Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, An Inquiry into Values

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a 1974 philosophical novel based on Robert M Pirsig's 1968 5,700 mile seventeen day motorcycle trip with his eleven year old son. As the book unfolds we are told about some of the experiences on the trip and how they related to the philosophical thoughts of the author. Through narration and first and third person dialogue we learn about some aspects of the author's life and his philosophy in regard to ethics and values.

This thread will explore this book.
We will neglect much of the story line and concentrate on the philosophical content.

But first a brief introduction:
At the age of nine Robert Pirsig tested with an alleged IQ of 170. At the age of 14 he graduated from high school and then studied biochemistry at the University of Minnesota at the age of fifteen. While there he became enamored with the scientific method, neglected his studies and was expelled.

He entered the U.S. Army and was stationed in Korea. Afterward he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Eastern Philosophy from the the University of Minnesota. He traveled to India and studied philosophy at the Banaras Hindu University, was a member of the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods at the University of Chicago and he earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota. He then became a professor of creative writing at Montana State University.

He had a mental breakdown and spent time in psychiatric hospitals between 1961 and 1963.
In 1967 he wrote Zen but couldn't find a publisher until 1974 as it was rejected 121 times.

​

In 2019 Pirsig's 1966 Honda Super Hawk motorcycle, "leather jacket, maps, shop manual and other gear from the 1968 ride, together with a manuscript copy and signed first edition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.... (his) favorite toolboxes, with tools for maintaining his bike and other vehicles as well as tools he made himself" were donated to the Smithsonian Institute.

 

It sold 50,000 copies in three months, over five million so far, and has been translated into twenty seven languages.

 

Pirsig starts with a brief introduction to the motorcycle trip itself as they travel across Montana with two friends John and Sylvia. Pirsig likes to work on his bike, John takes his to a mechanic. Pirsig can't understand why, as he feels it is much better to do the work himself but John and Sylvia refuse to talk about it, they get irritated when he tries.

After relating John's inability to start his BMW due to a flooded carburetor, his ignoring a leaking faucet, and his ranting at technology in general, he realizes they have an aversion to "It".

So they seek escape in the mountains riding a motorcycle based on technology. Pirsig can't understand what the big deal is, as the Buddha, or the godhead, is in the motorcycle transmission just the same as in the county side.

He then relates horror stories of getting his motorcycle serviced by inept mechanics and wonders why they are so inept.

In this book he intends to look into what this "It" is and why we feel separate from it.

 

And the book counties and eventually gets into the subject of ghosts.

Did the law of gravity exist before Issac Newton "discovered" it? It's easy to think it did, but did it always exist? Did it exist before the Earth, Sun, stars, and for that matter, matter existed?

Can it have existed without having some attribute which must be related to space, time, and matter? And as space, time, and matter have not always existed, then how could the law of gravity have existed on its own?

The laws of nature, logic, mathematics, common sense, as well as gravity, are all concepts that exist in the human mind. None can exist on its own, none has existed forever.

 

"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 the father rides harder and harder through the night."

"How does it end?"
"In failure—death of the child.
The ghost wins."
​

Tomorrow I'll introduce Phaedrus.

 

Phædrus was the protagonist in Plato's dialogues of Socrates, in this book he is Pirgig's alter ego, the ghost of his past before he was committed to those mental institutions. As he travels across the states on his journey, another internal journey takes place as remnants of past thoughts arise.

...More later when I get time.

 

We now enter the world of Phædrus.

Phædrus became interested in the world of form, or what is the underling form of the world?

How do you talk about the underlying world of form when you live, and think, and talk, within that underlying world of form itself?
In order to begin you first must define, or divide, the mode of understanding underlying form.
Phædrus divides it into classic and romantic understanding.
A classicist looks at the world by applying reason. A Romantic looks at it as art.

Classic understanding is straightforward, to bring order out of chaos, everything is under control and it's value lies in the amount of control it contains. Romantics find this dull, lifeless, and sterile.

However, Classicists find the Romantic approach to be nothing more than fun seeking, irrational, erratic behavior. These people are nothing more than parasites who contribute nothing to society.

Think of the scientist or industrial baron verses the hippie.

But as Phædrus expressed these thoughts he was considered eccentric, undesirable, and then insane. He was arrested and removed from society.

 

Phædrus belonged to the classical world.
The classical way of thinking is analytical.

When considering a motorcycle a classicist will divide it into several different systems such as the power train, electrical system, braking system, feedback system, etc. And each of those can be further divided.
The power train consists of the engine, transmission, counter shaft sprocket, chain, wheel sprocket, and rear wheel. The feedback system could be divided into the camshaft, cam chain, tappets, and distributor.
The engine can be divided into the head, pistons, valve train, oiling system, ignition system, etc.

The classic approach to a motorcycle as viewed by a romanticist is dull, dull, dull. But if we look further:

For example we could describe the camshaft, cam chain, tappets and distributor as a feedback system. But you can't go to a parts store and ask for a feedback system for a 350 Honda, they won't know what you're talking about.
Classical analysis can split and divide the same thing different ways depending on who is doing the splitting and analyzing.
This is important.

 

We are constantly bombarded by thousands of types of sensory input, to much to be consciously aware of at all times. We must select what to be aware of and what to subconsciously ignore.

Once we decide what parts of the landscape we will be aware of, we then take our analytical knife and begin to make various divisions. This is like that, that is here not there, that was and is not now, that is pointy and this is flat. The more we become aware of the sand, the more divisions we find we can make. No two grains of sand are the same, some are lighter than others, bigger or smaller, darker or lighter; on and on. The more we look the more we see.

Classical understanding divides and analyzes the sand, romantic understanding sticks its toes in and wiggles.

To do this Phædrus decided that what needs to be done is to realize that the one who looks at the sand is part of that very sand and to understand the sand we must also understand the one who seeks the understanding.

 

Phædrus was insane. He lost his sanity by pursuing rationality itself.
He knew about and applied the rules of logic, was systematic, intelligent, driven; and isolated by his own intellectual talents.

One day he awoke in a strange room....

To understand how he ended up in that room, we have to talk about the classic/romantic split.

 

When we think of classical thinking dividing reality up into different things which can then be further analyzed what we are doing is building hierarchies. This relates to that, that comes before this, this causes that. And hierarchies make systems.

The government is a system but as a system it is just a hierarchy made up of people going to work everyday, to attack it and institute a change in personal does nothing to effect the overall thinking that produced the governmental system to begin with. And soon another form of the same system based on the same thought patterns will arise in its place.
For real change to occur we can't change the outward appearance of things, we need to look at and change the overall system or pattern that gives rise to the outward appearances.
We need to look at the hierarchies.

Now, how do we find our way around these hierarchies? We use logic.

Deductive logic is the reverse.

If the problem is to complicated or involves a lot of steps to solve, both inductive and deductive logic can be used as needed. The ultimate way of using both inductive and deductive logic is called the scientific method.

 

To exercise the scientific method you start by stating the problem, then you make a guess or hypothesis as to what caused the problem. Next you think up experiments to test each hypothesis and you predict what the results of the experiments will be. You conduct the experiments, observe the results and draw conclusions. The aim is to not be deceived by romantic thinking and drawing conclusions from ideas that have no basis in objective reality.

Romantics think that Part Three, the experiment or experiments, are all the scientific method is. If they see a man working in a laboratory set up with thousands of dollars of equipment running around doing various things, they think he is a much better scientist than the man who presses a button on a motorcycle to see if the horn works. But if the man in the laboratory already knows the outcome of what he is doing, he isn't practicing the scientific method, whereas the man who presses the button, not knowing if the horn will sound, is.

Lastly the conclusion must never state anything more than what has been found in relation to the hypothesis and experiment.

The point of all this is to illustrate that the major part of the scientific method is not the pressing of a button or the experiment involving thousands of dollars of equipment. The major portion takes place in the mind. It involves careful observation, precise thinking, and imagination. Ever notice how reluctant a mechanic is to talk when first encountering a problem with a car or motorcycle?

They aren't looking at a specific car or motorcycle, they are considering the concept of cars and motorcycles. What is a motorcycle? What is it made of, how does it work, what are the various hierarchies that make it up?

 

You always have interesting posts!

 

The most mysterious part of the scientific method is the hypothesis.
Where do hypotheses come from? They don't come from the natural world. The natural world only provides experimental data used to test the hypothesis.
They don't come from the rational mind.

Phædrus became interested in the origin of hypotheses and how easy it was to postulate them.

He realized that if the number of hypotheses that can be generated will always exceed the number of experiments that can be conducted to test those hypotheses, then the scientific method was invalid.

There are no scientific truths as all scientific truths are subject to change whenever anyone chooses to investigate any of those infinite hypotheses. The more science advances, the more facts it determines, the more hypotheses it generates and the more hypotheses there are the more the facts themselves are called into question.

The effort of building order out of chaos, leads to chaos itself.​