American (and on this occasion, I am not omitting Canada from the term) book of philosophy. At the time, I was somewhat underwhelmed and more than a little bored by the book. While there may be a variety of reasons for my reaction at that time, today my estimation is that I had been reading the book out of context on several fronts.
First, I read the Walden without any consideration of the times that Thoreau lived. The concerns and conundrums of a nineteenth-century New Englander were not on my radar at the latter moments of the twentieth-century. For the same reason, I was not deeply impressed when I read Susanna’s Moodie’s 1852 Roughing it in the Bush – despite Moodie (and her sister, Catherine Parr Traill) having lived in the city of my birth almost a hundred years earlier. I’ve already admitted that camping, Life in the Woods and Roughing It In the Bush are not ideals that I have lived by.
That is not to suggest that I have not had a significant relationship to nature and forests. Nothing could be further from the truth. For a considerable time, I lived with my wife and daughter in boreal forest communities of Northern Ontario. Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and Elliott Lake. And even later, when living in the Ottawa Valley or here in the Carolinian forest communities of SW Ontario, hiking among the trees remains one of our favorite activities. But, living in smaller cities and communities, I’ve never felt the special drive to sleep among the trees when a comfortable bed and home was close at hand.
While very little of all my opinion of camping in the woods provides insight into ZAMM – what it does is to shed light on the way that Pirsig invites us to engage with the topics he addresses. Pirsig invites us to bring our individual and subjective experience to bear on the matters he addresses. In fact, when explaining why he brought Thoreau’s Walden along for the ride, he is recommending a way to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycles..and perhaps how to read the events of our own lives. The passage goes like this.
Pirsig emphasized that shoelaces are not on his list to differentiate (and defend) his list as a value-set from the kind of list (or perhaps the absence of a list) of his companions. Narratively, this emphasis may seem like a snarky put-down but I don’t think it is intended this way. I think it is merely a way to emphasize to the reader that the list of values and priorities is or can be a necessary thing to be prepared and self reliant.
Waking everyone to get riding before they’re ready – the narrator says ” I talked about caring. I care about these moldy old riding gloves.” This is a statement of values. It is also rather revealing that he got all of this companions up and moving much earlier than they were prepared for on a cold morning and then wrote off their annoyance as “small differences in temperament” rather than having been a kind of root cause of discomfort for his travel companions. The narrator obviously didn’t care much about these people concurrent to loving a pair of moldy gloves.
I think that I am not being gratuitously or un-necessarily critical of the narrator. This bit of insensitivity isn’t the worst of the narrator that is displayed. And perhaps it isn’t the worst of all of us. In our own way, from time to time, we do care more about our own equivalent of a pair of musty gloves than we do about the people in our lives.
Since his riding companions are clearly irritated with the narrator and have made it plain that they do not intend to head back onto the motorcycles in the frigid morning air, the narrator decides to take a walk and ponder the disconnection between the Rxx and technology. Rather than pondering his direct role in getting everyone moving hours earlier than comfortable (and strictly speaking, necessary)…he concludes that his companions are simply ungrateful for technology.
Despite the profound arrogance and lack of self-awareness that seems to be on display, Pirsig takes the opportunity to include one of the book’s most valuable and insights, “Blind alley, though. If someone’s ungrateful and you tell him he’s ungrateful, okay, you’ve called him a name. You haven’t solved anything.”
This focus on solutions rather than name calling endears Pirsig (if not the narrator) to me. It reminds me of the best parts of pragmatism and stoicism that I have often tried to keep close to my self-possession.
There is, of course the ironic double-entendre opener, “blind alley” – as the narrator was just as blind in his reasoning about the situation as would be the person who undertakes name-calling. There is an inherent awareness of the observer-thinker (the narrator) in this situation. He is not separate from the matters he is pondering…he demonstrates a blindness to his own influence on the events that sent him strolling in the cold and unable to remain in the warmth with his friends.
And on this walk, the narrator has not solved anything.
—
Pirsig’s observation that calling someone a name doesn’t actually solve anything seems to be well worth observing in an age when name-calling of one-sort or another appears to be a common-place occurrence. I’m not going to suggest that I haven’t been susceptible to the kinds of anger, resentment and frustration that leads to name-calling in the first place. Indeed, it may even be necessary from time-to-time to give a thing it’s proper name in order to proceed. By the same token, from time-to-time, the application of manners and a bit of practical wisdom suggests that it’s often, if not usually, quicker and more efficient to take a different route. Of course, none of that gives consideration (as Pirsig’s scene allows us to) to consider our own role in manufacturing the name-calling event in the first place. Pirsig’s scene reminds us that we are probably not the pristine, scientific, disinterested objective observers that we might like to believe that we are. The very act of name-calling is, a kind of values-declaration. The names that we may find ourselves in the habit of calling may well say as much about us as those we direct the force of our name-calling at.
At the risk of overstating what is eminently obvious with ZAMM, motorcycle maintenance is Pirsig’s metaphorical way of referring to caretaking of the self. A part of that caretaking includes awareness of our full engagement with our world.
When we write a list of our priorities, whether that list takes the form of a list of physical items that we need to survive or whether it is a list of names that we call those in our lives, we are setting out our values. But that doesn’t mean that we’ve solved any problems. These lists of of ours are not the things they describe. The cutting edge of reality still awaits us.
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A ghost is a disembodied spirit or soul, usually believed to have originated from a person that has died.
Origins/Etymology
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
See Also
References & Notes
External Links
If the Buddha may reside in the circuits and gears of a motorcycle, what of its ghost?
Origins/Etymology
The idea of the existence of ghosts as the disembodied soul/spirit/self of a person (usually dead) has probably been a part of human cultures very nearly as long as there has been human cultures in the first place. The most ancient literary and religious texts that we currently have, such as The Epic of Gilgamesh tablets or the Pyramid Texts provide evidence of complicated belief systems which included concepts of human/self existence after death or apart from the human body. It is reasonable to assume that the concept of ghosts has been a part of human culture for tens of thousands of years.
The notion of a self that may be divisible or separate from the physical body relies upon a (minimally) dualistic metaphysical system (i.e. mind as separate or separable from the physical processes and properties of the physical body). The term Ghost in the machine was coined by Gilbert Ryle in 1949 to describe the dualistic metaphysical system wherein a mind may be viewed as separate from the body.
Old Norse (pre-Christian) culture allowed for a self which was comprised of four components: The hamr was the skin or body which was capable of some mutability; the hugr (thought, mind) was believed to be capable of separation from the body (hamr) during sleep or trance; the fylgja was an external companion linked to a person’s fate yet could leave the person after death; and the hamingja was believed to be the embodiment of a person’s luck. Like the fylgja, the hamingja was separable from the person after their death. Mutability and divisibility of the self is an example where a dualistic metaphysical system was minimally necessary.
The word ghost appears to have roots in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language which pre-dates most modern European languages, including English. The PIE root word gheis was used in words which described excitement, surprise and fear. The Old English word gast referred variously to breath, spirits, and human beings. The word that we use today appears to have been in use for between 600 and 700 years.
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
In this part of Zensylvania, we’re going to begin to explore the notion of “ghosts” in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In previous episodes of the podcast, I discussed the first two chapters of the book and the wide variety of themes and ideas that were introduced. While review of those previous episodes may be of interest to you, I’m going to do my best to ensure that you won’t need to listen to those episodes to follow-this one.
Picking up our review of the book in chapter three, Pirsig firmly establishes Zen and the Art as a kind of ghost or gothic story and we’ll be outlining how that happens.
Up to this point in my examination of the book, I’ve avoided dips into later chapters of the book as I wanted to avoid getting ahead of the ideas that Pirsig presented when he presented them. In this episode, I’m going to break with that trend as it seems necessary to explain why the idea of a ghost is so critical to explore.
Whether we believe in ghosts, or not, is very much to the overall purpose of Zen and the Art of Motorcycles and indeed Pirsig’s metaphysical system. Not only is it a consideration that has been with humanity as long as there has been a humanity, it is a consideration that gathers strange new meanings in our contemporary era. Gilbert Ryle’s metaphor of the ghost in the machine is so thoroughly taken-up by Pirsig that he argued the Buddha may as easily resided in the gears and circuits of a motorcycle’s transmission as a human body. And here in the twenty-first century we have Artificial Intelligence computer programs that are on the edge of self-awareness, if they haven’t already achieved this. If a sentient computer program, could well reside in one set of microchips as readily as another, even simultaneously so, in what way does that reflect on what we believe about one of our most ancient and vexing of notions…what is a ghost, exactly?
Before we proceed with that question, let’s back to Henry James. We started this exploration with the first several paragraphs of James’ The Turn of the Screw. That phrase is rather interesting when placed in context of Pirsig’s work. The phrase is a metaphorical way to describe something that makes an already bad situation worse. We can imagine a turn of the screw as the mechanical tightening down of some torturous pressure. In his novel, Henry James increases the pressure presented by a ghastly and grisly presence going after a child by having a ghostly presence going after two children. The stakes are even higher. In his way, Pirsig takes this metaphor and applies it to his story. The increased pressure for Pirsig is presented by the alienating mechanistic world in which he lives…a turning of the screw which he portrays as certain ghosts pursue both him and his son, Chris. It’s no small irony, of course that this mechanical torture, this turning of the screw, is so fundamental to motorcycle maintenance as an activity and to motorcycle maintenance as a metaphor for caring for the self.
In the Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition of Zen and the Art, Pirsig explained that Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw had a significant influence on his writing of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. According to Pirsig, he had attended a creative writing seminar in the 1950’s wherein instructor explained that Turn of the Screw is not just a straightforward ghost story. Turn of the Screw is a novel “in which a governess tries to shield her two proteges from a ghostly presence but in the end fails, and they are killed.”
Henry James was a novelist who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Both his father, Henry James Sr , and his brother, William James were philosophers. William James is renowned for his contributions to pragmatism – an area of philosophy which Robert Pirsig’s philosophy is very comfortable with – and psychology. While it is important to differentiate between Henry James and William James as different people with very different works – knowing that Pirsig cites one of the brothers as a significant influence on the writing of Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance inevitably brings the other into consideration as well. William James’ roll in psychology is one area of concern given that a significant feature of Pirsig’s book considers mental health. William James was also a proponent of radical empiricism, a philosophical perspective that “experience includes both particulars and relations between those particulars, and that therefore both deserve a place in our explanations. In concrete terms: Any philosophical worldview is flawed if it stops at the physical level and fails to explain how meaning, values and intentionality can arise from that.”
This perspective is entirely consistent with ideas that John Dewey, another pragmatist philosopher, had expressed. In the Zensylvania exploration of Quality, I examine similarities between Dewey’s Experience and Pirsig’s Quality. Whether by chance or by design (and I tend to think that design is at play) by referencing the Henry James novel, Pirsig telegraphed some comfort with comparison of his ideas to those of William James.
But let’s get back to Henry’s book. The Turn of the Screw was published in 1898 and had an extensive history of analysis even by the time that Pirsig read it in the 1950s and published Zen and the Art in the early 1970s. Pirsig claimed that he initially believed the story was just as it seemed to be – a straightforward ghost-story. When he attended the writing seminar, he learned that James had written with ambiguous language which allowed for either a straight-forward (let’s say naive or accepting) interpretation of the story or a different one. A second interpretation might be that it was not a “ghost who kills the children but the governess’s hysterical believe that a ghost exists.“
It is interesting to note that Pirsig describes his early interpretation as the literal/naive interpretation that the book received from its initial publication up to the 1930s when the ghosts in the story started to be considered as figments of the governess’ imagination. It was the 1970s when text ambiguity was actively promoted as the writing method that allowed the interpretation. If Pirsig’s claim is true that a writing instructor put him on that path in the 1950s, then the instructor was well ahead of the established interpretations.
In the 25th-edition introduction, Pirsig explains that the use of a first-person narrator allowed James to lock the reader’s attention into whatever the narrator has to say….and this say trick is something Pirsig uses in ZAMM. In this Zensylvania episode, we’re going to explore some of the ways that Pirsig leveraged the ghost-story techniques he learned in the 1950s.
I’m going to read a plot synopsis of The Turn of the Screw currently Wikipedia because it serves as well as any other. For those who may have some objection to use of Wikipedia as a source, well that may be fair and reasonable in some contexts but I consider this to be a common-knowledge detail and not worthy of the quibble. At some later time, I’ll write my own plot-synopsis based on a fresh reading of the book. I’ll post that as an entry in my own Zensylvania.com Eric-o-pedia when I do. In the meantime, the common-knowledge repository will have to do.
On Christmas Eve, an unnamed narrator and some of their friends are gathered around a fire. One of them, Douglas, reads a manuscript written by his sister’s late governess. The manuscript tells the story of her being hired by a man who has become responsible for his young niece and nephew following the deaths of their parents. He lives mainly in London and has a country house in Bly, Essex. The boy, Miles, is attending a boarding school, while his younger sister, Flora, is living in Bly, where she is cared for by Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper. Flora’s uncle, the governess’s new employer, is uninterested in raising the children and gives her full charge, explicitly stating that she is not to bother him with communications of any sort. The governess travels to Bly and begins her duties.
Miles returns from school for the summer just after a letter arrives from the headmaster, stating that he has been expelled. Miles never speaks of the matter, and the governess is hesitant to raise the issue. She fears there is some horrible secret behind the expulsion, but is too charmed by the boy to want to press the issue. Soon after, around the grounds of the estate, the governess begins to see the figures of a man and woman whom she does not recognize. The figures come and go at will without being seen or challenged by other members of the household, and they seem to the governess to be supernatural. She learns from Mrs. Grose that the governess’s predecessor, Miss Jessel, and another employee, Peter Quint, had had a close relationship. Before their deaths, Jessel and Quint spent much of their time with Flora and Miles, and the governess becomes convinced that the two children are aware of the ghosts’ presence.
Without permission, Flora leaves the house while Miles is playing music for the governess. The governess notices Flora’s absence and goes with Mrs. Grose in search of her. They find her on the shore of a nearby lake, and the governess is convinced that Flora has been talking to the ghost of Miss Jessel. When the governess finally confronts Flora, the girl denies seeing Miss Jessel, and asks not to see the new governess again. Mrs. Grose takes Flora away to her uncle, leaving the governess with Miles, who that night at last talks to her about his expulsion. The ghost of Quint appears to the governess at the window. The governess shields Miles, who attempts to see the ghost. The governess tells Miles he is no longer controlled by the ghost, and then finds that Miles has died in her arms.
From that synopsis three features stand out for immediate comparison to Zen and the Art: an un-named narrator, a son who returns home for a summer holiday overshadowed by some seemingly dark secret, a child that dies in the arms of their protector.
The fact that there is a dark secret with Miles for most of the book and that the governess is overseeing the children is a parallel to the relationship displayed between Pirsig and his son, Chris.
The dying in the arms is echoed by Pirsig in his recital of Goethe’s Erlkonig in Chapter Five. The narrator is telling his companions that Chris has been experiencing troubling mental health issues and that he, the narrator had put an end to Chris’ visits to psychiatrists because they aren’t kin; this reminded the narrator of the Goethe’s poem which he describes as, “A man is riding along a beach at night, through the wind. It’s a father, with his son, whom he holds fast in his arm. He asks his son why he looks so pale, and the son replies, ‘Father, don’t you see the ghost?’ The father tried to reassure the boy it’s only a bank of fog along the beach that he sees and only the rustling of the leaves in the wind that he hears but the son keeps saying it is the ghost and father rides harder and harder through the night.” And then explains that in the end, the child dies and the ghost wins. This description of the Erlkonig is a vivid link between the inspiration that Pirsig took from The Turn of the Screw and the drama which unfolds on the motorcycle ride taken by the narrator and Chris.
The reference to the Erlkonig in Chapter Five is the fist major reinforcement of the ghost theme that was first established in Chapter three. The narrator’s rejection of mainstream professional mental health care also connects to his comments in Chapter Three with their skepticism and dis-alignment with science. Chapter five even has a brief dream-sequence where the narrator’s dream casts him and Chris in the roles of the father and son in the Erlkonig. Pirsig is clearly emphasizing that this connection should be made.
The fact that the narrator explicitly rejects professional psychology should seem odd as we contemporary parenting expectations would be troubled to reject professional help. It is also interesting to consider the ironic associations to William James and psychology. Later in the book, of course we find that the narrator had troubling experience of psychiatry given his peronsl history of having received electro-convulsive shock therapy. We’ll explore that in a later episode along with a variety of parallels to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Today we’re going to try to stick to the ghosts.
By establishing a parallel between the characters and the narrative methods of The Turn of the Screw, Pirsig invites similar analysis of the book’s plot and scrutiny of the narrator’s trustworthiness as a source of factual information and indirectly a concern with radical empiricism and its relationship to ghosts of various kinds.
Chapters Three and Five both feature settings that are classic ghost-story fare. Chapter three builds up to the ghost story with the riders arriving in town on a dark and stormy night. Both chapters feature the requisite campfire scenes and Chapter five has a silvery moon as the narrator reflects on these matters.
Who the ghost may be and why it may be haunting the family motorcycle ride is not revealed at this point in the narrative. But there are considerable hints so far: science is questioned, the validity of ghosts from a cultural perspective is allowed, mental health is brought in as a concern.
To get us started, I want to compare a couple of definitions of what a ghost is. I consulted several dictionaries and the most common primary definition of a ghost is that it is a disembodied soul or the spirit of a dead person. Clearly there are a variety of usages of the word ghost which draw on its primary meaning. For example, a “ghost of an image” is a faint impression, trace or outline rather than a fully detailed image. But let’s stick with the primary definition for a moment – that is the “disembodied spirit or soul of a person.”
With some word definitions, it can be extremely difficult not to find oneself running around in circles when attempting to pin down what a word means. To say that a “ghost” is a disembodied “spirit” or “soul” as a definition implies that one knows what those other words mean. But what if you don’t? What does it actually mean to be “disembodied”? These words rely on reference to concepts within a pretty complicated metaphysical system. If you don’t know how that metaphysical system is supposed to work, well you really can’t get at what the word “ghost” means.
The word “ghost” relies on the notion that there is something about people that can be separated from a physical body which retains some kind of singular and identifiable consistency or relatedness to the physical body. It’s a pretty extraordinary concept.
In the usual definitions of the word “ghost”, it is almost impossible to avoid indications that “ghosts” are that singular and identifiable something which can be separated from a physical body and that the original person is in fact dead. Clearly there’s a suggestion that ghosts arise pretty much exclusively from dead persons. Indeed, in most understanding of ghosts, physical death of a person’s body is a kind of pre-requisite condition for a ghost condition to be in play.
The etymology of the word “ghost” suggest that it comes from a proto-Indo-European root word, “gheis’ which implied fright, amazement and fear. This is an important root meaning or implication of the word ghost and we shouldn’t let that stray too far from our attention.
In chapter 3, the narrator advances a proposition that a ghost is something which has no matter and no energy. According to the narrator, this is depiction of two key attributes of a ghost fits is consistent with science and the laws of physics…and very shortly thereafter, uses the same attributes to argue that the “laws” of physics, numbers and other such things should also be disbelieved because they have no matter no energy.
Clearly Pirisg is attempting to disrupt the reader’s comfort with what it means to be a ghost…and thereby the metaphysical principles that such a word relies-upon.
Pirsig has taken this definition and, rather uncomfortably for many people, applied it to the “laws of science”. In what way do these laws exist that is different than ghosts. Well one might say that the phenomena would exist in physics regardless of whether we humans explain those phenomena in language or not. If a tree falls the forest, there is sound whether there’s a observing individual or not.
Pirsig introduces the idea that things may be considered “real” within a cultural context. The “real” ghosts of one culture may not necessarily be the “real” ghosts of another culture. I think Pirsig is doing this to shake our confidence in how we view descriptions of “reality” put forward by mid-twentieth century science. This is done early in the book to allow Pirsig space to develop an alternate depiction of how reality works.
In the spirit of The Turn of the Screw, Pirsig seems to be suggesting that the subjective view of reality put forward by our narrating culture (in this case, a culture heavily influenced, if not quite dominate by science) may not actually have any ghosts other than those which we ourselves embody.
Over the course of ZAMM, it becomes increasingly clear that the narrator of the story is haunted by the “ghost” of an earlier self. In Pirsig’s case, this haunting is depicted as a sharply real situation based on the severing of one version of himself from another version via electro-convulsive shock therapy. The narrator is telling the story of Pirsig’s life as though he did not directly experience it and only has access via documents and notes and occasional flashes of recollection.
For the narrator, the “ghost” which haunts him is not only “in his mind” but is his mind. This is a way to examine and critique a concept of dualism which allows a separation of mind and body. If the “self” which occupied the body of Robert Maynard Pirsig has driven out by electro-convulsive shock therapy, is it possible for that “self” to continue to exist as a kind of “ghost”? If not, in what way is that earlier version of the self that is capable of producing a “ghost”?
In what way are memories, idea or other phenomena anything other than ghosts?
The narrator makes an unexpected declaration when he claims that nothing outside of the mind exists. This is rather like the position taken by George Berkeley in the late 1700s. Berkeley’s subjective realism (aka empirical idealism) argues that objects in the physical world cannot exist without being perceived. Berkeley’s perspective is a kind of monism (where everything that exists is comprise of some single fundamental thing). In Berkeley’s case, this seems to be a version of “mind” (a deity’s and human).
We must also consider the various alternative positions represented by William James ( radical empiricism, a philosophical perspective that “experience includes both particulars and relations between those particulars, and that therefore both deserve a place in our explanations. In concrete terms: Any philosophical worldview is flawed if it stops at the physical level and fails to explain how meaning, values and intentionality can arise from that.”
Again the point here is to shake our confidence in models of reality which rely-upon or tolerate dualism. The idea that nothing exists outside of our mind is ridiculous but that doesn’t mean that some philosophers who proposed such an idea weren’t well regarded in their own time – let alone today.
A reasonable person must also question whether the argument that mind only exists as a consequence of materiality (the opposite extreme position of dualism) may also be considered ridiculous. What makes the proposition that mind only exists as a consequence of physical processes exits within our culture as a result of ghost-like propositions which do not have any physical reality in themselves.
In an experiment to fill a Klein bottle, the presenter states that a number of directly observable things (such as a contained volume) may not be readily obvious to mathematics. Mathematics is a language that may be used to depict the world but the language must be worked out over time by observers who develope ability to depict a particular truth but may not understand the given language which would be required to explain it.
This is the lesson of striving toward an accurate, necessary and true explanation of the universe. Languages, whether they are Greek, Chinese, English, mathematics or something else altogether are developed over time to explain complicated physical and conceptual portions of reality. What is the mathematical terminology for “tiger”? As far as I know, there isn’t one. Yet I can stay “tiger” and the vast majority of English-speaking people will know exactly what I am referring to.
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Motorcycle Zen is a philosophical stance and state of mind that originated and was developed on the Zensylvania website and podcast.
Origins
Etymology
Philosophical Stance
See Also
References & Notes
External Links
Between the horns of dualism.
Origins
The term Motorcycle Zen first appeared on the Zensylvania website and podcast on September 22, 2021 at 19:21. Eric Adriaans used the term to describe several concepts and rhetorical methods observed in Robert Pirsig’s 1974 book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Motorcycle Zen is an abbreviation of Pirsig’s iconic book title but is not intended to be a faithful mirroring of its ideas.
Etymology
The term Motorcycle Zen is derived from the words motorcycle and zen.
The word Zen is from the term assigned to a specific set of philosophical positions, aesthetic practices and daily-living techniques which were formalized in Japan from the seventh century through to the present.
The word Motorcycle is a compound word denoting a two- or three-wheeled motorized vehicle. The root-word motor indicates a rotating mechanism or machine that imparts motion by converting energy from one form (eg. electricity, fuel) to another (eg. mechanical energy, experience) . The root-word cycle is derived from bicycle or tricycle, which more typically refers to two- or three-wheeled vehicles where a human serves as the motor, converting energy into motion via pedals, a chain and gears.
Philosophical Stance
In Zensylvania, motorcycle is intended to be interpreted as a metaphor and potential avatar of the self in consideration of the human condition. In usage as a metaphor, the term may include a range of motorized and non-motorized vehicles in addition to the two-wheeled variety.
Motorcycle Zen, as used in Zensylvania, is an open-minded, contemplative inquiry into formulation of a coherent, logical, necessary personal philosophy which offers the opportunity to individually reconcile twenty-first century human experience and allows every element of our experience to be interpreted.
The stance surveys and incorporates elements of alternate philosophies, perspectives and fields such as stoicism, pragmatism, Zen, process philosophy, biosemiotics, mathematics, machine learning and logic on a contingent (provisional, limited-extent) and instrumental basis.
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If your compass does not point towards Quality, where does it point?
Introduction
I wanted to start this essay with a reasonably brief and straight-forward definition of the word “quality”. As it turns out, I couldn’t find a practical definition that I was satisfied with. It may be a peculiar trait of mine that I prefer a word’s or concept’s definition not to contain words or concepts that merely point straight back to place I started. Like some semantic Ouroboros eating its own tail. Unfortunately, definitions for the word “quality” often circle back on themselves.
For example, Merriam-Webster’s definition says that quality is “a degree of excellence”. Follow-through on this information and you find that excellence is “an excellent or valuable quality” and that “excellent is very good of its kind : eminently good.“. Of course something that is “eminently good” means that it is observably good. Next we find that good is something that is “of a favourable character” or “conforming to a standard” among other things. Finally, something that is of a favourable character is something we favour or prefer while a standard is of course “something set up and established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight, extent, value, or quality“.
It’s like that with all of the definitions that I’ve looked at so far – a somewhat fuzzy realm of subjective preferability and objective standardization.
The extraordinary fuzziness and variability of what may be contained within the term “quality” is somewhat surprising but hardly a new matter. Every one of us has some degree of self-assuredness that we know what is or is not of good quality. So certain are we that Pirsig quoted Plato as a kind of heading to ZAMM with And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good – Need we ask anyone to tell us these things? We’ve always known what is or is not good….we have our own fuzzy logic system to determine what meets our individual and ever-changing mix of subjective preferences and objective standards.
Regular visitors to Zensylvania will probably be familiar with Zensyalvania’s ongoing preoccupation with Robert Pirsig’s books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. I have readily used Pirsig’s books as touchstones within several investigations and inquiries. These two books are categorized by some people as works of philosophical fiction. This categorization describes a situation where a story is used as the setting, context or framing for some particular philosophical material to be conveyed.
While it is tempting to spend time quibbling over the extent to which the categorization of any book or work as philosophical fiction is meaningful, and indeed the extent to which the term reasonably applies to Pirsig’s books, I’m going to avoid doing that for now. It may be something to examine at some later time. Instead, I’m going to go along with this particular application of the analytical knife because it is clear that Pirsig’s books are intended to communicate some particular philosophical content and that they are fictionalized versions of Pirsig’s life, if not entirely fiction.
The particular philosophical content that the books convey has come to be known as the Metaphysics of Quality. And that is where we’re going to start in this essay.
‘Start” may not be exactly the correct term since that really began in Episode 15, when I spent some time in review of a book titled On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence. This is a posthumously published collection of Pirsig’s comments and insights into the Metaphysics of Quality which was released in March of 2022. For this essay, I want to begin by returning to some of my comments from that Zensylvania episode. If you’ve previously reviewed that episode, this may be slightly repetitive, I hope to mitigate any sense of redundancy by expanding on the initial reactions I had.
All of this will be in an effort to pin down a few basic questions when it comes to the Metaphysics of Quality.
Quality Undefined: MovingTowards an Initial Definition
Throughout ZAMM and much of Lila, Pirsig avoided providing a definition of “Quality”. On page 97 of On Quality, there is an excerpt from his 1974 lecture at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where he said that, “One of the advantage of keeping Quality undefined – which is central to [Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]…as long as you keep it undefined, then it becomes an instrument of change, and you can grow, because the things that you find Quality in are going to change as you grow.“
Despite his early motivation to avoid providing a definition of Quality, Pirsig eventually used the term as a direct or indirect referent to a variety of other concepts which I am listing here:
God
the phoneme “rta” from the Proto-Indo-European language
the essence of experience
selection
meaning
dharma
the pure thing (Hindu traditions); the pure non-thing (Buddhist traditions)
“what holds together”
righteousness; rightness
the stable condition which gives man perfect satisfaction
duty toward self
virtue of the ancient Greeks
the Cosmic order of things
spirituality
Metaphysics of Quality is Metaphysics of Spirituality
the Tao
This is probably an incomplete list as Pirsig admitted to a preparedness to talk about Quality for hours on end without establishing a firm meaning. Initially, I’d like to focus on the third item in this list, “the essence of experience” as it introduces two underlying connections that should be examined.
In David Grainger‘s 2006 book, John Dewey, Robert Pirsig and the Art of Living: Revisioning Aesthetic Education, Grainger suggests that Pirsig’s idea of Quality is equivalent to Dewey’s idea of “Experience“. For those who may be interested to verify for themselves whether Grainger’s comparison is correct, he seems to rely upon Dewey’s Art as Experience and Experience and Education. You can be sure that these are on my acquisition list for 2023.
In the meantime, here are a few ideas from Dewey. Ordinary experience has no structure. It is a continuous stream. The subject (i.e. person) goes through the experience of living but does not experience everything in a way that composes an experience. Meanwhile an aesthetic experience is a kind of event which stands out from the ordinary or general experience. While I don’t pretend to any kind of authority to correct or alter Dewey’s terminology…it occurs to me that Dewey was establishing that Aesthetic Experience is at least partially comprised of definable events while Ordinary Experience is not. Experiences are structured situations over time – however fuzzy may be the definition of the experience’s actual beginning or end.
Dewey’s ideas do seem to echo Pirsig’s notions of Static and Dynamic Quality where Static Quality seems to share some attributes with Dewey’s Aesthetic Experience and Dynamic Quality with Ordinary Experience.
In FSC Northrop’s The Meeting of East and West (that is the book which Pirsig credits with closing his youthful period of drifting and lending direction to his life, there is a passage about “undifferentiated aesthetic continuum” and “experience”.
Later in this essay I will look at A.N. Whitehead’s Process and Reality but for now let me suggest that if there are parallels between Pirsig’s “Quality” and Dewey’s “Experience”, these may also be aligned with Whitehead’s “Process”: “The process is nothing else than the experiencing subject itself. In this explanation, it is presumed that an experiencing subject is an occasion of sensitive reaction to an actual world.”
Granger references’ Heisenberg’s Principle of Indeterminacy and says something that links these things together, “all existences, material and ideational, are best viewed as events rather than substances.“
And this leads me to the observation that
Quality is an event.
What is Quality?: Toward a Second Definition
In order that we may get at what Pirsig may have been trying to convey in the Metaphysics of Quality, it seems essential to get at the individual terms in the phrase. I’m going to set aside the term metaphysics for now except to accept a kind of common-knowledge definition of metaphysics as the part(s) of philosophy which deal(s) with the fundamental nature of reality and existence and, by extension, those parts of reality and existence which don’t (at least superficially) appear to have a source or cause in physical, objective sources.
Provisionally I am interpreting the phrase “Metaphysics of Quality” such that the word “of” is a function word indicating origin or derivation. So the phrase, “metaphysics of quality” means: an explanation of the fundamental nature of reality and existence where quality is the original source or cause. Another way to phrase it might be that reality and existence is derived from a primordial Quality.
And now we have the question…what is “Quality“?
Since the Metphysics of Quality is Pirsig’s notion, it seems only fair to begin with explanations that he’s provided. But we will get to some other explanations that I’ve found interesting during that time I’ve been examining the idea….and, of course, also to some of my own observations.
In On Quality, there is an excerpt from a letter dated September 11, 1994 and it includes this brief section:
“Quality can be equated with God, but I don’t like to do so, “God” to most people is a set of static intellectual and social patterns. Only true religious mystics can correctly equate God with Dynamic Quality. In the West, particularly around universities, these people are quite rare. The others, who go around saying, “God wants this,” or “God will answer your prayers,” are, according to the Metaphysics of Quality, engaging in a minor form of evil. Such statements are a lower form of evolution, intellectual patterns, attempting to contain a higher one….” (pg. 81)
This seems to be a good place to start because it establishes and gives shape to a few specific traits that Pirsig posited about Quality. So I want to parse the various phrases here in an attempt to determine what he may have intended.
First he says that “Quality can be equated with God“. I want to take notice that Pirsig did not say “Quality is God“, only that “Quality can be equated with God”. Philosophy can readily be an exercise in splitting and re-splitting of conceptual hairs, but this is one that does seem to need to be split. The difference between the phrase “Quality is God” and “Quality can be equated with God” is meaningful because the concept of equivalence (as represented by the words “equated with“) is not that of sameness (As represented by the word “is“).
By saying “Quality can be equated with God“, Pirsig seems to be suggesting a comparison of two separate concepts based upon a function. The specific function being described is, as established in the brief definition above, that of an original source or cause.
In other words, Pirsig’s Quality functions in his metaphysical system as a monism in a similar fashion to how God functions as a monism in some other metaphysical systems.
The balance of Pirsig’s passage is an attempt to steer examination of “Quality” away from theology. Undoubtedly, there are a number of very good reasons to do that. But it is also very difficult to establish an existential origin story without having to engage the argument for a primordial entity or agent of creation. A deity. When I read Pirsig, I have the sense that he tries to do so.
Of course trying to posit an existential origin story without a deity causes some people a great deal of difficulty. And that maybe one of the reasons that Pirsig phrased things the way that he did. The Metaphysics of Quality is an explanation of existence and reality where the concept of “Quality” functions as the concept of “God” in separate and distinct existential origin stories. Discussion of “Quality” is not, therefore, a theological discussion on the nature of a deity.
Quality vs quality vs qualities: Towards a Third Definition
Now that we’ve established, to a limited extent, what Robert Pirsig had in mind in his Metaphysics of Quality, I’d like to get back to some more practical and familiar conceptions of quality.
In the day to day usage of the term, we may be quite comfortable with referring to any given thing or experience as being of high or low quality or perhaps alternately good quality or poor quality. In other words, we are readily able to assign a value to a thing or experience based upon some collection of subjective (personally perceived) traits and objective (empirically measurable) characteristics.
If we are, for example, visiting an auto-parts store to purchase a bolt to replace one that has broken during a repair on our motorcycle, we might say that a particular store-clerk’s dismissive attitude or lack of knowledge regarding engine bolts was a low quality service; similarly we might feel that the purchased bolt was of excellent quality as its metallurgy and machining met the specifications for the bolt’s purpose. Our subjective and objective criteria either were or were not met.
Often these criteria are considered to be “qualities” of the item or experience. A store clerk’s attentiveness is one quality while their product knowledge is another quality. Similarly, the bolt’s metallurgy and machining are sometimes referred-to as qualities.
This use of the term quality in day-to-day use is actually problematic as these ought more accurately to be referred to as: properties, factors, components, elements, constituents, items (a variety of other terms might easily be added) of the artifact’s or experience’s overall quality.
In this way, quality (and even qualities) are a set of subjective and objective measurements of an artifact’s or experience’s ability to fulfill its defined or expected purpose.
It would be correct, albeit slightly absurd, to argue that a banana makes a very poor quality engine bolt nor that an engine bolt is a low quality snack. Clearly, banana’s are not intended to be engine bolts and engine bolts are not machined for human nutrition. This means that defined purpose is an important and meaningful consideration. Defined purpose is another way to say that quality is relational and that the quality of an artifact or experience is normally assessed in context of an expected or defined purpose.
Fuzzy Standards: Synthesis of the Definitions
This is where the title of this essay considers what I’m calling “fuzzy standards”. While I am not completely aware whether this term that I’ve used is completely novel, I will say that it derives from my Incomplete Exploration(s) of Fuzzy Logic and concepts therein.
Within Fuzzy Logic, there are so-called Fuzzy Sets which comprise a predetermined set of conditions to inform an input-output decision making model. In this situation, the Fuzzy Set attempts to allow for a nearly infinite range of possibilities between 0 and 1 (the ultimately reductive binary either/or). In a binary-digital world, engine oil might be called either “hot” (denoted by 1) or “cold” (denoted by 0). Clearly this is not correct as temperature is almost infinitely variable and could be assigned a nearly infinite range of temperatures based on the extent to which more (or less) heat is present.
I mention this as an indication that “Fuzzy Standards” begins to consider the matter of the phrase ” the extent to which” in setting of standards within a Dynamic Quality world.
I’ve borrowed Pirsig’s term Dynamic Quality and the fact that a perpetually changing world fundamentally establishes that any standard (eg. a specific oil temperature, a particular metallurgical composition of a bolt, a depth of knowledge of a clerk) must necessarily be fuzzy (situationally-defined) and relational.
The Metaphysics of Quality and The Philosophy of Organism
In Episode 15, I commented that I felt this passage maintains Pirsig’s inquiries in alignment with humanist enlightenment ideas and also some ideas that Alfred North Whitehead expressed in Process and Reality.
Alfred North Whitehead
In that book, Whitehead provided what he called the “Philosophy of Organism“. In my opinion, Pirsig’s philosophy is well-aligned with many of Whitehead’s ideas.
Whitehead opened Process and Reality with the declaration that “This course of lectures is designed as an essay in Speculative Philosophy.” and then goes on to define and defend speculative philosophy. Well Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality is also an exercise in Speculative Philosophy. Here is Whitehead’s definition “Speculative Philosophy:
Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to form a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted.
Since Whitehead was a thorough-going philosopher, he proceeded to provide definitions for most of the terms used in the definition. I’m not going to chase that all down at present. I’m including it here in our consideration of Quality to help set the setting for Pirsig’s definitions (since there have been many) of Quality as a concept within a Speculative Philosophy system as presented by Whitehead.
“I ride, therefore I am.”: Rene Descartes would have written it, if only he’d had the opportunity; Photo Courtesy Pinterest
In Whitehead’s preface to Process and Reality, he explained his approach in contrast to others when he wrote that “The positive doctrine of these lectures is concerned with the becoming, the being, and the relatedness of ‘actual entities’. An ‘actual entity’ is a res vera in the Cartesian sense of that term; it is a Cartesian ‘substance’, and not an Aristotelian ‘primary substance’. But Descartes retained in his metaphysical doctrine the Aristotelian dominance of the category of ‘quality’ over that of ‘relatedness’. In these lectures ‘relatedness’ is dominant over ‘quality’.”
Whitehead goes on to give a brief summary of relatedness but again I’m going to defer examination of this to focus on the similarity in approach between Pirsig and Whitehead, specifically that the positioning of quality within a metaphysical system is a meaningful part of that system.
Returning to the earlier passage by Robert Pirsig that Quality can be equated to God, I am grateful that Wendy Pirsig and the editors of the book didn’t shy away from including this passage as it does positively establish the kind of metaphysical positioning of Quality that Pirsig reached.
All of that is to say that Pirsig’s capital-Q “Quality” term may be readily separated from common day-to-day usage of the term since the underlying position of the term is different than a subject-object-relational metaphysics as found in Rene Descarte’s outlook.
I say separate – but that may not be the right term as Pirsig did further divide Quality into “Dynamic Quality” and “Static Quality”.
A Provisional Definition of Quality
While it is certainly tempting to continue running down various rabbit-holes… I think we’ve actually reached a good point to finalize and summarize a provisional definition of Quality.
Quality is an event which a subjective experiencer (an actual entity) has a relationship-to within an actual (objectively real) world; in static form, quality is the aggregation (or fuzzy set) of subjective and objective measurements of an artifact’s or experience’s ability to fulfill its defined or expected purpose(s) and is consistent with a delimited Aesthetic Experience within an ongoing Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum. In dynamic form, Quality is that which mediates relations between an undifferentiated aesthetic continuum and actual entities. Quality is an idea and term which allows every element of our experience to be interpreted. It functions as a monism and may be best described via the metaphor of a field.
(Editorial Note: the above definition is a second revision circa December 2022).
I hope this jumble of metaphysical jargon is as clear to you as it is me. I will admit that I find it extremely satisfying that this definition has not yet resulted in an Ouroboros–like circle where I end up staying that quality is quality and we all know what it is.
Strangely, I also find that this definition has both practical daily applications which may be just as useful as any metaphysical implications that there may be.
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Cosmology is the area of philosophy and physics which attempts to analyze and describe the nature of the universe. Within physics, cosmology is usually constrained to observable and measurable details of the physical universe and may extend to what may be further inferred via logic and math. Philosophy categorizes further investigations and speculation within the area of metaphysics.
Original Essay
See Also
References & Notes
External Links
Original Essay
I began this exploration of cosmology as an exercise to trace out ideas from Robert Pirsig‘s Metaphysics of Quality and Alfred North Whitehead‘s Philosophy of Organism. It is an exercise in speculative philosophy and should be viewed as nothing other than entertainment – with no additional practical value or application(s).
When it comes to the nature of the universe, it doesn’t seem to matter what opinion you may have and express, someone is going to disagree with your ideas – perhaps vehemently. This happens because your opinion, whatever it may be, may just contradict the metaphysical perspectives that someone else has utterly devoted themselves to – again, perhaps vehemently. With that in mind, this is an incomplete, ongoing and subject to change essay where I first re-assert my non-expert status in anything at all. I am not an authority and I don’t always get things exactly right. This gaze into the void of cosmology is an enthusiastically non-authoritative assessment of some available information and concepts. If you disagree with the direction or detail of this exploration of a novel depiction of the universe based on your individual and alternate (and quite possibly, more authoritative) insights – thank you for taking time to browse these meandering paragraphs.
In Zensylvania we try as often as possible to proceed from a motorcycle-zen position wherein metaphors help point to reality the way a finger points to the moon. So let’s kick things off with consideration of one of our favorite metaphors, the internal combustion engine
Internal Combustion Engine
With a piston engine, the piston moves up and down within a cylinder to generate power which may be turned into motion. Below is a diagram of a four-stroke engine’s cycle of intake, compression, power and exhaust. A four-stoke engine is called “four-stroke” because there are is a series of four events when the piston moves along the cylinder. The intake and power stroke are in one direction while the compression and exhaust strokes are in the opposite direction. This is the engine’s process. It seems reasonable that this moving up and down (or back and forth, if you prefer) of the piston entails a moment when the cylinder stops moving in one direction and starts moving in the other direction.
But this observation which seems reasonable is a kind of fallacy. The piston never stops moving. If the piston stopped moving, there would be some serious problems for that engine. There’s a scene in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which depicts what happens when a piston stops moving in the cylinder:
In a seizure, the pistons expand from too much heat, become too big for the walls of the cylinders, seize them, melt to them sometimes, and lock the engine and rear wheels and start the whole cycle into a skid. The first time this one seized, my head was pitched over the front wheel and my passenger was almost on top of me. At about thirty it freed up again and started to run but I pulled off the road and stopped to see what was wrong. All my passenger could think to say was “what did you do that for?”
Pistons don’t stop moving. If they stopped moving, the crank shaft would also stop moving – and as we can see from Pirsig’s anecdote, that would not be a pleasant experience for a motorcycle rider.
What happens is that pistons change direction within their continuous process of movement. The crank shaft that the piston is attached to is in continuous motion in a circle and this creates an illusion that the piston is moving upwards to a top dead center position and then moving down to bottom dead center. There is no stopping.
Cosmology – Do You See Where This is Going Yet?
I find in the process of an internal combustion engine a useful analogy to considering the nature of the universe. Let me be clear, I am not suggesting the universe is exactly the same as a four-stroke internal combustion engine (ICE). Nor am I suggesting that the universe operates exactly the way an ICE works. It is an analogy. A metaphor. A finger pointing at the moon.
It is possible that at one phase of universal existence there is infinite compression of time, space and matter. In that phase (or expression), duration is infinitely brief and therefore experience is essentially meaningless. It is a kind of top-dead-centre. At the opposite phase of universal, time, space and matter there is infinite dispersal. Duration is infinitely long and therefore experience is again essentially meaningless. This is our metaphorical bottom-dead-centre.
Perhaps the universe progresses between these two extreme states in a continuous change of direction which does not stop – and does not start.
No Big Existential–Metaphysical-Cosmological Bang
I once spoke with a quite engaging individual who happened also to be a quite well-known scientist, professor and published author. On many topics, I found this person to be engaging and informative. He expressed the opinion to me that many people have a very significant challenges with giving-up the idea of that they have “free-will”. It’s an interesting and rather thorny issue and not what I’m considering in this essay. But it comes to mind as many people from both a scientific and a theological point of view would have difficulty in giving up the idea of a concrete beginning to the universe. It’s baked into their metaphysical, cosmological comprehension of how the universe works.
But what if that’s just the way it is? What if the universe seems to have had a beginning only because we are so focused on one part of the machine that we haven’t (yet) observed other parts which negate the premise? Speculating about “how the universe began” presupposes that there was a beginning and it does not seem to me that this can absolutely be presumed. Perhaps the big bang was just the universe going through a particular phase (yes that was an intended pun).
Getting back to Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality
As promised, what I want to do now is try to connect this speculated cosmological alternative of a universe with no beginning to the Metaphysics of Quality. I have no idea whether others have attempted to put these things together, but let’s give it a run.
According to Pirsig, Quality underpins his metaphysical system for understanding the world. Quality comes before the matter, time and space. Indeed, matter time and space are comprised of Quality.
Pirsig also argued that Quality can be understood in two different forms: Static Quality and Dynamic Quality. Static quality is the rigid patterns and established values of the good. With an ICE, the static pattern is a process of intake, compression, power, exhaust which produces power. Static quality might otherwise be perceived as those things which we can ascribe traits and values to. Motorcycles, people, books, governments, relationships and a host of other things that we can relate to. Dymamic Quality is the immediately experienced reality. It is the power and motion that the engine produces. It is the experience of interacting with another person.
What Pirsig seems to be saying is that experience itself is the ‘stuff” of the universe upon which all else is possible.
Decades ago, I wrote a poem (which is included in my Leviathan collection) titled Life is a Psalm of Existence which contains elements of this idea:
Life is a psalm of existence
Will is the strength at the core
Truth is a portrait of thinking
Care is the light of purpose
Love is an echo of beauty
Share is the song of resonanc
Belief is a scent of mystery
Fear is the wall of separation
Pain is the touch of exclusion
Doubt is the death of the striving
Life is a psalm of existence
Will is the strength at the core
A slight re-imagining of the poem using Pirsig’s ideas might alter the title-line to ‘Life is psalm of dynamic quality.’
Shifting Gears to A.N. Whitehead
Using Whitehead’s terminology, there is a process which produces our human actual occurrences. This process is dynamic quality. The concept of reality may roughly equate to Static Quality – a particular pattern of Quality which we recognize and value.
Causal Set Theory
In Causal Set Theory, there isn’t a singular(ity) “Big Bang” to be accounted for. Causal Set Theory (CST) looks at the universe differently than Einstein’s general relativity or quantum physics theory by positing discrete morsels of space-time which it calls “atoms”. CST, whether it is correct or not, offers a conceptual way forward to examine how the universe might work. It is a physicist’s model which can be examined via the language of mathematics. While I am not in a position to suggest that CST offers any form of validation of the kind of cosmology I’m posing int his essay, I mention it as an indication that whatever perspectives one cares to propose, there may be new ideas to explore about the universe is. Lack of conformity to or divergence from some other (arguably incomplete or inadequate) theory is not merely acceptable – it may well be absolutely necessary.
Taking the crude analogy of the internal combustion engine, one may readily posit a series of bangs within a cycle. Clearly, what I am suggesting is that the metaphor(s) which Pirsig and Whitehead used to describe individual human experience can be connected to a cosmology which does not rely on a singular(ity) Big Bang.
Diagrammatic models of the universe can be compelling, despite the impossibility for any two-dimensional diagram to adequately depict how the universe works. Clearly a line drawing of a four-stroke engine is not adequate to fully depict the functioning of the universe. It’s hilarious that anyone even attempts to describe the universe in these reductionist ways. This explains why the assertion that “It’s turtles all the way down” is simultaneously wonderful and ridiculous. Analogies only ever work as far as their limitations. Fingers only ever point to the moon. Whether the analogy is words, pictures or numbers hardly seems to make much of a difference in this.
Has the universe always existed?
This question is a matter of cosmology. It pertains to the nature of how the universe works. Depending upon your perspective, it’s either one of the biggest questions one may ponder – or one of the smallest. For those who are oriented to top-end theoretical physics or metaphysical musings via philosophy or theology, this is one of the “biggest” questions. Certainty about any given response is most difficult to attain and validate.
On the other hand, for those who are definitively not oriented to the previously-mentioned theoretical physics and metaphysical musings – then the question, “Has the universe always existed?” is perhaps one of the smallest questions that may be asked. Consider pragmatism – a philosophical perspective that I have a thorough and long-standing appreciation for. A pragmatist is concerned with the practical applications and implications of any given idea or conception. If you happen to be a theoretical physicist or some other specialist who earns their income by answering questions of this type, clearly you’re in a special category for whom their really is a practical application. For most of us, however, the practical implications to the answer of whether the universe has always existed or not are so far removed from our undertakings, that it is a very small question indeed.
Whether it is a big question or a little question and despite and relative expertise one might have, I think we all tend to have some notion about the answer. Some of us are quite vague while others are extremely precise in their opinions.
For the purposes of this essay, I’m going to set forward a perspective that the universe always exists and establish some context for that statement.
What is the Universe?
It seems only fair to begin with a reasoned definition of terms. The first term I want to deal with is ‘universe‘. I’m going to argue for an extremely transparent definition of ‘universe’ such that it means ‘everything’. There isn’t any physical or non-physical thing, concept, dimension, energy, substance, form, force or what-have-you outside of the universe.
This ought to be a straight-forward principle to work from. It is little more than a trick of language when someone proposes something outside of the universe. I’m going to use the specific example of the ‘multi-verse’ concept where there are proposed to be multiple universes which co-exist in a simultaneous or parallel manner. This is tom-foolery.
I am quite comfortable with the concept of multiple time-and-space-continua which co-exist in a simultaneous or parallel manner. However applying the term ‘universe’ to each time-and-space continuum is entirely inaccurate as they are clearly not ‘everything’ in isolation. Each continuum may well be self-sufficient and complete, but a posited existence of additional continua, means that the term ‘universe’ can only be applied to the collection of all the individual continua and anything else one may care to posit.
What does ‘Always’ mean?
It is exceedingly difficult to phrase comments about cosmology since one’s terminology is bound to include concept of time which are part of the concepts being described. Time itself is a feature of the universe. So my assertion that the universe always exists is somewhat circular because that time element of always is partially embedded within the term universe.
I’ve used the term ‘always’ in its correspondence to the term ‘continuum’. Always is continuity. It is perpetuality. Always is duration itself.
What is Existence?
Existence is the act of being. It is manifestation in any form. Time exists. Matter exists. Concepts exist. Words and ideas exist. Existence equals ‘is’.
Creating a word to represent something does not conjure that thing into manifested physical reality. The idea exists but that does not mean that there is a manifested reality which corresponds to the idea and the word assigned to it. I want to call this an ‘insofaras‘. Vampires, unicorns and anything you care to mention exist insofaras the words and ideas are an identifiable, cohesive and consistent set(s) of meanings but that does not mean the set(s) of meanings have a corresponding physical reality.
In this way, any word or idea has a contingent existence even if that contingency is conceptuality. In this way everything that is must be considered to be contained within the term universe.
To assist, I’m going to invert Wittgenstein’s famous “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” to explain existence. It is not possible to conceptualize anything that does not exist. Once you have generated a novel concept, the concept exists but that does not generate a non-existing thing…it only enlarges the universe by one novel concept. Even if it is a concept of a something that does not have a corresponding manifested time-space physical reality.
The concept of existence goes includes all details of reality – even those that are in addition to time, space and matter.
A Paradox of the statement ‘the universe always exists’
A rather circular and paradoxical character of this statement is that each of the meaningful terms is a dependent of the others. The universe is existence. The universe is always. Existence is always. They are equivalents components of each other with different manifestations.
Models of the Universe
As previously indicated, a line drawing of the universe is utterly inadequate to fully explain how the universe works. It can only point to certain things. One of the most popular theories about the universe is that it began just under 14 billion years ago in a cosmological bang and has been expanding ever since.
What caused this singular big bang and what came before the big bang appears to be fully debatable territory. From my perspective, anyone that posits any kind of anything outside of the universe (which includes everything and all time), has either misapplied the term “universe” or assumed a status of time that is incorrect.
The diagram which depicts the universe as a kind of cone where the big bag is the narrow end and the present is the open end is a compelling image. But is also seems incomplete. This could be a simple deception of trying to use a line drawing to explain the universe. Bu it has offered the metaphorical conceptualization of the universe where there are two funnels which connect to each other within a spherical universe.
This model is visually satisfying as it offers a representation of an ongoing cyclical completion through a process.
What I want to conceptualized here is a perspective on time, matter and space. Time and matter are interconnected. When time and space are very nearly infinitely compressed (inside the sphere, where the cones meet), duration is very nearly infinitely short. Time’s duration is as close to not existing as it is possible to be. This is the singularity. Expect that it is not as a singularity never exists. Matter, time, space, experience, quality and all of the rest of it are never an undifferentiated monism.
At the equator on the outside of this metaphorical sphere, time, matter and space is very nearly infinitely dispersed and duration is very nearly infinitely long. Time’s duration is as close to not existing as it is possible to be. Matter is as thinly resolved as it is possible to be. Space is penultimately null.
I don’t want to give the impression that anyone subscribes to this cosmology. I have no idea if this cosmology corresponds to any theories or ideas that others have previously developed (beyond anything already suggested within this essay) nor whether this meditation achieves anything more than attempting to hand language around a range of accumulated impressions.
The point in all of this is making a case that the universe always exists; that there is nothing else. What can (and does) change is the duration of time, the substantiation of substance, the spatiality of space, the meaningfulness of experience via the mechanisms (physics) of their concentration/density (compression vs. dispersal).
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Minimalism is an attitude about one’s relationship to material possessions (‘stuff’) whereby maintaining the greatest possible independence from and indifference to it is ideal.
Original Essay
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References & Notes
External Links
Mimimalism: Is there something missing?
Original Essay
Let me start by asking whether you have ever gone through a period of your life when ‘minimalism’ seemed to have been not only a good idea, but something that you absolutely needed to act on as quickly and thoroughly as possible?
This essay (originally title Footnotes to Minimalism: A Grey and Colourless Philosophy) is about that type of experience – and also about some implications of the contemporary minimalism which I have had occasion to observe and explore. Not surprisingly, my exploration leads to several insights and connections that I’ve found to Motorcycle Zen and the Zensylvania state of mind.
But first let me focus on the title of this essay: A Grey and Colorless Philosophy. I imagine that this word choice presents something of a stark and bleak outlook on what is actually a very popular lifestyle, philosophy and design aesthetic. Despite the characterization I’ve started with, minimalism is a trend that I readily admit a certain affinity for. It is exactly because of this attraction that minimalism has for me that it is worthy of some critical examination and even criticism. And so we come to an essay title that may seem less than flattering.
But it also seems to be a reasonably accurate observation of the mainstream contemporary minimalism that has recently flourished. Dig into the aesthetics of contemporary minimalism and it is nearly impossible not to be buried in avalanches of white, grey and black. Perhaps with some wood-tones mixed-in here and there as a gesture to naturalism. As a design concept, contemporary minimalism seems to have a pre-occupation with objects and environments that are sanitized of colour. Or perhaps purified is a more precise descriptor for what may be happening within minimalism. This is an interesting situation with a variety of drivers worth examining – especially for those who may feel that acting on minimalism is a pressing matter. It can be instructive to appreciate what it is that moves us toward radical lifestyle and ideological changes or approaches. Are we reacting against something – as with a sanitization? Or are we moving toward something – as with a purification? While the outcomes may be superficially similar, the process and aesthetic effects are likely to be very different in quality.
As well, this observation of the aesthetics of contemporary minimalism has, at least for me, a startling connection to Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Stick with me and we’ll get there in the essay and also to some insights that I’ve taken away.
As a header image for this essay, I’ve used a photograph of the oddly striking Novus electric motorcycle (or E-Motorbike). The inclusion isn’t in any way intended to be an advertisement for that product; nor is the inclusion an insult to the concept. As I’ve said, it’s oddly striking and may well be an entertaining option. With that being said, the image of that bike immediately struck me as relevant to this essay and I knew I had to include it. A little later one, we’ll be returning to it.
Rather paradoxically, defining minimalism is not a simple task. As with any ideology, there are more than a few underlying concepts, elements and assumptions packed into the larger concept. When you start looking into it, minimalism is actually more complicated, nuanced and sophisticated than it seems.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I’m not going to try to dig into all of these foundational bits as that would make this exploration much larger than we have time for right now. What I’m going to do instead is set-aside as much of the ‘you-won’t-get-this-unless-you-first-get-that‘ philosophizing as possible. So, here is the official Zensylvania definition of minimalism (pending future editorial fiat):
Minimalism is an attitude about one’s relationshipto material possessions (‘stuff’) whereby maintaining the greatest possible independence from and indifference to it is ideal.
This definition of materialism carries several immediate and primary corollaries and outcomes:
(1)stuff is inherently a burden, regardless of the perceived benefits that it may also provide;
(2) owning, possessing and maintaining the least amount of stuff as practically possible is desirable as it reduces burden;
(3) complicated design is the physical representation of conceptual ‘stuff’ and represents intellectual and aesthetic burden;
(2)when stuff must be possessed, the least complicated, ornateand attention-catching of stuff is preferred over the more complicated, ornate and attention-catching.
Are these oversimplifications? Reductionist views? A minimal approach? Hopefully so. And hopefully that makes the definition consistent with contemporary minimalism.
Personal Experience
In 2016, amidst a variety of relatively stressful life events, it occurred to me, in a strangely compulsive kind of way, that it was necessary that I significantly reduce the gross tonnage and clutter of my personal possessions. It was a disconcerting experience to ponder just how much all of my stuff weighed.
While the particular circumstances don’t much matter for this essay – clearly I had been pondering what would be involved to move all this stuff from one place to another. It’s an issue that I’ve needed to consider many times, having moved house to far-flung corners of the province I’ve called home throughout my life. Back in 2008, I recall being somewhat appalled by the thousands of pounds involved in a relocation from Thunder Bay to St. Thomas. And we’ve only acquired more stuff since then. How much might it all weigh, now?
As a detail of minimalism, I put some basic questions to myself:
if I needed to move all my stuff, what would be involved and how much would it cost?
is there stuff I can dispose of now to minimize that burden?
with all of the stuff I own, how much of it is actually meaningful?
Minimalism seemed to offer attitudes, methods, tools and options for reducing the burdens of stuff that I felt – both for stuff I already possessed and maintained and for potential future stuff that would almost certainly cross my path. Predictably, I began an effort to get rid of as much of that stuff as I could as a preparation to move forward in my life. And I also began an investigation of contemporary minimalism and its potential meanings and implications for me.
One of the first things I did was to catalogue my individual, personal stuff. The exercise allowed me to understand exactly how much stuff I had laying around. And how much of it I didn’t really use or need in any active kind of way. I eventually found that I could get my individual, personal stuff to something approximating 100 items. This included such things as clothing, musical instruments, objets d’art, electronics, books and anything solely and exclusively my own. To do so would mean almost wholly culling from my habits of ownership the concept and practice of collection.
I excluded from the scope of my efforts anything with a family- or communal-purpose. I thought it would be unfair to apply my personal considerations to things that other people use and derive benefit from. For similar reasons, I also excluded tools and other items of practical usage that are necessary to maintain our family home. It simply didn’t make sense to ditch stuff that would be useful, if not essential, to getting on with the life that I was interested to put into order.
This reference to 100 items is a popular benchmark in contemporary minimalism. There are books, websites and who knows what else devoted to that somewhat mystically specified quantity. There doesn’t seem to be any objectively certain reason that 100-items should be chosen instead of some other number, excepting perhaps that it is easy to remember and has the practical application of being sufficiently high to allow quite a lot of stuff. Even still, in my own case, I quickly established various conditions and caveats to exempt myself from stuff-possessing limitations.
Still, setting an upper limit of stuff is the whole point of minimalism. It is a practice of setting a personal minimum or baseline.
I recommend conducting an inventory of personally owned items whether you’re interested in minimizing that inventory or not. It is a valid strategy to contemplate the sheer quantities of things that contemporary people possess. Indeed, enumerating what you own is also more readily practicable compared to (for example) pondering the overall mass of your possessions (as in the case of paying for logistics services to move your stuff from one place to another). It is appalling how quickly the list grows…even if you’re prone to counting a pair of socks as a single item. Idealistic, magical numbers, like 100, become quaint rather quickly and you’ll discover the degree to which materialism dominates your daily life.
I say magical because any arbitrary quantity which does not serve a specific, objective limit is indeed dabbling in a kind of fantasy-land exercise – an internal negotiation of the personal boundaries of the material-based basis of your life.
By contrast, consider the objective and practical limits set by airlines for online luggage: nor more than X pieces where each piece weighs no more than Y pounds or kilograms. Airlines look at your stuff as a matter of logistics rather than mystics.
There isn’t a problem with a minimalist pursuit that allows for magic and fantasy. Indeed, my own indulgence is almost wholly composed of it. There is no actively and externally imposed limit the amount of stuff I might acquire within my resources. But the difference between an arbitrary, self-prescribed quantity and an externally-imposed mandate is an education. Consider those who spend some period of their life constrained-by external limits such as long-term care residents, military personnel or the poor.
This exercise of quantifying and limiting my stuff had me reflect that when I was my teens and early twenties, I was mostly satisfied if all of my possessions could be packed into whatever vehicle I happened to own at the time – and therefore, readily transported wherever I happened to be going. This method of limiting my stuff was essentially assigned to me when I moved out of my parents’ home and was given the frank and direct information that anything left behind would be proactively collected for a trip to the landfill. Take that for an externally-imposed scenario.
Humanity
This method of limiting my stuff to the amount I’m able to cart along has turned out to be extremely practical and effective. It’s an approach that seems to strongly align with several philosophies that I appreciate from stoicism and pragmatism all the way through to certain aspects of Zen and Fuzzy Logic.
If you happen to be couch-surfing around or otherwise uncertain what roof (if any) may be over your head on any given night – then it probably makes sense to have only as much stuff as you can move around. Uncertainty reveals that stuff, despite the pleasure and benefits that might be derived, is also a burden. In a world confounded by concerns about environmental damage, rising costs of living, global elites who promote being happy whilst owning nothing, military and social conflicts and other such matters – a sober assessment of uncertainty in your life requires an examination of your relationship to stuff. There may well be very large external forces to consider.
Indeed, I’m struck by the notion that nomadic people throughout history would have considered it common sense that humans need to place transportability at the center of material possessions. Indeed, for the vast majority of human existence, permanent settlements (houses, towns, cities) were unknown. Compared to the millions of years that humans have existed, we have lived stationary, rooted lives for only some ten to fifteen thousand years. We evolved as relatively stuff-less, nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Our deepest instincts, evolved over those millions of years, seem to contradict our drive to gather stuff. In crisis, we look around us for the most essential things to take as we flee. And yet, we are also drawn to acquire and collect everything from pretty rocks at the beach to clothing, books, motorcycles, cars, pretty stones at the beach or frankly any manner or size of bauble that one cares to mention. Perhaps it is a part of some nesting instinct relate to creating a safe and stable territory to provide-for and rear newer generations.
Walden Pond
It is clear that contemporary minimalism is not a direct product of our collective human heritage as nomads. There certainly are nomadic cultures even in this twenty-first century, but most of us are not looking at these cultures as the source of inspiration for how to declutter the closet or design the kitchen. Though perhaps we should.
Contemporary minimalism is clearly also not a direct product of economic poverty. Those who engage in minimalism often seem to have more than enough money to spend, if they wish to. Interestingly, however, minimalism does seem to take its expressive form from scenarios that are necessarily spare in their original occurrence.
The concept of “tiny homes” has been growing in North America and around the world to one extent or another. Tiny homes are akin to minimalism insofar as they are a scaling-back from the average 1,700 square foot home. But tiny homes are often not minimalist in their design.
It seems to me that tiny homes are a distant relative of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin near Walden Pond. In essence, this is a reduced square-footage still based upon a presumed longer-term residency when compared to a genuinely nomadic or necessarily uncertain situation.
Culling the Concept of Collections
In my own case, when I approached the inventory of my personal stuff, I unexpectedly learned that I had a strange relationship to ‘collections‘. I think most people would agree that a collection is a situation where we possess and maintain more than one of any given item. Most of us develop a specialty of collecting a particular item and our personal collection of this type of item is larger than what our friends’ and neighbours’ might be.
In fact, if someone were to ask if you had any ‘collections’, you might assume the question pertains to these specialist collections: purses, books, records, antique tea pots, motorcycles. What have you.
Yet, if you conduct an inventory, you may find (as I certainly did) that most of us have a wide-range of collections that manage to grow over time and without any seriously sustained effort. Here are a few examples from my experience: a collection of leather jackets, a collection of audio equipment and related electronics, a collection of shoes.
I hope you take my meaning, I learned that I had a collection of items that were different in their design but still fulfilled the same basic purpose. Even today, I have three different leather jackets which I maintain as each jacket seems to suit a different weather condition. If I remove that modified, ‘leather’, I have to admit to maintaining no fewer than a dozen ‘jackets”.
It turns out that my personal mountain of stuff can be easily lumped into collections of items that all serve the same (or substantially similar) fundamental purpose. It turns out I was (and am) a passive and unconscious collector.
PersonalCase Study Number One: Books
Over most of my life, I’ve had an unreasonable attachment to books. At one point, my personal library included hundreds upon hundreds of books. During house moves, this translated into hundreds of pounds of cartage from one place to another. Cartage that cost money.
Books are just one type of item. After reading a book, the book became an artifact of having read the book. Seeing the physical object was a reminder of the experience, for good or bad.
Eventually, I used Goodreads, the social media platform to document all of the books I read and to serve as a kind of digital artifact. The digital artifact allowed me to let the decaying physical objects go. For me that turns out to have been a good thing as hundreds of pounds of paper have been sent off to to used book stores and the like and hopefully for the enjoyment of others. For me, I now have a much more narrowly curated personal library of books that I actively expect to re-use.
As I said, books are one object and similar situations apply to music library (tapes, CD’s and devices to play them on), clothing and other collections of objects which accumulated and accumulated.
As it turns out, getting rid of all that stuff did not culminate in the path I had expected, but it certainly did allow play a role in preparing me to move forward in my life.
Personal Case Study Number Two: Cars and Bikes
Needless to say, notions of minimalism have even influenced my attitudes about motorcycles and cars.
I admit to having owned an un-necessarily large number of motorized vehicles. And this ownership has cost much more money over the decades than makes much logical sense. I also admit to not caring much about that in the moments that I consider a particularly terrific Yamaha or Moto Guzzi.
However, my experience with and contemplations about minimalism has tempered my approach. At one time, I had three operable and one in-operable vehicle(s) in the driveway. The total fuel-burning displacement of all those engines was almost thirteen litres and the grand total weight of metal, glass and plastic was probably north of 14,000 pounds. That’s a lot of ‘stuff’.
When it comes to quantification, my Yamaha XJ 550 was only a half-litre of displacement and some 400 pounds. Mind you, it was only a practical option for 2/3 of the year. The Novus electric motorcycle pictured at the top of this article is said by the manufacturers to weigh about 85 kilograms – or approximately 185 pounds. As an electric option, the Novus doesn’t directly burn fuel. Here in Ontario, power would have to be provided by some combination of nuclear, wind and hydro-electric infrastructures. Meanwhile my bicycle weighs something less than 25 pounds and has no displacement at all.
Hatchbacks: Amazingly Convenient
So where have I landed? Currently we own a single vehicle weighing about 3000 pounds and displacing two litres of fuel-and-air burning capacity. While it’s still a shockingly large quantity of metal, glass and plastic to fuss with…it does have the capacity to carry quite a bit of my stuff around when and if I need to. And for the forseeable future, this seems (in combination with the aforementioned bicycle) to be the likeliest ongoing vehicle to serve our needs. At least we’re down from thirteen litres of pollution displacement and 14,000 pounds of natural and manufactured resources.
The Meeting of East and West By FSC Northrop: An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding
Finally we’re getting to the reason that I titled this essay with that combative characterization of minimalism as a grey and colourless philosophy…and I do hope, despite the meandering path we’ve taken, that we arrive at a conclusion that is indeed consistent with the introduction.
In chapter eleven of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig describes a period of time when the narrator, Phaedrus, returns from military service in Asia and spends a period of time in confrontation of several fundamental conceptions about existence. While the scene is comparatively brief, I have also found that it is an extraordinarily useful scene for tracking Pirsig’s philosophical influences – and in the so-doing, providing an insight into the aesthetics of mainstream contemporary minimalism.
So let’s have a look at this passage:
...The final strong fragment from that part of the world is of a compartment of a troopship. He is on his way home. The compartment is empty and unused. He is alone on a bunk made of canvas laced to a steel frame, like a trampoline. There are five of these to a tier, tier after tier of them, completely filling the empty troop compartment.
This is the foremost compartment of the ship and the canvas in the adjoining frames rise and falls, accompanied by elevator feelings in his stomach. He contemplates these things and a deep booming on the steel plates all around him and realizes that except for these signs there is no indication whatsoever that this entire compartment is rising massively high up into the air and then plunging down, over and over again. He wonders if it is that which is making it difficult to concentrate on the book before him, but realizes that no, the book is just hard. It’s a text on Oriental philosophy and it’s the most difficult book he’s ever read. He’s glad to be alone and bored in this empty troop compartment, otherwise he’d never get through it.
The book states that there’s a theoretic component of man’s existence which is primarily Western (and this corresponded to Phaedrus’ laboratory past) and an aesthetic component of man’s existence which is seen more strongly in the Orient (and this corresponded to Phaedrus’ Korean past) and that these never seem to meet. These terms “theoretic” and “esthetic” correspond to what Phaedrus later called classic and romantic modes of reality and probably shaped these terms in his mind more than he ever knew. The difference is that the classic reality is primarily theoretic but has its own aesthetic too. The romantic reality is primarily esthetic, but has its theory too. The theoretic and esthetic split is between components of a single world. The classic and romantic split is between two separate worlds. The philosophy book, which is called The Meeting of East and West, by F.S.C. Northrop, suggests that greater cognizance be made of the “undifferentiated aesthetic continuum” from which the theoretic arises.
Phaedrus didn’t understand this, but after arriving in Seattle, and his discharge from the Army, he sat in his hotel room for two whole weeks, eating enormous Washington apples and thinking, and eating more apples, and thinking some more, and then as a result of all these fragments, and thinking, returned to the University to study philosophy. his lateral drift was ended. He was actively in pursuit of something now.“
First, I want to point out that the beginning of the scene is set among an empty, stark and minimalist bunk compartment of a military ship. When describing the environment, Pirsig provides no direct words to convey colour. At most, colour can only be inferred from the references to steel, canvas and the fact that it is a military area. Overall the scene conveys absence of colour as readily as it conveys a disconnect from the massive rising and falling of the ship in ocean swells.
If there is a life situation that must necessarily be minimalist and practical – where nothing but the necessary is packed along – it must be a military setting. Like nomadic people or the homeless, the military life is filled with uncertainty and a perpetual requirement to be able to pick up and go. The extraneous is soon purged in these environments. Military personnel don’t go about their business lugging a dozen coats just in case the one they happen to be wearing doesn’t suit the occasion.
This massive rising and falling of the ship is a mirroring of the polarizing pendulum swings of the narrator’s perspectives on reality and existence. Inside the compartment, there is no hint that the whole thing is moving – that there are indeed two different perspectives. The compartment is a metaphor for the polarities of Eastern and Western aesthetics that the narrator is reading in the next paragraphs.
At the close of the scene, Pirsig describes Phaedrus, having returned from the East as spending time thinking and eating enormous Washington apples. While it is tempting to let the metaphors speak for themselves, I’m going to indulge in over-explanation to avoid letting anything go un-acknowledged. Apples are often (accurately or not) depicted as being the actual fruit of the tree of knowledge from the Abrahamic religions’ Biblical Adam and Eve story. These two ‘first people’ were evicted from the Garden of Eden for eating this forbidden fruit. Pirsig has almost certainly included this reference to apples in this section to reference this myth.
It is equally certain that Pirsig states that they are Washington apples to emphasize the American, new-world position that Phaedrus was in. As for minimalism – all that is depicted is consuming the fruit of the tree of knowledge and thinking. The hotel room is left colourless. Even the apples are colourless. These are sparse scenes written with a kind of minimalism.
Given the minimalist underpinning of the scene, it is that much more apparent that Pirsig’s nod to F.S.C. Northrop’s book should not be taken as extraneous. Having acquired a relatively battered second-hand copy of it, I’ve taken advantage of the opportunity to read it several times. I’m not sure that I found it to be particularly challenging, but I wasn’t sitting on in an empty bunk-compartment of a military ship at the time.
Apart from a general recommendation to anyone who may be interested to explore Pirsig’s philosophical influences that it is an excellent addition to a collection of ZAMM-oriented library, there is a section of the book that has perspective that we can bring to bear on the relationships between minimalist doctrines and minimalist aesthetics. In chapter two of The Meeting of East and West, Northrop says:
“There is another difference between the Mexicans’ and the Anglo-Americans’ approach to democracy in its bearing on religion. For the Mexicans, art is a necessity of life, not a luxury; religion for them, if it is anything, is a passion, a moving, emotional experience. The culture of the Aztec period and that of the colonial period satisfied both these requirements. Also, Catholic theology, whatever its defects, is rigorously defined and consistently developed. Consequently, the Mexicans know what a doctrinally meaningful, aesthetically adequate, emotionally moving religion is like. For people of the English-speaking world, art tends to be a luxury or an afterthought, or else a hash of souvenirs without integrity because of the use of old art forms for modern institutions and doctrines which deny the theses which the art forms represent. With respect to art, the Protestant Church is scared. At its worst its art is crude; at its best neutral, preferring a pure white in the New England Congregational churches or a dull grey in the Episcopal chapels, which does not commit itself. A church with the diversity of vivid colors, which the Indian aesthetic imagination demands would shock a Protestant congregation. But imagine, conversely, how the Protestant religion must appear to the religious Mexicans. Its exceedingly verbal preaching, its aesthetic color-blindness, and its emotional tepidity and coldness must make it look to them like no religion at all.…”
For those who study ZAMM, this is a significant passage as it establishes the directions that Pirsig takes in his philosophy, provides a philosophical path to follow, and also explains why he ended up at the University of Chicago, trying to advocate for his ideas as a breakthrough in the synthesizing of Eastern and Western philosophy.
It is worth noting that Northrop’s subtitle for The Meeting of East and West is, An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding. It’s a title that invites some sober thought. The book was published shortly after the second world war and Northrop was clearly concerned regarding an emerging global cultural and political world with competing civilizations, empires and ideologies. While the details of these things may be modestly different today, it seems that the general concerns remain very solidly in place. There is still reason to be concerned about world understanding.
A personal practice of minimalism can absolutely be a part of a personal approach to that understanding. From considerations of socio-economic or political certainties, materialistic consumerism to quite valid concerns about global ecology and resources, minimalism connects at practical levels with significant daily issues. There really hasn’t been a better time to examine our relationship(s) to the acquisition and maintenance of stuff.
In The Meeting of East and West, one may also find connections to Alfred North Whitehead‘s Process and Reality and this is another significant recommendation for those interested to explore philosophical work that overlaps Pirsig’s. As to Whitehead, I will admit that Process and Reality readily ranks with Baruch Spinoza‘s Ethics as perhaps the most difficult works of philosophy I have ever read.
But for the purposes of this essay, clearly I’m focussed on Northrop’s contrasting of religious practices which requisitely include and aesthetically satisfying diversity of colour and those that seem to deliberately exclude colour. These latter appear to favour of a kind of doctrinal purity projected by verbal/literate practices and demonstrated by the exclusion of art and colour.
In the spirit of The Meeting of East and West, it may suddenly be clear how the aesthetics of Eastern (and particularly Japanese) minimalist art and aesthetics have been so popular in the Americas where several varieties of Protestantism are to be found. Almost certainly, the cultural forces which produced minimalist aesthetics in Japan and other parts of Asia are significantly different than those that produced Protestantism in Europe and further developed it in North America.
Here I want to reflect again on that Novus electric motorcycle and contrast it with any typical image of a gasoline-powered motorcycle you care to imagine. There, at the very centre of the gasoline-powered motorcycle is the engine itself; at the centre of the Novus? Nothing. The Novus design is clean and striking – fully in line with minimalist principles. That empty space emphasizes what it is not. What it does not have. Just as Protestant religions developed to emphasize the omission of certain gaudy excesses – the Novus electric motorcycle emphasizes the omission of a hydro-carbon burning engine. Earlier, I commented that there is a difference between minimalism that strives to purify and minimalism that strives to sanitize. The distinction that I made was between reacting against something (sanitizing) and moving toward something (purifying). And so I wonder in language echoing Northrop’s, if the Novus is an exercise in sanitizing the concept of a motorcycle. If indeed it is an object which attempts to use the older art form in an empty, grey and colourless attempt to express new ideas. Despite that illusion of the empty space where there is no engine, something really does reside. It is the vast infrastructures of electric power generation.
Those who may have grown up with a grey and colourless religion may find a familiar aesthetic, emotional, and psychological (if not spiritual) experience in a philosophy/design/lifestyle that centers in the principle of omission. It is doctrinal asceticism as aesthetics.
Contemporary Western Minimalism
This observation of Northrop’s, that Anglo-American protestant religion is largely verbal and colorless, strikes me as meaningful in context of what I’m calling Contemporary Western Minimalism.
Minimalism, a design approach which strips away as much extraneous or superfluous excess as possible, seems extremely well adapted to a religious tradition which does much of the same. Protestantism is “nothing but the word”, so to speak. Well minimalism is “nothing but what is necessary.” The concepts resonate.
Science too, is often viewed as sterile….the necessity of science is to remove potentially confounding variables. Control the the experiment as tightly as possible. Make things as black-and-white as possible. And scientific environments such as laboratories, hospitals and even modern high-tech manufacturing facilities are similarly sterile of colour and excess.
Perhaps this is why Pirsig’s motorcycle is described primarily as black and chrome. It is minimalist. It has the aesthetics of the classic. The romantic aspects are the romance of the technical. There’s no colour.
A Colourful Minimalism
There can be several potentially valuable benefits to employing a minimalist philosophy or attitude to your life, home or environment. At particular times of life, it is logistically and economically practical not to have a lot of stuff to move around. No doubt, there are some people who never (or rarely) experience the need to move their residency from one place to another. But for those who do, or even for those who sense any insecurity in their residency, paring down the things that may need to be relocated is a practical benefit. And there’s no practical reason that everything needs to be either grey, white or black when these moves happen. A single orange hatch-back can do the job just as well as a grey one might.
A practice of not acquiring things in the first place is probably more valuable than a practice of paring down. In this age of hyper consumption, it is probably a very good idea to consider all purchases much longer than advertisers would prefer. And when the purchase is made, there’s no reason to exclude aesthetic satisfaction in the list of requirements. It is not the presence of aesthetically satisfying things that must be addressed – it is the clutter of piling thing upon thing to the extent that all that may be apprehended is the over-stimulation of the clutter.
Minimalism has within it a severe doctrine that actively stifles joy in living. Given complete reign, minimalism threatens to extinguish one’s engagement with art, colour, expression and aesthetic satisfaction.
It seems to me that we can and should derive benefits from minimalism or whatever concept that seems to offer some way to improve the conditions of our lives – but that all doctrines require boundaries and limitations. They require counter-weights to ensure that the ideas and strategies we employ to make our lives enjoyable are not employed excessively such that we create harmful or miserable deficits.
So, at least for me, I prefer a colourful variety of minimalism. One that is minimal without being insufficient of the very art, music, colour, joy, substance, expression and emotion that is the stuff of life. The cutting edge of reality is very much a process of meaningfully engaging every part of sensory lives.
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During the course of reading and considering Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue, I had occasion to reflect that the act of sitting under a shady tree, both literally and metaphorically, is a fundamental human experience that very nearly every human being has access to. This notion seems to offer an interesting place to explore what exactly all of that means. It seems like intriguing new Zensylvania territory. So here we have an exploration of the meanings and benefits of shadetrees.
For convenience, let’s start this examination with the Phaedrus dialogue. The dialogue begins with the characters Phaedrus and Socrates heading out of the city for a conversation. Eventually they take up a place to sit by a river under a shady tree. In their case, it was a plane (or sycamore) tree. On face value, this is an interesting and relatively benign detail. Plato presents a couple of intellectuals heading off to a pleasant spot to chat.
I’ve already suggested that sitting und a shady tree is a fundamental human experience and this could be enough. The dialogue is merely showing what any two friends have had opportunity to do throughout human existence: take shelter together and commune. I wouldn’t want to suggest that this simplicity should be mistaken for banality. Instead, and even before any other considerations, I want to suggest that the simplicity is relatively profound. Taking shelter in the natural world to commune and learn from one another is perhaps one of the most fundamental indicators of productive civilization that we have. What could have been more essential to human progress, at any time, than taking a bit of time to figure a few things out together?
Sycamore
For Socrates and Phaedrus, the tree was a platanus orientalis. That is the scientific term. As most of us are aware, standardized scientific terminology (in our contemporary western culture) is most often rendered-in or derived from Latin, Greek and, to a certain extent, Arabic (see my Incomplete Exploration of Fuzzy Logic). The vocabulary preferences displayed in scientific jargon are an interesting tangent which still managers to be firmly connected to this exploration. The reasons that scientists continue to use these languages for their jargon are dominated by the Academy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Sure, there are many other variables and events involved, but western academia (and therefore, science) is rooted with those influential individuals.
So let’s get back to the platanus orientalis. Those two words mean Eastern Plane tree. Orientalis indicates eastern. There is also a platanus occidentalis, or Western Plane tree species as well. Occidentalis indicates western. The eastern variety may also be referred to as the Old World Sycamore while the western variety may be called the American Sycamore. Here again, there is an interesting tangent. In writing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig was clearly interested in the synthesis of many different ideas, not least being the values of Eastern and Western culture. This was an underlying attitude that he held in his approach to the University of Chicago which is detailed in the book.
Pirsig’s interest in these issues are displayed via a number of events of his life and perhaps not insignificantly influenced by a book he referenced reading after having been exposed to Eastern cultures during a period of military service. In ZAMM, Pirsig references having read The Meeting of East and West by F.S.C. Northop. That book was published shortly after the second world war and was deeply concerned with a need to reconcile eastern and western cultures . Northrop recognized that human civilization had entered a period of global interactions which made communication among differing cultures and values existentially necessary.
So the fact of a platanus orientalis and a platanus occidentalis – an eastern and a western shade tree – is not entirely banal.
The plane tree is closely connected with the Athenian Academy which had a grove of trees where the peripatetic (walking) scholars interacted with their students. There was also the Tree of Hippocrates, which was a plane tree. All of this is to say that academics and learning has, for at least 2500 years, been closely associated with the fundamental experience of taking shelter under a shady tree t commune.
Siddhartha or Gautama Buddha sits under the bodhi tree
Fig Trees
Well…let’s continue to play with words a bit and take note that the plan tree is also known by the name ‘sycamore’. Sycamore (sicamour) is a word derived from the root words of sykos (fig) and moron (mulberry). So a sycamore is a fig-mulberry. The sycamore leaf resembles the mulberry leaf while the fruit resembles the fig. Indeed, sycamore is a Biblical word used for a wide-spreading shady tree with fig-like fruit; it should be no surprise that fig-trees are often cited in the Abrahamic religions. Those trees were a valued presence for their fruit and shade – in essence for their community-nurturing properties.
In Buddhism, Guatama Buddha is described as sitting under a ‘Bodhi tree‘ when enlightenment was attained. Bodhi tree means tree of awakening. One of the archetypal images of Buddhism is a person seated in a lotus-position under the canopy of a tree. This is the tree of awakening. The original bodhi tree was a fig tree with the latin name Ficus Religiosa. It seems entirely likely that the fig tree was a central figure of the Buddha story/myth for the same reasons that it appear in the Abahamic stories/myths: community-nurturing properties.
Buddhist literature formally recognizes twenty-nine individuals as having achieved the status of enlightenment or wisdom – thereby attaining the term ‘Buddha’ and each one has a particular species of tree associated with the achievement. Clearly, there is something that is both fundamental and universal in sitting under a shade tree that seemed worth documenting within that tradition.
The image of a single person meditating under a shady tree is not precisely the same as that of two (or more) folks gathered under a tree in community. But it isn’t terribly far from it. In fact, the image of a person meditating under a tree feels far more like an invitation to community than (for example) the image of a hermit in a cave, a sage at the top of a mountain or a variety of other archetypal depictions that one cares to call to mind.
In the final chapter of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there is an extended revelatory scene where Chris, the narrator’s son, is finally freed-up from his sheltered and limiting position behind his father on the back of the motorcycle. At that moment, Chris is finally able to see the trees and the road itself: “The road continues to twist and wind through the trees..some of these branches over the road are hanging so low they’re going to konk him on the head if he’s not careful….the sunlight makes strange and beautiful designs through the tree branches on the road.”
This is the culmination and enlightenment moment for the motorcycle-ride-as-meditation. Pirsig names the tress along this ride on the California coast as being coastal manzanita. The scene clearly sets this species as a kind of Bodhi tree for Chris and/or the narrator.
There had been may scenes in the book prior to this offering trees as vital elements of Pirsig’s intellectual, spiritual and philosophical journey, but let’s focus on the manzanita. Manzanita is derived from the Spanish word for apple, manzana. Manzanita means little apple. It can hardly be a coincidence that the apple is, like the fruit tree, a tree commonly associated with its fruit. And that the apple fruit is frequently referenced as the specific fruit depicted in the Abrahamic (Biblical) story of the Tree of Knowledge which Adam and Eve consumed.
A very early scene in ZAMM has the narrator consuming big Washington apples after his discharge from the military. At the time, he seems to have been reading F.S.C. Northrop’s book about Eastern and Western cultures. In North America, there is a phrase, “American as apple pie” which attempts to establish a thing as genuinely connected to American values. So, Pirsig eating Washington apples while reading and learning is a thorough-going metaphor and the use of the manzanita trees at the close of the book is a particular contemporary (relatively speaking) American version of a temple or shrine tree in the tradition of the figs and sycamores.
Ash and Elm
In 2020, Neil Price published a book titled Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings; it’s an interesting book for anyone who may be interested to learn what contemporary historians have to say about Viking culture. Clearly, my purpose in mentioning the book is that tree-based title.
In Norse mythology, an immense Ash tree is the primordial element of existence. It is Yggdrasil, the tree of life. It is interesting to consider the ordering of those words and recall that old Germanic languages were not all that fussy about word order in their sentences. At least, not as fussy a modern English is. It may well be just as accurate and correct to say instead ‘life which is a tree’. And that offers some different connotations to the mythology.
This notion of Yggdrasil, the tree of life is common enough in our culture that most people are probably familiar with it. But fewer, I expect, consider the specific species of tree that the Viking mind envisioned when invoking this element of the culture. Clearly, the mythology of these northern people pointed to the ash.
These cultures also involved the concept of a warden tree (a kind of protecting spirit) and these trees were commonly ash, elm and linden species. Interestingly, the word “warden” is cognate with vordr..a kind of wraith or spirit.
Yggdrasil: The Tree of Life
I can’t help but observe that Robert Pirsig was of Swedish and German descent and would certainly have been familiar with Norse mythology. Certainly an early passage in ZAMM has the narrator recite a short passage from a poem by Wolfgang von Goethe – the Erlkonig. I take this to be a link to Pirsig’s observation that the book is a link to his personal and cultural mythologies.
The species of trees which serve as the focal-point are clearly not the fig trees observed in the more southern cultural seats of the other cultures considered. That seems reasonable and perhaps an indication of a clearly different relationship to trees and forests. One might consider that the northern people considered themselves, as the title of Price’s book indicates, to be children of the forest, a sylvan culture.
Ash, elm and linden trees are certainly in keeping with shade trees and further demonstrates the fundamental connection humanity has with tree and with the act of taking shelter and community in their shade.
Regardless of the many other culture that may be similarly – and the perhaps diminishing probability that I would be able to weave some connection to the established themes of Zensylvania – the underlying point here is that the relationship between us as individual and collective folk and the act of being among trees is fundamental. It is older than history.
The fact that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people live in vast municipal infrastructures where the ability to connect with that relationship is a rare, limited or non-existent situation is a travesty. Certainly there are other pressing travesties. But this one seems to be uniquely indicative of the crisis humanity is experiencing. The simple and profound act of being under and among the trees is vanished for vast portions of the human population. It is a sobering and saddening thought.
At my present home, the front porch of the house sits under the canopy of what is most likely a thirty- to fifty-year-old Crimson King Norway Maple tree (Acer Platanoides). The tree is presently taller than our 2.5-story, century-old home. It is one of the most comfortable and relaxing places of our home to be. And indeed, the tree lends a welcoming coziness to the entire block that we live on. People want to park their cars under our tree, whether they are neighbours or visitors to the area.
Our home is not significantly different than the ones that line the several blocks of our street. They’re all, more or less, the same kind of thing. But the tree establishes a particular community welcome that simply isn’t present elsewhere on the block or street. While we didn’t plant the tree (it may well be as old as I am) – but its presence certainly played a role in the affection we had for the property when moving to the community.
Being Canadian, I can’t help but observe that maple trees have been a symbol of shared community throughout our history. There are ten varieties of maple native to Canada and six of those are native to Ontario: Moosewood Maple, Red Maple, Silver Maple, Freeman Maple, the Sugar Maple and the Manitoba Maple. Maple leaves have appeared on Canadian flags dating to the Red Ensign naval flag of the 1890s. The current flag with two vivid red stripes and a matching maple leaf was designed in the 1960s. Ontario’s flag has borne maple leaves since that same period when many people in Ontario wished to retain some reminiscence of the Red Ensign.
Most, if not all, of the homes I can recall living in had a maple tree somewhere on the property. They have always been a part of the community.
The Shade Tree Mechanic
Shadetree mechanic is a term used to describe a particular kind of person. It’s someone who sits under the shade of a tree to maintain and repair their own equipment. Usually on their own property and at their leisure. It’s a term that an interesting connotative weight of pride, self-reliance, pragmatism and even some sense of mockery or derision.
The shade-tree mechanic is a generalist who overcomes obstacles to the best of their ability and resources. These are virtues.
Some of that is by jerry-rigging the equipment or circumstances they need to accomplish their goals or needs. Consider the archetypal concept/image of an engine being lifted from a car using a chain slung over a tree branch. On the one hand, there is evidence of resource-scarcity, otherwise the expensive specialized equipment and environment would be present. On the other hand, the shade-tree mechanic does not allow this scarcity to be a ‘gumption trap’ that prevents work from being done.
Shadetree mechanics can be hobbyists, as in the hotrod culture where increasing a vehicle’s performance is a matter of entertainment, or it can be a matter of necessity for the person who needs their equipment to be in running order and does not have access to a specialist to do it for them. (we don’t need to exclusively focus on vehicles, despite Zensylvania drawing on automobiles as a primary reference point). Anybody who maintains and repairs their own equipment and technology is a shadetree mechanic.
They are a person who keeps the infrastructure of their own lives operating not (necessarily) as a profession, but as a matter of principle, need or preference.
The fact that a shady tree is a involved also makes this situation a matter that is related to other community-building and self-shaping matters examined in this essay. The shade-tree mechanic is often accompanied by friends, family and neighbours. Peers. Folk. Kin.
It is a time and place where practical wisdom and social connection may be shared. Where values may be exchanged.
And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good – Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
The Phaedrus dialogue doesn’t seem to be one of Plato’s most popular nor one of his most-frequently examined dialogues. Those who study Plato seem to focus far more attention on The Republic, Phaedo, Crito and The Apology of Socrates (which I have also written about and provided a reading-of via the Zensylvania Podcast). Phaedrus just isn’t one of the dialogue’s that is identified as required reading in mainstream academic or recreational philosophy.
But for those of us who may be interested to expand our appreciation of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an examination of Phaedrus is not only useful – it is probably requisite. I make that comment with a certain degree of self-consciousness as I’ve not found very much scrutiny of Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue in the popular commentary on Pirsig that I’ve reviewed since taking the book seriously in 2014. While drafting this essay, I couldn’t recall whether significant attention had been given to Phaedrus in Di Santo & Steele’s Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, so I pulled my copy off the shelf to remind myself. The guidebook is a wonderful companion to ZAMM but I don’t find a significant comparative or analytical study of the two works. Frankly, that rather surprises me.
At this time, my assumption is that mainstream western philosophy hasn’t been interested in re-opening many of the matters that overlap between Phaedrus and ZAMM. Most particularly, matters of rhetoric and its place in academia seem to be something western academic philosophy studiously avoided throughout the twentieth and these early decades of the twenty-first century that we’ve experienced so far. So that’s what we’re going to do here – examine Phaedrus as a channel-deepener to Pirsig’s books and also for possible insights into living the kind of life we want to live.
A Reading of Phaedrus
As the August 2022 Episode of the Zensylvania Podcast (S02, E17), I published a reading of the Phaedrus dialogue. You can think of that reading as a companion to this essay (or vice versa). I hope the reading is useful to those who may be dis-inclined to read the Phaedrus for themselves. Perhaps you have time constraints such that it isn’t convenient to sit down with a printed or digital copy. Maybe you just prefer to consume information in audio format. Or maybe you’re already read the Phaedrus and are interested in an audio version to augment your understanding or appreciation of it. Whatever the reason you have for listening to the Phaedrus, I hope my version is of value.
For my own engagement of the text, recording and editing an audio version of the Phaedrus was an interesting process. If you haven’t taken the opportunity to read a text aloud for some time, it is an exercise that I recommend. What I have found is that reading a text aloud results in a better understanding of the words on the page compared to simply reading it silently. The rhythm of my reading adapts to the sentence structure and to the pace of actually saying things rather than merely taking them in through my eyes. Quite literally, by reading aloud, more of my brain is occupied in the process of engaging the text. I sometimes find words and/or word combinations which challenge me when reading aloud that I simply zip by when reading. How the name “Alcibiades” sounds simply doesn’t matter in a silent reading….the collected letters of the name are enough to consistently signify a person or character named Alcibiades. I also find that reading aloud forces me to engage all of the words of the text; I can’t ignore or skip them, whether by distraction or impatience, as I might when reading silently. In short, reading aloud forces me to establish an expanded and more thorough relationship to the text and, to a limited extent, to re-organize my insights into related texts, such as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Not at all coincidentally, a significant underlying theme of Plato’s Phaedrus is a contrasting of Socrates’ preferred dynamic, conversational style of philosophy and teaching called dialectic with a more static, written method which we can think of as rhetoric. Spoken words versus written text. With the Zensylvania podcast we have the advantage of being able to present both systems at once. In a sense, we’re able to do something that Socrates…or for that matter, 1970s era Robert Pirsig really couldn’t do…provide you with a written essay simultaneously to my recorded human voice. I suppose the only thing we’re missing so far is the live back-and-forth of a conversation. Well maybe you can help out. I’m happy to record a conversation or dialectic exploration of the ideas in Plato’s Phaedrus contrasted with the motorcycle zen themes. And add it to the episode.
Here in the twenty-first century, we shouldn’t be looking at this matter of the contrast between dialectic and rhetoric as solely a consideration of competition among ancient Greek philosophers for students – as we will see that it is. Nor should we consider it quaint pre-occupation of a twentieth century American neo-pragmatist with a moderate pre-occupation with motorcycles. Because indeed, when we look around us, the distinct offerings of a primarily verbal and interactive modality with a primarily literate and non-interactive model is critical to every part of our modern culture. From pre-school to adult learning, as individuals and as a species, we face a critical problem of how best to communicate. To share information. The matter of rhetoric versus dialectic is, indeed a deeply significant cultural matter. And perhaps that is one justification for Robert Pirsig to have considered his book a culture-bearing book. Well, hopefully the exploration that follows will reveal some insights for us.
Who is Phaedrus?
Beginning with the Plato, Phaedrus is presented as a young friend and disciple to Socrates. Phaedrus escorts Socrates on a walk outside of the city gates to read an essay and engage Socrates in a dialectic exchange. The essay which Phaedrus reads to Socrates (and which is the anchor of the dialogue that Socrates and Phaedrus will have) was obtained from Lysias, a friend of Phaedrus, and a contemporaneously famous rhetorician.
A note about pronunciation. I proceed on the understanding that the appropriate pronunciation of Phaedrus is….Fay-druss. That is the way I pronounce the name in the my reading of the dialogue and how I have always felt the name ought to be pronounced. When I decided to read the dialogue for the podcast, I pondered using alternative pronunciations such as “Fay-uh-druss”, “Fie-druss” and “Fee-druss”. I admit that I was rather less interested in choosing a pronunciation that classics scholars might approve than with choosing a version that fits my appreciation of both the ideas in the books and, perhaps strangely, North American automotive culture. This latter consideration tempted me to go with “Fay-uh-druss”.
1930 Cord L-29 Phaeton
I was motivated by the word “Phaeton”. This term was borrowed from horse-and-buggy carriage-making of the 1800s into early automotive coach building. Many of the earliest automobiles were situations where the motor, transmission and chassis (frame) were built by one company and a coach-builder would create and attach the body and all of the rest of the vehicle by custom order. A phaeton was a sporty, open car with no permanently installed roof. When I think of the phaeton as an automobiles, what comes to mind are big old classics from the 1920s through to the early 1940s. Cords, Duesenbergs, Packards. Big old cars with hand-made coaches that still drew their design inspiration from elegant horse-drawn carriages. A phaeton carries the slightest reminiscence of a chariot. The kind of thing you’d expect Gatsby to drive.
Via carriage-making in the 1800s, the term phaeton ultimately derives from, appropriately enough, Greek mythology. Phaethon was a son of Helios – the god and personification of the sun. Phaethon’s story is that he travelled to the sun-god’s palace in the east to find and connect with his father. Eventually, the two meet and Phaethon asks to drive Helios’ chariot for a single day. Helios’ declines Phaethon’s request, describing the various dangers Phaethon would encounter if he tried to drive the celestial chariot. Helios advises Phaethon that only he, Helios, is able to control the horses. Still, Phaethon persists in his pleas and eventually Helios relents, allowing Phaethon to drive the chariot. Inevitably, the ride is a disaster. Phaethon cannot keep the wild, powerful horses under control. The chariot careens wildly, first coming to close to the earth, scorching it then soaring too far away and leaving the earth frozen. Eventually, Zeus steps in and strikes Phaethon with a lighting bolt to bring the wild careening ride to an end. Phaethon dies and his body falls into the river Eridanus.
Helios, the Sun God, on his Chariot
It is a remarkable story for a number of reasons. Most prominently, of course, we have that name Phaethon to connect to Plato’s (and Pirsig’s) Phaedrus. The word ‘phaos’ is the ancient Greek root-word for light (think photon) and we can clearly see how both names, Phaedrus or Phaethon, link to light and brightness. Just as clearly, we have this wild and tragic story of a son fatally failing to drive his father’s chariot – a vehicle far outside of the son’s abilities. It’s a cautionary tale archetype for anyone handing the keys to a powerful vehicle to a younger generation. This comment and observation of handing the keys to a powerful vehicle to a younger generation should be viewed as a meaningful and important metaphor. And it couldn’t have been more perfect for Pirsig to reference in the naming of the primary character in a father-son motorcycle journey. While the relationships between Pirsig, Phaedrus and Chris in ZAMM are not as transparent as the Helios-Phaethon relationship, the connotations are there.
As a metaphor, this handing over the reins of power should be considered and understood beyond merely joy-rides. In fact, this is a central issue. In handing the reigns of his chariot to his son, Helios was not merely dealing with a couple of horses and some wheels…he was handing over control of a fundamental and essential component in the operation of the cosmos. And when things went wrong for the young and incompetent Phaethon, it was Phaethon that crashed and burned, not Helios.
This is a critical matter. For Socrates in addressing his Phaedrus, his concern is to steward his relationship to a protege to guide him away from a Phaethon-like destruction. Similarly Pirsig wishes to guide his son, Chris, away from mental-health disasters that an earlier version of himself (his very own Phaedrus) experienced. And we today have our relationships to our following generations and the matter of finding the best way to guide them away from a ride that they may not be competent for and which could very well end in oblivion. It is an ultimate existential matter, isn’t it?
Which brings up the matter of Zeus’ lightning bolt. In the Greek myth, the lightning bolt destroys Phaethon. In ZAMM, the lightning bolt which liquidated a personality (destroying Phaedrus) took the form of electro convulsive shock therapy which Pirsig underwent. The synchronicity is almost too terrible and chilling to consider.
When I was first drafting this essay, an image search using the terms “motorcycle” and “chariot” revealed a variety of images that seem to be simultaneously inevitable and bizarrely improbable. Particularly old black and white photos which depict an insane Mad Max version of the chariot race scenes in Ben-Hur. If the spirit of Pirsig’s Phaedrus can be depicted in an image, I propose this one which I’m going to call Thus Spake Phaedrus.
Thus Spake Phaedrus (Cue the Strauss)
Exploration of the Phaethon myth brings new insights into the characters and events of both Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It addresses how things work in our world and who bears responsibility for ensuring that they are maintained and enabled to work to our benefit. It also addresses what happens when power and responsibility is handed to people who aren’t competent to handle it. For Phaethon, he was destroyed. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an incompetent and under-prepared Robert Pirsig eventually undergoes shock therapy. There is also an encapsulated version of the myth in the anecdote when Phaedrus/Pirsig took his Honda to a repair shop where some incompetent mechanics bashed around and damaged the bike. In that setting, Pirsig himself was Helios who ended up taking his chariot home with the decision that it was his responsibility to address.
In Plato’s story, Phaedrus is clearly the bright youth or student. The relationship depicted between Phaedrus and Socrates does not seem to be presented as a father-son relationship. It does seem to be a relationship of an older male teacher or mentor to a younger male student or prodigy. I’m not certain of the parameters of relations of those kinds in ancient Greece and will defer further observation of that to some other time. This mentor relationship is fundamental to the Phaethon myth as well. Appropriate mentorship of a younger generation is one of the greatest of responsibilities of an older generation. This is a feature of ZAMM and something we’ll come back to later in this examination.
In the Phaedrus dialogue, Socrates spends considerable time using a chariot and horses metaphor to explore the themes of love and the human “soul”. So linking exploration of the metaphysics of humanity to the technologies of transportation is at least as old as Greek mythology. Pirsig’s use of the metaphor is again established as entirely consistent and justifiable in context of the mythology and the reference material of the Phaedrus dialogue as sources.
In ZAMM, Phaedrus is the name that Pirsig gives to an earlier version of himself – a younger, brighter and more endangered version of himself. Arguably a version of himself that was not adequately mentored – at least not as presented in ZAMM. A version that was perhaps more in keeping with the mythological Phaethon than the Phaedrus of Plato’s work. In consideration of this, it seems to me that the Phaedrus persona most closely aligns to Pirsig as a student up to a time before he attended the University of Chicago (while teaching at the University of Illinois’ Navy Pier campus).
At around that time (and still before the lightning of shock therapy struck), the persona of the character shifted to be more aligned with Lysias (who does not personally appear in the dialogue – we understand him only through the text that Phaedrus reads – which is a significant and appropriate thing when considering the dialogue). Indeed, as Pirsig was both a student and a teacher at that time, it may be most accurate and appropriate to think of the character at that time as being an incomplete transition from a Phaedrus-state and to a Lysias-state.
And so who is Phaedrus? Simply put, Phaedrus is that younger version of ourselves who we can remember as still bright and full of potential. Phaedrus is also our next generation for whom we have tremendous responsibility and concern. Phaedrus is our protege and the young person who is no longer a child but not quite an adult and a peer. Phaedrus is our ambition, our hope and our light.
Who is/was Lysias
Pirsig has explained that he was confused when choosing the name Phaedrus and perhaps ought to have chosen the name Lysias. Whether that is factually correct or not, Pirsig preferred that we proceed as though it were true. I am disinclined to go with Pirsig’s preference on this.
In Phaedrus, Lysias is a rhetorician and seems also to be a suitor for the affections and tutelage of Phaedrus (at least, a reading of the essay seems to suggest this). Socrates disapproves of Lysias in nearly all ways. He doesn’t like his rhetoric and he doesn’t want to lose his disciple to Lysias.
Lysias
I am not convinced by Pirsig’s claim that his own errors in judgement led him to choose the name Phaedrus instead of Lysias. The Phaethon myth is too well aligned to ZAMM to be a complete coincidence. Had Pirsig used the name Lysias, this connection would be largely out-of-reach. Also, it seems correct that a mid-forties aged Pirsig might perceive his younger self as a bit of a golden-child.
However, a not-quite-young-anymore Robert Pirsig, with a family and no longer able to be a rising intellectual star, that person is certainly able to be named Lysias. In ZAMM, Pirsig describes taking-up the cause of rhetoric and the Sophists. He rebels against Plato, Socrates and academia itself. He wolfishly describes going to Chicago as if he were an intellectual hit man.
“Great Universities proceeded in a Hegelian fashion and any school which could not accept a thesis contradicting its fundamental tenets was in a rut. This Phaedrus claimed, was the thesis the University of Chicago was waiting for…..if someone else were to produce a thesis which purported to be a major breakthrough between Eastern and Western philosophy, between religious mysticism and scientific positivism, he would think it of major historic importance, a thesis which would place the University miles ahead. In any event, he said, no one was really accept in Chicago until he’d rubbed someone out. It was time Aristotle go his.” (Chapter 28)
The passage refers to Phaedrus’ attitude when he received some resistance or rejection to an attempt to enroll in the University of Chicago’s Interdisciplinary Program in “Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods” which included oversight from the University’s philosophy, English, Chinese and Classics professors. When asked what his substantive field was, Phaedrus explained that it was English composition. The committee chairman rejected the field (which one may simply re-term rhetoric for this essay) as methodological rather than substantive. And it is a root consideration..is composition substance or only method. Consideration of this question is what made Phaedrus feel so wolfishly akin to Lysias.
Historically, Lysias was a rhetorician at the time that Socrates, Plato (and a bit later Aristotle) were dominant intellectuals and scholars of their day. Lysias was a speech-writer and clearly was not a political nor intellectual friend of those proto-academics. When I read Plato, I am frequently concerned by his contemporaneous political intentions. I don’t quite trust that Plato was a fully objective and unbiased source of information. When I approach Plato, I can’t help but think of contemporary partisan politics to wonder how much of what Plato put to paper was a kind of thumb-on-the-scale rhetoric and how much was an earnest and faithful representation of either Socrates’ ideas or Plato’s own.
So here’s an irony about reading Plato in general and the Phaedrus in particular. Despite the fact that Plato advocates for a dialectic method of learning and mentorship via the character called Socrates – he clearly employed rhetoric and writing as vehicles for his philosophy. This is unlike the actual Socrates, from whom no written material is available. So Plato used rhetoric in attempts to intellectually undermine and devalue rhetoricians.
A note about pronunciation. I went with “Liss-ee-us” in my reading but was tempted to go with “Lie-see-us”. The latter version seems to evoke the relationship of the name to it’s root-word origin meaning wolf…as in lycanthrope.
In ZAMM, the scenes wherein Phaedrus is in a kind of conflict with his instructors at the University of Chicago and presents himself as a “wolf” or lone wolf…and this is Pirsig’s confusion between wanting to portray himself as an intellectual wolf among the sheep on the one hand but a kind of radiant golden-child on the other.
Clearly there is room for both personas. Our personalities are mutable over time. Different versions of ourselves are continuously emerging -perhaps now we are a gold-child version of ourselves with hope of rising to glory and power and then again, what seems to be mere moments later, we are a Phaedrus – wolfishly hunting things down…and again at some other time, perhaps we are Helios or Zeus.
This mutability over time is no small consideration, either for ZAMM or for our own lives. I certainly recall times when the golden-child version of myself was most dominant. At times, I can bring that feeling to mind again – either by reliving those times in my memory or approaching some endeavor in a similar manner. However, as I am undoubtedly in the second half of the life, it would be somewhat disappointing if I still viewed myself as that rising golden-child. For me, however, there isn’t any confusion between a Phaedrus version of myself and a Lysias version of myself. While I remember golden-child days and can revive golden-child spirit, it is clear that I am not fundamentally that earlier version of myself. In a sense, I am expressing a significant disagreement with “inner child” notions that suggest adult persons are the living and current embodiment of their childhood – that there’s a child within us currently and always. This seems to me to be a diminishing and confusing perspective – as with Pirsig’s uncertainty whether to name a character with one name or another.
So again, returning to an earlier question…who is Lysias. Well Lysias was an established and respected rhetorician. He was a nemesis to Socrates, Plato – a threat to the foundation of all that was and is academia. Lysias and rhetoric was the alternative mentor for Phaedrus…and for all of western Philosophy. As a speech-writer, Lysias is a political reality outside of the ivory towers. For Plato – Lysias is the anti-academic. But Lysias is also the advocate of literacy and technology. Composition is his field. And here we must confront the question whether that is a methodological or a substantive area. Lysias is the wolf in the garden of academia.
Outside the City Gates
At the beginning of Phaedrus, Socrates explains that he takes his learning from engaging with people within the city. It is his environment. The setting for Socrates requires interaction with others. Dialectic is dependent upon what we may refer to as urban settings.
In the Phaedrus dialogue, however, Socrates and Phaedrus leave the city sit by a river under a plane tree, They have brought the ideas of people with them in the form of a written essay. These facts will become interesting to consider later in this essay where we have a reminiscence of dialectic exchange between Thoth and Thamus. The written essay is what allows Phaedru and Socrates to leave the city – the dynamic source of the themes.
ZAMM also begins with an explanation of getting out of the city. The narrator undertakes his Chautauquas with the reader in the role of listener. If we accept the Phaedrus as a kind of template…Pirsig (the author) is our Plato; the narrator is our Socrates as well as our Lysias and our Phaedrus.
Rhetoric
Within the Phaedrus dialogue, Socrates presents a story of two Egyptian gods, Thoth and Thamus, at the invention of the technology of writing. Thamus argued that writing would be a benefit to humanity by expanding human memory. Thoth argued that writing would actually erode human capacity for memory and general/practical living and knowing. Thoth argued that reliance on writing would mean humans would not use their memories but would instead use writing to remember. These arguments relate directly to Pirsig’s ideas of static and dynamic quality – where static quality is in the writing while dyanmic quality is in the active memory of the human.
A significant theme of ZAMM is a struggle with technology and our capacity to live satisfying lives. We may no longer think of writing as a technology – which shows just how ancient it is and the extent to which Thoth’s argument is correct. Cell phones and all things internet are contemporary exhibitions of the theme. Pirsig saw technology as a threat to humanity’s ability to live in the cutting edge of reality; Thoth also saw this threat. Today, we can go to a park with wonderful natural scenery and observe people staring down at a hand-held screen. Or we can casually pose a thought in conversation and have an individual quickly relay a relevant piece of information gleaned from a vast trove of digital information. And just as quickly forgotten.
Via the parable of Thoth and Thamus, Socrates laments a situation where written documents leads to people generally knowing less…as they rely on the documents to provide knowledge. This is the ivory tower of academia versus the workshops of trade schools; book learning versus lived experience; theory versus practice. Professional specialization versus generalization.
Despite Socrates (and therefore Plato’s) apparent preference for a dynamic quality experience of learning via dialectic, academia has evolved into a rhetorical form. When academia was significantly more restricted in size, this situation was perhaps less prominent than it is today. I might suggest that the more dominated by rhetorical forms, methods and patterns that academia undergoes, the more it will be prone to the faults of rhetoric that Plato observed.
Pirsig seems to agree with Plato that dynamic approaches that result in greater general knowledge and ability of students is preferable.
Rhetoric is not just writing, it is arguing for a particular end. Today, we see rhetoric as primarily presenting of arguments to achieve a case or policy. When education is designed around achieving a rhetorically-designed end, anything outside of serving that end is disregarded or held as problematic. Unfortunately for the students, that also means that their training is also held to the specialization of the rhetorically-designed end.
Through Socrates, Plato advocates for Dialectic – the exploration of information, ideas and truth through dialogue and he saw rhetoric/writing as being in conflict with this. As reminiscence rather than memory. Not cutting edge of reality.
Conversation rather than essay…exchange that is in the moment, dyanmic.
Rhetoric is consistent with Pirsig’s static quality
Dialectic is consistent with Pirsig’s dyanmic quality
Rhetoric is the production of artifacts; dialectic is the lived experience.
Plane tree or sycamore…
Sitting Under the Plane Tree
In Phaedrus, Socrates and Phaedrus choose to take up a place under a plane tree (platanus) to have their discussion. The plane tree is closely associated with the Academy of Plato and Aristotle.
This act of sitting under a tree is a critical metaphor and symbol and deserves some consideration in reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or more broadly in life.
Trees occupy a significant presence in ZAMM; trees are frequently mentioned to help establish the setting and the situation. They are a landmark and a reference. Most frequently, and memorably, referenced in ZAMM are pines. Pines seem to hold a special, almost primordial position in Pirsig’s aesthetic environment. Pines are present in the anecdote when Pirsig and his son Chris foreshortened a trip in a rain-storm “But there weren’t any mechanics. Just cutover pine trees and brush and rain.” Pine trees occur in brief passages of this sort as a kind of continuous, stabilizing presence, but they are not the kinds of trees that one sits under.
In chapter three, the riders must take shelter and John Sutherland has pointed out a convenient spot. The narrator recalls that there is a “better one if you turn right at a row of cottonwoods a few blocks down.” While this surprises the other riders, the cottonwoods act as a memory anchor for the narrator and for us.
In chapter eight, the narrator visit’s Bill’s cycle shop “under some shady trees.”; this scene follows an extensive description of the narrator performing inspection and tuning tasks on the motorcycle due to some concerning performance he’d observed.
In chapter fifteen, while the motorcycle’s chain adjustment link is being serviced at a repair shop, the narrator and his son firs sit on a church’s lawn then “…walk under shady trees on very neat sidewalks past neat houses….he prepared his lectures in the peripatetic manner, using these streets as his academy.”
Chapter seventeen..they are mountain-climbing and Chris “sits under a tree and rests. He doesn’t look at me, and that’s how I know it’s bad….is afraid to face the possibility that his fear creates: that he may not be able to climb the mountain at all…”
In the final chapter of the book, there is an extended revelatory scene where Chris is finally freed-up from his sheltered and limiting position on the back of the motorcyle and is able to see the trees…”The road continues to twist and wind through the trees..some of these branches over the road are hanging so low they’re going to konk him on the head if he’s not careful….the sunlight makes strange and beautiful designs through the tree branches on the road.”
This is a zen moment for the motorcycle-ride-as-meditation. Pirsig names the coastal manzanita and this seems to serve as Pirsig’s bodhi tree.
In Buddhism, the Buddha is described as sitting under a Bodhi tree. One of the archetypal images of Buddhism is a person seated in a lotus-position under the canopy of a tree. This is the tree of awakening. The original bodhi tree is a fig tree with the latin name Ficus religiosa.
Sitting under a tree is a thing that nearly every person is capable of. I mean that in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Sitting in the shade of a tree is a fundamental experience. Indeed, a fundamental pleasure. One that we can do at any age and, in many cases regardless of the surrounding events of our lives if we choose to.
At my present home, the front porch of the house sits under the canopy of what is most likely a thirty- to fifty-year-old Crimson King Norway maple tree. It is one of the most comfortable and relaxing places of our home to be. And indeed, the tree lends a welcoming coziness to the entire block that we live on. People want to park their cars under our tree. Meanwhile the back deck and patio sit under a forty-foot tall Balsam Fir.
Living in a major urban centre without trees is one of the most destructive of conditions that we have allowed in modern society. The environments which we have created that are devoid of trees denies access to a fundamental human experience – just sitting under a tree.
Siddhartha or Gautama Buddha sits under the bodhi tree
In the Phaedrus dialogue three is also a reference to taking learning from an oak or a rock…this idea of taking learning directly from nature rather than from teachers. The grasshoppers are muses….nature and the natural world rather than dogma and prescriptive doctrines. It is a sentiment that sits comfortably with Zen philosophy and with the scenic passages of ZAMM. Most notably, Pirsig takes learning directly from the nature of the landscape and from the atmosphere. Throughout the book, he is observing weather and temperature and geography. But he also seeks to find learning in the real-world of his motorcycle’s behaviour. Here we may take “nature” to refer to anything that exists in the physical (or natural) world compared to what exists only in the mind.
Truth
Throughout western Philosophy and certainly within Plato, there is a common conjoining of “the good” and “truth”.
Socrates disapproves of rhetoric and writing as an inadequate replacement for direct living and interaction. He also disapproves of rhetoric and writing as a form that enables a departure from truth.
in the sections of ZAMM where the narrator recalls teaching experiences in Bozeman, Montana as well as his interactions with the University of Chicago when he reveals his area as “English composition” and is accused of being a methodological field. In essence it is revealing Pirsig’s interest in rhetoric and mainstream American philosophy’s disinterest in the same.
Early in ZAMM, the narrator refers to the truth knocks on the door…go away, I’m looking for the truth. This sentence can refer to his own knocking on the door of the University of Chicago’s philosophy department door. Go away, I’m looking for the truth says Plato and academia to rhetoric. The truth, as far as Pirsig can see is in quality and may well be revealed using composition. Rhetoric.
Pirsig advises a student to start with a single brick and work outwards from there. This is a form of advocating inductive reasoning.
Metaphorical Language
The language of myth and metaphor is used in part because it shows the relationship of the use of language to lived and experienced reality. Socrates compares the grasshoppers and plane trees to mythical creatures, gods and events. What we have is a contrasting of subjective narrative-based reality with objective observable facts and remembered experiences. These, too, are central themes of ZAMM and can provide interesting insight into Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality.
In the Phaedrus dialogue, Socrates laments that documents are read to be believed rather than to be critically engaged. This is not a small theme in our contemporary society when the internet and various forms of mass media provide vast quantities of information. We must ask ourselves…do we read in order to believe or do we read to critically engage? To what extent are we participating in subjective narrative-based realities or objective facts and experiences. Are we competent to reject a forced choice between the two and instead synthesize these into an intelligently and authentically experienced whole?
Isocrates
Isocrates: Freedom. Self-Control and Virtue
At the end of the Phaedrus dialogue, Plato includes what may be either a backhanded compliment or a sarcastic reference to a rhetorician named Isocrates.
Isocrates was a leading rhetorician and competitor of Plato’s academy when it came to drawing in the young golden-child-status students from Athens’ wealthy families. Plato has Socrates say that Isocrates may rise above the limits of rhetoric.
Isocrates’ writing shows a promotion of freedom, self-control (what I may call self-accountability) and virtue. There is a political theory built on this which is called ‘isocracy’ that is distinct from ‘democracy’ which Plato advocated and the political systems of that name which are dominant today. Some view Isocrates to have been an advocate of ‘pragmatic’ principles as well as probability as a tool for navigating life and truth. Isocrates also focussed on ‘arete’, which is a word/concept that Robert Pirsig features in his metaphysics of quality via Lila and ZAMM.
In my own estimation, Isocrates appears worth more time and attention despite Plato’s bit of damning with faint praise.
In a study of ZAMM, this rather passing reference should not be ignored as it opens the door to more consideration…and will form the basis of a future essay/episode in Zensylvania.
Synthesis
In this review of Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue, it seems less important to establish whether Robert Pirsig really did agree with Plato and the academics or whether he preferred Isocrates and the rhetoricians/sophists. It seems to me that preferring the methods and principles of one faction over another is akin to relating to contemporary left-right politics. It gets in the way of one’s ability to draw the best, most correct and most useful elements of all the factions. Rather than trying to justify, reject or overlook an ideology due to its failings and flaws, it seems sensible to figure out in a dynamic way in what ways, under what circumstances and to what extent an ideology may be “true”. See my explorations of fuzzy logic. It seems to me that this is what Pirsig was doing when he tried to synthesize different systems to understand his own life.
Dynamic quality, as the cutting edge of reality, is entirely circumstantial.
To understand and apply these things in our own lives…where does reading and writing fit in our lives. Is the alphabet a kind of descent from memory to reminiscence….from engaging our lives to engaging with abstractions and patterns? Is the internet a continuation and complication of that?
In my podcast, I have focussed on artifacts (essays) and speechifying rather than dialectics…at least so far. They are different.
On the interior panel of the dust jacket cover of On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence, there is a brief proclamation attributed to Robert M. Pirsig that “The ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment.” This was, apparently, Pirsig’s opinion in 1962 – well before either of Pirsig’s more famous books Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Lila, were published. On Quality, has been published posthumously and a few short months ago. For reasons peculiar to my own interests and inquiries, this proclamation strikes me as tremendously important as well as being something that might just take one down a long path of discovery.
This observation that one of Robert Pirsig’s sentences bears the potential for protracted curiosity is fully consistent with my experience of examining Pirsig’s earlier books. There is usually something to explore, contend-with or discover just about anywhere one happens to open the book.
For example, as I’ve not yet run down the relationship between “enlightenment” and “excellence”, I’m not confident that I fully agree that the ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment. Perhaps for Pirsig it seemed to be. Having reflected on that sentence, I would actually prefer if Pirsig had claimed that the “ultimate goal in the pursuit of enlightenment is excellence.” My revision of Pirsig’s circa 1962 sentence seems, at least to me, to be more in keeping with the Metaphysics of Quality philosophy that he later developed. And I do wonder if he might have similarly revised that sentiment if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to that question. But I tend to think that Pirsig may have been the kind of person who updated his opinions when new information was available.
I’m also not certain whether Pirsig’s 1962 conception of “enlightenment” aligns with his perception of “enlightenment” in 1974 or 1990….nor for that matter with my understanding of “enlightenment” here in 2022. The same word may have been used to describe three slightly different things.
One thing that the word “enlightenment” often refers to a process where a person is freed -up from ignorance and misconception. The enlightened individual understands things as they really and truly are. Enlightenment is therefore a process by which one achieves that state of understanding. This version of the word “enlightenment” seems to track well with Pirsig’s 1962 sentence…pursuing excellence might well lead to an enlightened status relative that status one is pursuing excellence within. If motorcycle maintenance happened to be the field, then so be it…an enlightened motorcycle maintainer. Even if by “motorcycle maintenance” we are actually metaphorically saying “self maintenance.”
This initial definition of “enlightenment” may, however, be tracked via (at least) two different major philosophical paths – that being the Enlightenment of Western Philosophy and the enlightenment of Buddhism in Eastern Philosophy.
Baruch Spinoza: There’s no reason not to think of Spinoza when examining Pirsig
In the Western/Euro-American tradition, the Enlightenment is what I will call a humanist intellectual movement that is generally recognized as beginning in the 1600s and, arguably, continues on today. I have no difficulty suggesting that Robert Pirsig’s philosophy sits comfortably on a branch of the major route that is the Enlightenment. The humanist Enlightenment movement synthesizes a worldview that focuses on reason, science and a common humanity with goals of human understanding, freedom, and happiness. Robert Pirsig had certainly been exposed to both Western and Eastern philosophy by 1962 and would have been well aware of the Enlightenment. I doubt that Pirsig was specifically referencing the formally recognized enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th century. But it is not inconceivable that he may have been aligning with the ideals and goals iterated as a part of all that. So the pursuit of excellence could be argued to ideally end in human understanding, freedom and happiness.
Finally, along the Buddhist path, we find that enlightenment refers to a blessed status that is free from desire and suffering. Again, we know that Pirsig had been educated about Eastern concepts and would have been able to contemplate whether the pursuit of excellence had an end goal of being free from desire and suffering. On page 109 of On Quality, Pirsig states that Soto Zen Buddhist doctrine holds that “everyone is enlightened. What occurs at “enlightenment” is the falling away of the illusion that one is not enlightened. But the enlightenment has been there all along.” This is from a letter dated August 17, 1997. Putting this perspective into play in the earlier sentence, The ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment….we might get something like “The ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is the falling away of the illusion that one is not enlightened.”…it seems not quite right. But that partly depends on what one might mean by the term “excellence”, doesn’t it?
However, a version that follows my ultimate goal in the pursuit of enlightenment is excellence would be The ultimate goal in the pursuit of falling away of the illusion that one is not enlightened is excellence.”…also seems to be a better presentation.
Of course, there is nothing preventing Pirsig from having been comfortable with all of the possible associations within the proposal that the ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment. Even though the several notions that I’ve described are not exactly the same, they aren’t necessarily contradictory in nature. In fact, there is significant overlap despite the unique territory that each covers.
It seem to be an “and gate” situation. As, potentially, is the “pursuit of excellence” and “enlightenment”…each in the various possible meanings.
As a person moves toward expressing something they think/know/experience/comprehend/apprehend/understand, they are presented with the challenge to explore the words and word-orders that most suit their meaning. It is both a creative process and an exploratory process. It is a process which first brought Pirsig to explore “Quality” in his first book and then later to talk about Static Quality and Dynamic Quality, the established patterns (on the one hand) and chaotic cutting edge of reality (on the other).
Another Book to Consider Buying
Well, I will certainly be considering all of these terms and the relations and expect that they may form the basis of future Zensylvania territory. In the meantime…
In writing this essay, I realize that I have come dangerously-close to writing a book-review rather than my preferred intention to document only my own reactions to an original work. This is mostly due to the fact that On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence is mostly NOT a new and original work.
Given what seems to have become for me a long-standing interest in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, I was very eager to obtain a copy of the follow-on Inquiry into Excellence as I hoped to obtain a significant quantity of new material and previously un-revealed insights. Unfortunately, there’s a lot less new material than there is re-printed versions of information that is already available. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t ANY new insights or collections of words that make the book worthwhile…it simply isn’t as robustly new as I would have preferred.
Still, I don’t regret the purchase. And I should send a significant thank-you to my daughter Chloe-Lynn for the fathers-day gift card which I used to expand my motorcycle-zen themed collection. And largely, that is the role that this Inquiry into Excellence plays for me today. It’s an artifact…and it is a kind of finger pointing to the moon.
The book was released for sale in April of 2022 and I received my first edition hard-copy several weeks ago. At 150-pages of relatively large-font print, I’ve only read through the book a couple of times so far but I intend to give it serious examination over the course of the summer.
Photographs
Throughout the book there are pictures of Robert Pirsig’s tools. According to the book’s preface, written by Robert Pirsig’s wife Wendy K. Pirsig, the photos were taken by David Lindberg – a nephew of Robert.
That brief paragraph offers the opportunity for observations about Pirsig’s writing and philosophy that I appreciate. First, consider the fact that the book was marketed as, at least in part, a collection of previously unpublished material by the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The book’s preface is credited to Wendy Pirsig, an individual with a direct family relationship to Robert, who died in 2017. Actually, what needs to be said is that Wendy is an individual with a kin relationship to Robert. The reason that this phrasing is important can be found in Chapter Five of ZAMM.
Clearly, David Lindberg also has a kin relationship with Robert Pirsig…and as an artist, his contribution is a collection of photographs of tools used by Pirsig. Tools serve an important function in the pages of ZAMM and also in our lives.
The handing-down of legacies (consider Footnotes to Being Water) has always been a massively important feature of individual and collective human endeavour. The handing down of tools – as artifacts and as useful means to achieve let’s say excellence…cannot be emphasized enough. Handing down a tool is:
handing down a culture;
handing down an artifact symbol of past survival and creativity;
handing down an artifact object to serve future survival and creativity;
Robert Pirsig’s tools are a symbol of his past and could be photographed as objects or picked-up and used for the practical purposes that Pirsig acquired and used them for during his life.
Finger Pointing to the Moon
The Inquiry into Excellence is a finger pointing to the moon as the majority of it’s work is as an exhibition to reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila. It is a hard-backed museum.
In the creation of On Quality, an artist has presented photographs of the tools which a person used in the living of their life. The creative act of photography was a dynamic quality act. The photographs are static quality products. Presumably those tools were objects which enabled Robert Pirsig to tune-up and maintain his Honda Super Hawk. Each tool was a kind of sacred object to those dynamic quality rituals he undertook. Now that Robert Pirsig no longer completes those tasks, they are artefacts of that past. They are patterns of static quality.
The photographs point to the dynamically-lived life of Robert Pirsig but they are a finger pointing to the moon. Of course all of these books are fingers pointing to the moon of Pirsig’s philosophy and way of understanding the living at the cutting edge of reality.
MOQ
Many people who choose to investigate On Quality will be interested, as I was, about any new text addressing the Metaphysics of Quality. I’m not going to outline every new or renewed thing I found in the book. If you’re interested, I hope that you’ll buy a copy and thereby contribute to the Pirsig family legacy.
However, there were several passages that engaged my attention that I want to feature in this essay. In a letter dated September 11, 1994, I found a passage which seems, I think to justify my observation that Pirsig’s philosophy was consistent with humanist enlightenment:
“Quality can be equated with God, but I don’t like to do so, “God” to most people is a set of static intellectual and social patterns. Only true religious mystics can correctly equate God with Dynamic Quality. In the West, particularly around universities, these people are quite rare. The others, who go around saying, “God wants this,” or “God will answer your prayers,” are, according to the Metaphysics of Qualty, engaging in a minor form of evil. Such statements are a lower form of evolution, intellectual patterns, attempting to contain a higher one….” (pg. 81)
Alfred North Whitehead
It’s quite a tough stance and frankly one that I think not only sets MOQ in alignment with Enlightenment ideals but is also consistent with notions that Alfred North Whitehead expressed in Process and Reality.
I am grateful that Wendy Pirsig and the editors of the book didn’t shy away from including this passage as it does positively establish a metaphysical position of the MOQ.
As a follow-on to that, Pirsig also suggests (c. 1995) that his MOQ solves a list of philosophical “problems”
The Metaphysics of Quality is valuable because it provides a central pivotal term that the Western, scientifically structured mind cannot dismiss. The second reason is for selection of Quality as a pivotal term is that is solve the “Two Worlds” problem of C.P. Snow, the division between the arts and sciences….“
The list goes on and I encourage you to obtain a copy of the book and examine the list. I am not certain of the extent to which I agree with Pirsig on his assessment. And that is not a coy way of saying that I disagree.
However, the work does rather go to Pirsig’s critics to do a good job of explaining how/why MOQ might (in good faith) be dismissed.
C.P. Snow
Dharma- Rta – Quality
Many critics of Pirsig’s metaphysics (as of any metaphysics whatsoever) may be expected to be come form those deeply-embedded in the physical sciences – biology, chemistry, physics and the like. On page 101, Pirsig is cited as writing that…”So far [readers seem] struck mute about the equivalence of the terms “Quality” and “dharma”, which are both derived from a common prehistoric root, “rta” meaning “the cosmic order of things.” The Buddhists have no trouble understanding that the dharma is the origin of things, but I think it’s going to take another century or two to convince Westerners that Quality is.”
It is very difficult, if not essentially impossible to approach a comment like that as anything other than a kind of soothsaying that can’t be evaluated. It will take another 150 years or so to know the extent to which Pirsig may be on to something. From my own outlook, I think that the field of biosemiotics seems to be most likely to reveal whatever truth there may be in Pirsig’s metaphysics and prediction.
Quality Undefined
Throughout ZAMM and much of Lila, Pirsig avoided providing a definition of “Quality”. On page 97 of On Quality, there is an excerpt from his 1974 lecture at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where he said that, “One of the advantage of keeping Quality undefined – which is central to [Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]…as long as you keep it undefined, then it becomes an instrument of change, and you can grow, because the things that you find Quality in are going to change as you grow.“
In this little book though, Pirsig’s use of the term Quality is equated, directly or indirectly with
God
the phoneme “rta” from the Proto-Indo-European language
the essence of experience
selection
meaning
dharma
the pure thing (Hindu traditions); the pure non-thing (Buddhist traditions)
“what holds together”
righteousness; rightness
the stable condition which gives man perfect satisfaction
duty toward self
virtue of the ancient Greeks
the Cosmic order of things
spirituality
Metaphysics of Quality is Metaphysics of Spirituality
the Tao
This is probably an incomplete list as Pirsig admitted to a preparedness to talk about Quality for hours on end without establishing a firm meaning.
On page 32 and running for about ten pages there is a delving of the phoneme “rta” as found in words like arete, art, right, rhetoric, arithmetic, aristocrat, virtue and more…this is from the proto-indo-European language. This is interesting as it establishes how words can be “cognate” with each other in descent from that common ancient language. In this case, ‘rta” or “rt” as a phoneme is seen to bear a fundamental meaning of rightness.
Clearly other language groups may have a different phoneme which would affirm something similar. Something about “rt” seemed to convey to a particular community of people that “rt” meant rightness at the most fundamental level. Just as “Ya” seems to indicate “yes/positive/affirmative” or “na” seems to indicate “no/negative/dis-affirmative” across many languages.
A term or word is only correct/useful insofar as it accurately and precisely identifies the object/phenomenon/event/idea that it is intended to identify. Pirsig’s preference to avoid defining “quality” was, as described a trick to maintain exploration and curiosity…but also as seen, it was placed (eventually) in the context of that single syllable meaning rightness.
But not as a judgement after the fact..rightness as a fundamental trait.
What Was I Looking For
When I purchased this little book, I was certainly looking for original material by Robert Pirsig that I hadn’t read before. Inevitably, that might have been some expansion of the work he’d begun in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila. But I found that I was also looking for further glimpses into what kind of a person Robert Pirsig may have been after having written these books. The largest clues come not from Robert Pirsig but from Wendy Pirsig. In the preface, she comments that a depression which followed the murder of Chris Pirsig, led to the delay in publishing of Lila. This indicates that Pirsig experienced a depression that lasted somewhere between 10 and 13 years. Perhaps longer.
She also wrote that Robert “contemplated other works, but they never materialized. His work in later years, involved maintenance of our home, the boat and the motorcycle he kept for the rest of his life.” This seems to be the boundaries of Robert Pirsig’s public persona. Boat. Home. Motorcycle. And, of course two books.
And that may be more than enough.
An Inquiry into Excellence is considered by Wendy to be a reminder of Pirsig’s “challenge to Western Philosophy and science to take on a study of Quality and stop thinking of it as vague and unworthy.“
This book focuses on the Philosophy and not on motorcycles or motorcycling. Neither does it focus on the literary side of ZAMM (and to a lesser extent, Lila). It may be inevitable that people will want to make the philosophy the focus as that did seem to be a central ambition of the book.
But as I’ve attempted to describe in my Footnotes essays, there is literary meat on the bones as well. The focus on the philosophy of the metaphysics can be seen as getting in the way of apprehension of the message. Stop looking at the finger and start looking at the moon.
Your experience of this moment right now is the cutting edge of reality. Just as Pirsig’s sentence “The ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment. ” seems to me that it ought to be flipped to say “ultimate goal in the pursuit of enlightenment is excellence” consider what happens when you flip the question “What is the meaning of life?” to “Life is meaning.”
You don’t have a purpose. You are one of many purposes.
You may have noticed that this essay (or episode if you’re listening) is titled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part Five. It’s part of an as-yet-indeterminate series of examinations of Robert Pirsig’s books. You may wish to go back to earlier parts of the series before taking this one in, but it isn’t obligatory in any way. You may also want to listen to take in the “On Footnotes” essay which is available on the website in print and is included in the first episode of this series. Just to get a sense of why I’ve titled so many essays in this way. But as I’ve indicated previously, it isn’t necessary to backtrack if you’re not inclined to.
Right now we’re going to take a look at Chapter Two of Pirsig’s book. At about nine pages, it’s a relatively brief chapter but it contains two of the books most memorable motorcycle-themed scenes and a number of interesting passages which reinforce Pirsig’s messages about self-reliance.
The chapter begins with a reminder that Pirsig and his companions have only just begun their motorcycle vacation. Similarly, the reader has only just begun exploration of Pirsig’s journey and philosophy as well. The first paragraph of the chapter says, “The road winds on and on….we stop for rests and lunch, exchange small talk and settle down to the long ride. The beginning fatigue of afternoon balances the excitement of the first day and we move steadily not fast, not slow.“
I interpret this as a kind of prescription by Pirsig for approaching both the reading of this book and for approaching life – remembering that the motorcycle journey is a metaphor for living life. It isn’t a terrible prescription to take breaks out from the business of life’s journey to stop for rest, meals and the small and inconsequential talk that doesn’t carry immediacy and import. To move steadily through life. neither fast nor slow is probably a good thing.
From the chapter sample that I opened this episode with, we can see that this thesis of steadily, neither fast nor slow is something Pirsig repeated near the end of the chapter. I appreciate how internally consistent Pirsig’s writing is. It isn’t merely repetition, it is reinforcement.
Typical of Pirsig, the next paragraph seems to continue about the motorcycle riding but actually introduces an ominous element…”Lately, there’s been a sense of something, as is we were being watched or followed…” If you haven’t read the book, my next comments may be something of a spoiler…but my presumption is that anyone following this series is either already familiar with the book or will appreciate that I’m trying to unpack Pirsig’s design as we go….this brief passage is a very early hint of a ghostly presence inside the narrator’s mind.
It’s a terrific bit of foreshadowing and reinforces one of my arguments that ZAMM may fairly be called a gothic story or ghost story. This is the introduction of a theme of ghosts and ghastly elements that will come up many times in the book.
In the third paragraph, Pirsig seems to break away again and takes time to talk about the flue flax blossoms in a nicely phrased, poetic line talking about the fields along the road, “Some of them are blue with flax blossoms moving in long waves like the surface of the ocean.” This mention of the ocean is also a bit of foreshadowing as Chris and the narrator do eventually arrive at the Pacific Ocean.
Photo Courtesy: Flickr
With the hint of ghostly presence and mention of the ocean, I am reminded of S.T. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I don’t think this is a far stretch….Pirsig is clearly conjuring maritime imagery in the next paragraph describing the plains ” as if you were siailing out from a choppy coastal harbor, noticed that the waves had taken on a deep swell, and turned back to see that you were out of sight of land.”
The ominous tone that Pirsig introduced is very effectively reinforced and then she says “I have a feeling none of us fully understands what four days on this prairie in July will be like.”
It’s quite a threatening statement which he moderately softens with memories of other trips and with discussion of the group’s planning. But the suspense and hint of tortures and trials to come is absolutely there.
And here I want to mention that ZAMM often recalls to mind the first part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, the Inferno. It’s a kind of invocation, isn’t it? Four Days on the prairie in the July Heat..a road that winds on an on…just as Dante and Virgil wound their way into Hell’s circles?
Dante’s Inferno Circles of Hell
ZAMM is absolutely in line with epic poetry traditions and it should be reinforced that Pirsig was absolely able to bring this imagery in without feeling the need to explain that this is what he was doing. ZAMM is Pirsig’s Divine Comedy…It is a story of his mid-life’s journey.
The narrator says of the trip through hell that he felt Sylvia should go along to maintain harmony among the riders…”to arrive after days of hard travel across the prairies would be to see them in another way, as a promised land..”
There is a break in the chapter and then Pirsig takes time to talk about some storm clouds on the horizon (another foreshadowing)..air temperature and weather play an ongoing role throughout the book..the inteplay between hot and cool..physical discomfort. “on a cycle you’re in the scene, not just watching it, and storms are definitely a part of it.“
The narrator’s comments about Sylvia being along for the ride through a hellish prairie may be a reminder of Dante’s goal to be united with Beatrice. But clearly Pirsig is taking a different tack and while Sylvia may be a kind of analog of Beatrice, clearly they are not the same. Suffice it to say, it is valuable to ponder who the narrator’s companions in this epic journey are and what function they may serve in Pirsig’s design.
Next comes an is an interlude wherein the narrator provides a kind of amusing anecdote of a father-son trip from Minnesota to Canada. This is interesting to me as my family and I spent several years living in Thunder Bay Ontario, the area that is immediately north of Minnesota and could have been a kind of destination of the trip. I’m certainly very familiar with the geography. While this is personally interesting, I think the reference to Canada is another one of Pirsig’s reinforcements. In American literature and popular culture, Canada is often presented as a kind of wilderness garden of eden…a promised land. A serene place to escape to. Perhaps this observation of American culture of mine is oversimplified. Be that as it may, The accuracy of this picture of Canada is highly questionable.
The anecdote is filled with rain, mishaps and misery…ultimately leading to an end of the trip when the narrator failed to diagnose an empty fuel tank. The story fulfills a number of tasks. These are storms of Rime of the Ancient Mariner or the horrible stations along Dante’s path.
It shows the narrator, and Pirsig as someone not unlike everyone else. He’s had failures and times when he was unprepared for the storms of life. To the point of being on the side of the road without gas and without even knowing he didn’t have gas.
To one extent or another, we all start out as a younger version of ourselves and without all of the knowledge and preparation to deal with the storms we will have to face. Literal and metaphorical.
I’ve found myself on the side of the road in a vehicle with no gas on a couple of occasions…once in the middle of a cold winter day…I’ve also found occasions to be on the side of the road variously lacking oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, power steering fluid and engine coolant. My point is that life can be complicated and as it gets more complicated, there are more things that can shut you down. Whatever the cause, being shut down can bring about a deep and genuine dejection.
Being shut down with no clue why you’re shut down is particularly awful. But it is the helplessness, whether you know why you’re shut down or not, that takes the toll…and this is what Pirsig describes…his son’s tearful questions of why the fun is all over are your tears….why am I shut down? Why can’t things move ahead.?
“But there weren’t any mechanics. Just cutover pine trees and brush and rain.” This is the emotional wilderness. No help from specialists who know what to do. No shelter from the storm. Just storm.
Pirsig said the machine they were on (no brand mentioned) was a “six-and-one half horsepower cycle, way over-loaded with luggage and way underloaded with common sense”.
Clearly the motorcycle trip into Canada is a metaphorical depiction of progressing through life. And its also a call to self-reliance and education…we have to learn how to live…how to make it through the storms, how to equip ourselves and be prepared.
The story is summed up with “Now we are on a twenty-eight-horse machine and I take the maintenance of it very seriously.” As life’s stakes are greater, we owe it to ourselves to take things a bit more seriously.
Right now, as you are living your life – whether you’re, metaphorically speaking, operating an 8-and-a-half-horsepower machine, a 28 horsepower-power machine, or the latest 125-horsepower high tech delight, I wonder how seriously you have taken the maintenance of that machine. And if that machine is not a motorcycle at all, but is in fact your own self, what has been your attitude to these things?
I wonder how seriously I’ve taken these things myself. There seems to be something in the world that doesn’t give much encouragement to giving serious consideration to maintenance. It’s either assumed to be irrelevant or presumed to be taken-care-of without effort or forethought on our part. But I’m not sure trouble-free-motoring has been a real thing for anyone. Ever.
Still, we seem to live in a world and a society that is predisposed to using things up rather than engaging with them as things to be conserved. This seems to be a fundamental feature of contemporary attitudes. And it does seem to be a genuine problem.
In the chapter, suddenly John cuts in (the character from the first chapter who we know doesn’t even want to think about maintenance…John who is heading into Hell’s circles ignorant and unprepared…to tell the narrator that they’d ridden past a sign for their turnoff…telling the narrator (and us?) that it was as big as a barn door.
Well it is big as a barn door isn’t it? Are you prepared for life’s storms? Have you been taking things seriously enough? Will you be able to diagnose when you’re gas tank, radiator, oil pan, brake fluid or power-steering fluid reservoir – or the complicated contemporary-life-reservoirs for which they are metaphors are empty?
The narrator’s realization of his inattention to the road…having missed the big as a barn door sign while pursuing his memories of the past trip set the narrator to checking his engine temperature. The narrator is shaken out of focusing on the past and tries to put his attention back in the moment. The here and now.
I want to take a moment to recall Pirsig’s mention in chapter one that country road sign makers don’t tell you twice…one may assume that this is true when the sign is as big as a barn door.
Soon however, a second set of memories takes hold of the narrator’s attention and a new lesson is investigated. It’s another of the most memorable motorcycle-themed scenes. It pertains to anyone who has needed to deal with mechanics. Mechanics, of course are the specialists who fit the motorcycle metaphor… the narrator’s story ought to be applied to all of the various specialists and professionals upon whom we give our dependence.
And we do give our dependence don’t we? Lawyers, doctors, psychologists, bankers, financial planners, plumbers, university professors, politicians,….all the contemporary specialists who we allow to to fix and perhaps sometimes even design our problems for us. These specialists and the problems they correspond to often set us on particular paths, don’t they? And rather like Pirsig’s narrator, it isn’t unusual to find ourselves lost in the memories of yesterday or the dreams for tomorrow rather than focussing on the road we’re riding on right now.
Well…anyone who has dealt with any professional, particularly a professional who clearly does not seem to know what they are doing will share the narrator’s frustration and concern. It’s one of the most valuable scenes in the book.
It talks about care;
about professionalism;
about people being engaged in what they are doing;
about being competent.
Right now, we are living the times that Pirsig is talking about. Do we give over our lives, that is to say place ourselves in a position of dependence upon these incompetent, uninvolved chimpanzees when there are big as a barn door signs that they’ve simply wandered in and been handed a wrench? After all, it is your motorcycle going home with you after you’ve paid the fees.
Pirsig runs through the clues and decides it is the expressions, “Good-natured, friendly, easy-going – and uninvolved…..you had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job”
These are the big as a barn door cues he ought to have noticed.
Pirsig then explains he is a technical writer and found the spectator attitude in the manuals…the separation…” And it occurred to me there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance, the most important aspect of all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant, or taken for granted.“
It bears repeating that the mechanics that Pirsig’s narrator recalled stand-in for all of the specialists who we give our dependence to. Lawyers, doctors, psychologists, social workers, politicians. I think you take my meaning.
You may have noticed that I have emphasized that I think it would be a mistake for me to claim to be an expert in anything at all. It isn’t that I necessarily view expertise as problematic…however, our relationships to experts seems, in my experience, to be very problematic indeed.
This caring about life, by ourselves about our own lives…or alternately by the specialists and professionals when we choose to be spectators rather than the primary agents of our lives, this caring is the central concern. And we need to approach this caring steadily, neither fast nor slow.
Spectator should remind you that the narrator mentioned that he felt someone was watching….a spectator. So the spectator theme arrives with two distinct, though not necessarily unrelated purposes….the ominous spectator that seems to be monitoring the narrator’s journey and being a spectator of one one’s own life. Naturally enough, in zen meditation there is a concept of observing your own thoughts.
I suddenly notice the land her has flattened into a Euclidian plan. …we have entered the Red River Valley….In the Zensylvania episode containing an incomplete examination of Fuzzy Logic, I spent some time connecting dots between Pirsig as a technical writer and the field of formal logic. Here is a big as a barn door sign that Pirsig’s writing is involved in logic and mathematics. Euclidian Plane1?
This just isn’t the kind of reference that one would normally associate with riding a motorcyle. This single sentence is, at least for me, validation of my argument that Pirsig has incorporated the language of mathematics and formal logic into the structure of Zen and the Art.
In mathematics, a plane is a flat, two-dimensional surface that extends indefinitely in all directions. The fact that the narrator describes the Red River Valley as a Euclidian Plane is very unusual and a very clear reference to Euclid, the ancient thinker and mathematician. We have to stop to think what Pirsig might be up to? It’s not an indiscrete reference. In fact it is big as a barn door. But its up to us to consider what that sign may be pointing at.
For me, I’m reminded of navigation and the first chapter of ZAMM when the narrator talks about dead reckoning. In the earlier Footnotes episodes, I’ve spoken about my opinion that the book that uses motorcycles as a metaphor for the self and a motorcycle journey as a metaphor for living life – and also that the idea of dead reckoning one’s way through life is quite an interesting way to think about how we navigate our way from one point to another of our human existence.
Earlier in this essay, we’ve seen how Pirsig continues to use these established themes to place the storms of life as a real presence in living a life. I’ve also said that Zen and the Art is Robert Pirsig’s analog to Dante Alighieri’s mid-life journey – the Divine Comedy. For Dante, his trip through the inferno was a series of descending circles. For Pirsig, the inferno seems to be a Euclidian plane – a flat, two-dimensional surface that extends unbroken in all directions. A featureless place devoid even of the sparse cover that a few cutover pine trees had offered during past trips. The fact that Pirsig used the language of mathematics to describe his inferno is not unimportant. It is, in fact, a part of Pirsig’s overall design. How indeed, does one navigate an unbroken, featureless wasteland which extends in all directions. Dead reckoning may well be a reasonable answer.
And with this very unusual and reference, the narrator – and of course Robert Pirsig, ends the rather ominous second Chapter of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Zensylvania: It's a State of Mind 