Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Father Son Relationship
Ride to Retrieve: The Lonely Journeying of Robert G. Pirsig
- By Marc Eliot Stein
- April 29, 2017
- American, Beat Generation, Biography, Eastern, Environmental, Existential, Fiction, La Boheme, Nature, Pacifism, Popular, Psychology, Reading, Religion, Summer Of Love, Engineering, Transgressive, Tributes
- 29 Comments
Robert Maynard Pirsig, author of the great 1974 novel Zen and the Fine art of Motorcycle Maintenance, died on April 24, 2017 at the historic period of 88. This novel was a cornerstone of the late Vanquish/Hippie literary era, and it continues to touch the hearts of countless readers all over the world.
Though this novel's fetching title makes a big offset impression, it's about much more than Buddhist philosophy and combustion engines. As a philosophical novel, it brushes apace past Eastern philosophy to swoop deep into the classics of ancient Greece, and despite all this it's really a novel most parenthood, and about the challenge of staying centered and sane amidst the trials and challenges of everyday American life.
Most of all, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a personal, autobiographical story about a father worrying about how to raise his son. It's mainly because the novel works so finer on this raw emotional ground — of grade, its clever title and zeitgest-y Summer of Dear vibe helps too — that it remains so widely loved by then many readers today.
But there's an agonizing, terrible twist to the story Robert Pirsig tells near a cross-land motorcycle trip with his tween son Chris, a trip designed to strengthen a father/son bond that the narrator/novelist knew would always be precarious and hazardous due to his ain psychological instability. The narrator/novelist took his curious, pleasant and occasionally irritable son on a cross-state trip in order to give him a grounding in motility and reality, and a cosmic sense of the possibilities of life. Robert Pirsig was apparently a pretty good father, and young Chris (his existent name equally well every bit his proper name in the book) was turning out fine by the time the novel was published in 1974, several years after the ride chronicled in the volume.
Merely, five years after that, just before Chris Pirsig turned 23, he was murdered in a random robbery in San Francisco. In a harrowing irony that must have haunted this Buddhist-minded begetter for the rest of his life, this senseless mugging and murder took place outside a Zen center that both begetter and son frequented often, though at this time the son was visiting solitary.
This after-story is far crueler and sadder than anything that happens in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, a lovely tale equanimous with a quiet tone and an underlying tension that often happily yields to a simply blithesome celebration of life on the route. The narrator spends much of the book worrying about his son, but he is not worried that his son volition be suddenly stabbed by a full stranger on a city street. He is absolutely obsessed, though, with the fear that he himself volition fail to be a good father to his own son. He is specifically worried that his son may have inherited his ain tendency towards mental illness.
He teaches Chris how to fix motorcycles and plot journeys on route maps and slumber in tents because he hopes these life lessons will yield the kind of holistic sense of reality that he wishes he could have attained at an earlier age himself. He thinks it might save the growing boy from a future of broken marriages, failed careers, mental hospitals and electroshock therapy.
It's because Robert Pirsig lived through these trials himself before writing Zen and the Art of Motorbike Maintenence that it's such a serious and valuable volume. Information technology was obviously inspired past Jack Kerouac's On The Road (which presents two buddies on a ride, rather than a father and a son, but aims for the same balm of enlightenment). It stands today every bit a period slice alongside the experimental/"kooky" piece of work of other hippie-era counterculture novelists like Ken Kesey, Richard Farina, Richard Brautigan, Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins.
Merely it'due south a fault to dismiss the volume for its immersion in a singular era (and, really, it's a mistake to dismiss the novels of Kesey, Farina, Brautigan, Vonnegut and Robbins for the same reason likewise). All of these writers took their arts and crafts seriously, and about of them dealt with the looming specter of mental affliction as well. But Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is unique for its sober and sensible tone, its devotion to serious analytic idea, and its complete lack of debauchery. The heed-altering substance almost vividly described in the book is coffee, which Pirsig's narrator recommends as essential for any amateur motorcycle mechanic dealing with a difficult trouble such equally a broken gear chain.
Zen and … is undeniably a wordy, brainy book, especially since it chronicles the author's collision with the University of Chicago's famed Philosophy section, where the notable professor Mortimer Adler championed an aggressively rational and Aristotlean arroyo to the works of Plato, and where Pirsig struggled badly as a grad student. The parts of the book that do not involve roads and motorcycles show the narrator battling a professor who wishes to humble and humiliate his contributions to class discussions. Pirsig'south hostage student narrator wanted to bask in the spiritual anarchy of Plato's mind-spinning Socratic dialogues, and refuses to have his teacher's direction. He feels himself stopped in his tracks by the basic uncertainty of the homo mind, and insists (rather childishly, some Aristotlean philosophers might argue) that information technology is impossible to proceed with philosophy once one realizes that no hypothesis can ever be proven, and that an infinite number of hypotheses volition always exist to reply any question. He comes to see his professor as an enemy, and indeed this professor is the just villain in the volume.
Pirsig performs an artful feint in tying his vision of an epistemological crisis to Zen Buddhism, since the book'south directly philosophical lineage is clearly grounded in classic Greek philosophy, and aligns with the critiques of Ideal thought laid out by existentialist philosophers such equally Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre. In Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre's narrator apprehends the existential emptiness of reality, and becomes physically sick. Robert Pirsig's narrator apprehends the aforementioned thing, but eventually finds salvation in motorcycle engineering. Not a bad moral lesson, nor a shabby intellectual accomplish, for a mere "hippie novel" from the wacky/crazy 1970s.
The Zen-tinged championship does point, though, to the broad catholic sense of openness that Pirsig yearns for throughout the book. Indeed the novel might never take defenseless on (I might not have picked it up myself once, every bit an eager pre-teen with a library carte du jour) if it did non have this slap-up championship, which alludes to an earlier Eastward/W crossover, Zen in the Art of Archery by the High german Buddhist scholar Eugen Herrigel. It'south worth wondering if Pirsig thought upwards the book'south title first, and then challenged himself to write a novel proficient enough to earn information technology. If and then, it was a tough challenge and he succeeded.
Zen and … is far from a perfect book, and in my stance its biggest failure is its disability to connect the philosophical/existential crisis described in the University of Chicago classroom scenes with the narrator's growing mental illness. We watch the narrator descend into dysfunction, in scenes from a bleak past, but the main clues we are given as to the cause involve his ballooning philosophical inquiries. Are we really meant to believe that a sublime appreciation of Plato's Gorgias and Commonwealth collection a grad student mad? Is there really whatsoever causal relationship between an eager reader's intellectual apprehension of uncertainty and that same reader's actual descent into mental disease?
There may be, simply the book fails to make this connection clear. Nietzsche did become mad, but Kierkegaard and Sartre did not, and the uncertainty of knowledge is ordinarily more than likely a metaphor for mental disease than an actual root cause. The thought that a proper philosophy didactics may lead an innocent soul to clamor and shock therapy is a stretch. It seems more likely that any person may apprehend the full crisis of western philosophy, and that any person may suffer from mental affliction, but that there is actually no clear causality betwixt the two.
This is an argument that seems to deflate Pirsig'south novel merely a little scrap, though it doesn't damage the book's charm or relevance or appeal at all. We can forgive stretchy metaphors when the prose is equally proficient every bit this scene, in which our hero visits a mechanic in a repair shop to set up a problem he can't set up himself.
When I evidence it to him he nods and slowly goes over and sets the regulators for his gas torch. Hither he looks at the tip and selects another one. Absolutely no bustle. He picks upwardly a steel filter rod and I wonder if he'southward actually going to effort to weld that thin metal. Canvas metal I don't weld. I braze it with a brass rod. When I try to weld it I dial holes in it and then accept to patch them up with huge blobs of filler rod. "Aren't you going to affix it?" I ask.
"No," he says. Talkative fellow.
He sparks the torch and sets a tiny little blue flame so, it's hard to describe, actually dances the torch and the rod in separate little rhythms over the sparse sheet metal, the whole spot a uniform luminous orange yellow, dropping the torch and filler rod down at the verbal right moment and and so removing them. No holes. You can hardly see the weld. "That's beautiful," I say.
"Ane dollar," he says, without smiling. And so I grab a funny quizzical await within his glance. Does he wonder if he's overcharged? No, something else … lonely, aforementioned as the waitress. Probably he thinks I'thou bullshitting him. Who appreciates work like this anymore?
Pirsig'due south book holds a place not but amid the nifty hippie novels of its era merely also amid the era'southward notable novels about mental illness and fear of looming insanity, such every bit Hannah Green'south I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Sylvia Plath's The Bong Jar as well as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by, again, Ken Kesey. Zen is a delicate, empathetic portrait of a fragmented mind, and a hopeful, soothing chronicle of a program for recovery and prevention.
Of course, it is more than a quaint and academic problem that human being existence is a never-ending crisis of epistemology. This is the root of the absurd reality that we humans are e'er decumbent to misinformation and stunted thought, and that we ofttimes don't know how to think or who to believe. It's galling to realize that the humane and spiritually witting Robert Pirsig'due south last yr of life was mired within the ugly muck of a new American crisis of epistemology. This crunch sees Pirsig's dearest America fallen into a state of willful stupidity, led by a malicious liar who urges united states to abandon our ain common sense and descend to the low moral level of a detest-filled mob. It'due south truly enraging that a great word-painter of affectionate Americana like Robert Pirsig had to live his last months of life nether the cloud of the absurdly sinister assistants of fake-President Trump: our whole nation'south descent into mental disease.
But Pirsig is accepted to crises of epistemology. In a belatedly afterword to his great novel, written 25 years after its initial publication, the novelist describes how a recent rereading of Henry James'southward Turn of the Screw helped him sympathize his own novel in a new way. Like the heroine of James's perceptive psychological "ghost story", Pirsig'south hero is non actually as innocent as he appears to be. And Pirsig's admission that he was still struggling to understand his own novel years after it was published proves how apprehensive and eager his sharp listen always was.
Pirsig's later writings about his best book are well worth reading, though I accept to acknowledge that I never took the time to read his 2d novel, an apparent sequel to Zen and … called Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals. Information technology may be a great book, just it did not seem to bound off the shelves the manner his first book did, and I never observed much of a groundswell of support for the book. In later writings, Pirsig expressed thwarting that many readers of his first novel failed to pick up his 2d. Well, maybe I'll give information technology another shot this twelvemonth.
Lila was Pirsig's only other novel, though, and I'thousand guessing it was his beloved son'southward death that knocked Robert Pirsig off the fast lane every bit a writer of pop books. He also appears to completely lack the kind of outsized ego that inspires many other novelists to go along putting out new stuff. Robert Pirsig didn't seem to care whether or non anybody idea he was even so in the game, and instead appears to have lived a serenity, contemplative life off the fashionably literary grid.
Once, humorously dismissing the intellectual pretensions of Zen and the Fine art of Motorcycle Maintenence, he said this:
It should in no way be associated with that cracking body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either.
Actually, it's got but enough facts about both, merely we don't read novels for facts. Robert Pirsig'south archetype book brings us the nifty American road, with ii lonely figures riding in — one parent and ane child, and the love that keeps their wheels spinning forrad.
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29 Responses
A beautiful and loving
A cute and loving commentary on a great volume. Since I've lived with bipolar depression all my life, Pirsig'due south story is especially meaningful. I recollect the bulldoze to empathise, to seek out life's answers, oftentimes coming confront to face with the bleakness that I thought represented the blank bones, the stark reality of life. I know now that the story that depression spins in front of my very optics is a false one, incomplete and monochromatic. Just trying to read "Criminal offence and Punishment" would be enough to trigger my depression though at that place is no causality between the literature and my view of life. Seeing the emptiness of what nosotros can know, and what nosotros cannot certainly in my instance triggered an existential crunch. My search for meaning in philosophy and religion was driven by internal disharmonize, so I can understand what Pirsig must take gone through in his own life. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance may be one of the most touching and personally relevant books I've ever read. Thank you for a bang-up read!
Good story.
Skillful story.
All i got out of my offset
All i got out of my first reading of ZATAOMM really was a want to get a motorbike and that the guy seemed hung upward on quality and self sufficiency merely I exercise non know how he would make his own spark plugs, spark plug cables and all the other cables, tires et al.
I did get a cycle, several, and rode declension to coast and almost all the mode from Canada to Mexico and suffered my offset existential crisis when I was making a left on a super-decorated street in heavy traffic and looked and turned and when i looked again saw this Ford Bronco an arm's length from me. I hit the street so difficult that I couldn't movement and saw cars coming towards me and thought for sure I was going to get run over.
I am a Pirsig fan, besides. Zen
I am a Pirsig fan, also. Zen and the Fine art blew my heed when I first read it dorsum in high school some 30 years ago. I still accept that same well-thumbed, domestic dog-eared and highlighted copy- I volition always treasure it. I recently picked upwards a copy of Lila to read at a library volume sale ironically only a week or and so before he passed on. I am tempted to reread Zen once more earlier I transition to Lila. Thank you, Robert Pirsig as you lot journey on into the afterlife, whatever that may concur for you, or for any of us.
What practise you mean by "clever
What do you mean by "clever championship or zeitgest-y Summer of Love vibe"? To me, sounds like a slam against a time period in which this novel took hold. Then, why the slam?
Hullo Marion – well, I am
How-do-you-do Marion – well, I am characterizing the time menses of the 1960s/1970s, but certainly not slamming information technology. I think it's pretty clear from this article (and many other articles on this website) that I'thousand very addicted of this catamenia, isn't it? Literature, art, music, civil rights, pacifism … the hippie era or Summertime of Love era was an era of artistic greatness and originality. I don't come across why anyone would perceive that I am slamming either the era or the book.
The decease of Chris Persig at
The expiry of Chris Pirsig at historic period 23 is very deplorable. Arguably at that place is a law, like Potato's Police, which requires that authors like Pirsig who attain great writing must suffer terrible punishment—akin to the meme "no good deed can go unpunished." Call up of Arthur Miller with the birth of a mentally challenged son afterward all his famous writings were done, Ernest Hemingway whose life became tormented to such an extent he committed suicide at age 61, Sylvia Plath'due south and Nietsche'south insanity, Coleridge's opium habit, etc.
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorn Clemens) might be cited by some as a happy writer, only Wikipedia has these downer facts:
He married Olivia Langdon in Feb 1870. Their first kid, Langdon Clemens, was born in November 1870 but was premature. Olivia contracted typhoid fever and became very ill, her condition requiring much care for the rest of her life. Langdon died of diphtheria at the historic period of 19 months. The Clemens had three daughters: Susy (1872–1896), Clara (1874–1962), and Jean (1880–1909)—one of iv children attaining an age across 29. Twain passed through a menses of deep depression that began in 1896 when Susy died of meningitis. Olivia'due south death in 1904 and Jean'due south on Dec 24, 1909 deepened his gloom. On May 20, 1909, his shut friend Henry Rogers died of a sudden. Twain died on April 21, 1910, not four months after Jean.
Joan Didion received a great deal of recognition for The Year of Magical Thinking, which was awarded the National Volume Award for Nonfiction in 2005. Documenting the grief she experienced post-obit the sudden death of her husband, the book's publication engagement was narrowly preceded by the decease of Didion'southward daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne.
To study writers' lives might atomic number 82 to the idea that the virtually spot-on metaphor for life is Kafka's "Penal Colony." At times, yet—as the poet Rumi insisted—other metaphors similar "Gift Store," "Amusement Park," and "Purgatory" befit our moodish muddling through.
I spent quite a lot of time
I spent quite a lot of time at the Blue Heron Cafe, which was paid for, I remember, with coin from proceeds from ZATAOMM and run/owned by Pirsig's ex, Nancy James, in the belatedly '70s, early '80s. I was aware of the cafe's connectedness to the book at the time but the cafe'southward draw, for me, was a waitress who was a expressionless ringer for(Annie-Hall-era) Carol Kane and who wore her pilus in Swiss Miss braids and suffered from anosmia. I was shocked to discover, years later, that Nancy and Robert's poor son Chris was murdered, in '79 (I would have been in the cafe quite often that year; I fifty-fifty had a cursory Fine art exhibit there)… I detected no grief or drama on the premises. Which is either a testament to the power of their Zen commitment or an index of my youthful cluelessness.
Literally everyone I knew, in those days, owned a paperback copy of ZATAOMM (forth with a Seth book, a Joan Armatrading album, a yogurt-culturing kit and a batik garment or two from a West Banking company boutique). Pirsig's decease was a curtain closing on an era that out-lasted the '60s by quite a stretch and overlapped the New Moving ridge '80s (which was the stop on the culture railroad train I got out at): the era not of The Hippies, so much as The Yuppie Mystics.
Odd article. When I read this
Odd article. When I read this book I was amazed that this guy in the tradition of Platonic philosophy, basically proves the being of something else… God even. He calls information technology Quality, a word not fifty-fifty in this article. Quality becomes the source, the pregnant and the reason of interaction and of existence. Every bit a immature person into the whole hippie affair, I didn't see this book every bit being beat nor hippie, simply scholastic and traditional. Go figure.
Chris, information technology'south definitely valid
Chris, it's definitely valid to read this book exterior of the context of the era in which it was published. For me – well, I was a child during the 1970s, and the volume brings dorsum many memories of that era. That'southward why I wrote this article in this way. But that'due south not to advise that the book isn't timeless, and I'chiliad glad you're pointing out how timeless it really is. May it be read forever, in every decade to come up!
the UC professor was Richard
the UC professor was Richard McKeon
I outset read this book when I
I commencement read this book when I was a teenager, you're right the championship seemed for certain catchy clever and engaging equally it does to me now xxx odd years afterwards (I've just finished re-reading information technology). I'm not sure I "got" it the first time around simply I really got it this fourth dimension (whatever that ways – a deeper agreement and appreciation of the artfullness and scholarship of the novel and it'south journey on several planes or themes which resonated with my own personal understanding of philosophy and how I choose to live my life. Thanks for your review which I also enjoyed, it's e'er enlightening to compare what one thinks to what others thought/made of such works. I just wanted to say in defense of the book regarding your criticism that the author/narrator's described descent into mental illness (due to perchance excessive or sectional ongoing analysis of existential bug – or any you want to phone call it) is perhaps one factor but also the author does note other variables, i.eastward. that he was working, teaching artistic writing at the aforementioned time he was struggling through this philosophical material (obviously unsupported by his professors/teachers) and alongside working through the dark, he was non getting adequate sleep or diet which over an extended time frame in itself is a sure fire route into mental health (and concrete health) problems. Cheers,D
Lila is the best book I ever
Lila is the best book I ever read
Finally I tin can say that a book changed my life
Yes Daniella, precisely. 🙂
Yes Daniella, precisely. 🙂
23 years ago in sophomore
23 years ago in sophomore English my teacher had the course read this volume. It changed my life. I've read it nigh three to four times since. I have had a couple authors sign their books for me. I am grief stricken I didn't track downwardly Mr. Pirsig sooner. I live in Montana and have been to MSU where Robert taught, and met people who met Mr. Pirsig. I will now reread this masterpiece, this civilization bearer over again, more slowly this time, sipping it like a warm tea. Pondering quality. Pursuing quality in all my affairs. This volume has made all the difference in my life. With all the beloved a homo can convey, thank you Robert M. Pirsig for all you did for humanity.
-Dave.
P.S. Printing this webpage. Putting it on my wall at piece of work.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Zen and the Fine art of Motorbike Maintenance blew me abroad. Lila was even ameliorate.
Fascinating data yous
Fascinating information you provide. Thank you.
I believe the article could be enhanced once the Author reads Lila and realises that Pirsig has introduced a whole new philosophy to the World… The Metaphysics of Quality or MOQ.
It is revolutionary in that it re-introduces Quality/Value/Morals to a Scientific/Technological World bereft of them.
No longer is Truth at the top of the pile, but Quality supplants it, and explains the East/West Art/applied science etc divide.
As a newly christened Zen
Every bit a newly christened Zen student I read it in 1974. And reread it a few times. The ending was confusing for me — although the gist of was not — namely — "Information technology's going to be alright."
But over the years, to this very twenty-four hours, I dear to choice upward the book for a read in the Spring — simply as Wintertime is surrendering to new beginnings. And for the by decade of so, I tend to mostly focus of his incredibly vivid, graphic, enthralling detailed descriptions of the ride across the mid-due west — the flowers, the mural changes along the way, the people, the flora and animal — his incredible Here & Now situational awareness of the natural environment he is passing through.
In 2017 I first discovered the NPR radio interview of Pirsig done in 1974. And in that interview, as in the volume, Pirsig confirmed that my favorite parts now — the scenic ride — are the heart and soul of the book in a way — because it's about "the journey" — Not the destination. I keep wanting to make that same Beginner's Mind, fresh, eyes-wide-open panoramic motorcycle journey across the mid-west — over and over again.
Merely the part that intrigued me the near when I first read it in 1974, was the way he had this natural zeal to "fix things" and empathise how they worked and how to keep them working optimally. It was just like me — a comfort zone of self-sufficiency. A relentless drippping faucet is non just a "task not done" — it's a consciousness not awakened — an awareness dulled by a simulated sense of futility. What a great volume it has been all these years.
You give a good breakup of
You give a skillful breakdown of the novel and your writing is very intelligent, simply y'all missed one of the fundamental aspects of the book. What you refer to equally mental breakdown or mental illness was in fact Samadhi or enlightenment. Peradventure it wasn't? However this possibility is explicitly referred to in the novel and you shouldn't only exit it out, it'due south important, you tin can't simply dismiss one of the key themes of the book by saying some shit about fragmented mind and looming insanity. It's like breaking downward WWII by saying some shit burned down and another shit got destroyed somewhere by someone, Amen. The fact that you tin bring a person back from Nirvana using electroshock equally is alluded to past Pirsig…that thought itself is fascinating. Likewise, Pirsig was trying to span philosophies of Eastward and West, of mystical spirituality(read: Buddhism) vs materialist western science — all you saw was a travelogue by dad and son and some heady crap nearly Plato, Zen, fixing bikes and mental illness? You lot observe that Pirsig had no ego to go along pumping out novels like most writers: later enlightenment ego and personal motives dissolve — good job backing upwards the possibility of Pirsig as Boddhisattva. Likewise, Lila is a timeless masterpiece and reads like poetry compared to Zen.
Thanks for the feedback, John
Thanks for the feedback, John. That's a very good signal that the "breakup" may have been intended to exist understood as samadhi or enlightenment. You are correct that I overlooked these hints in this book, though of course I did understand that the so-chosen breakdown was both a positive and negative force in his life. Perhaps I'll come across more than of this aspect when and if I read this book once more. Anyhow, thanks for adding your perspective – this is what comments are skillful for!
What a fine article and skilful
What a fine article and good complementary comments too. I'll never forget the week holiday I had that started by going into my favourite bookstore where my favourite bookseller handed me a couple of hardbacks saying "You lot'll like these."
I spent most of that week devouring Zen and the Art along with Ernest Becker's Denial of Death and the remaining fourth dimension walking around the house babbling deep inanities. Whew!
I've never been the aforementioned since… but and so I never really was.
"Activeness and suffering, which
"Action and suffering, which together make up our lives, are a whole; they are one. A child suffers its bearing, information technology suffers its birth, its weaning; it suffers here and suffers in that location until in the stop information technology suffers expiry. But all the good in a man, for which he is praised or loved, is simply good suffering, the right kind, the living kind of suffering, a suffering to the full. The ability to endure well is more than than half of life — indeed, it is all life." ~ Hermann Hesse
I don't call up there is a
I don't retrieve there is a connectedness betwixt literary accomplishment followed past personal tragedy. I've read my hometown newspaper for decades. I always read the stories virtually crime and penalization and the features about families dealing with devastating illnesses that are unusual enough to be newsworthy. Then in that location are the people I know who suffer from diseases that are common and not newsworthy. Suffering is universal and none of us get through life avoiding it. The writers you mention are famous and so we know what happens to them. I recommend Why Religion? by Elaine Pagel if you want to explore death and mourning through a personal narrative.
EXCELLENCE as an aspiration.
EXCELLENCE as an aspiration. And an openness to divine intervention. Both Zen and Lila acknowledge us into a personal view of truth and reality which we tin can capeesh and react upon. How many of us can promise for such a legacy? Expert on Robert Persig!
If you lot believe Science nosotros are
If yous believe Science we are suspended in a by and large nighttime, mostly common cold Universe, here by the Grace of Probability and life has no meaning and you might likewise practise exactly what yous want because one mean solar day the Universe will apartment-line according to the second law of thermodynamics.
Robert M Pirsig gave us an alternative where an entity can exist without a particle existence involved and Dynamic Quality (a placeholder name for something that can't be defined) is the driving force behind everything. The whole shooting match is Moral… with a construction from the bottom upwards of Inorganic, Biological, Social, Intellectual.
An thought in the Intellectual level can destroy a religion in the Social level.
Dynamic Quality pervades everything and is interim on everything giving u.s.a. Cosmological Evolution, not just evolution at the biological level.
A faith in the Social level, may have dynamic components such as the desire for gay and female priests and static components such every bit the want for the old ways and rituals and only male person priests.
The tension betwixt the two is essential for its survival. Too much dynamic and it will die. Besides much static and it will die.
How-do-you-do Marc,
I've been reading your website for the past four hours, just having establish information technology and it's something of a revelation to me. And then much of the literary territory upon which you draw has informed my own development. When you mention Nausea, I recall that I just pulled out a piece I wrote decades ago chosen, "Roquentin was Wrong," referring to Nausea'southward master character. Nosotros were reading the volume in a higher English language class, and merely days later on in a well-nigh-drowning feel, I came encountered a terrifyingly real and magnificent version of a reality which totally humbled me for my cavalier adoption of the existential perspective of meaninglessness.
I read with interest your discussion of Pirsig'south Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read back in 1974 when it first came out, at a time when in no fashion did I feel my mental sanity was assured. The strange quality of Pirsig's mind intrigued me and somewhat frightened me on behalf of my ain state. That he could write an entire novel indicated such amazing mental genius and clarity of focus. At that time I was doing my all-time to put together a modest volume of poems. It's taken me about of these forty-vii years since to realize I couldn't finish anything I wrote dorsum then considering my world had been so turned upside down by the raucous ride of the Sixties that information technology would take decades for me to accomplish the clarity to conclusively concord forth on whatsoever topic.
I'm reading your memoir with fascination. I would like to send you a copy of "Roquentin was Incorrect;" however I don't know if you are currently reading others' writing these days.
Hi Carol Lee – squeamish to encounter yous, and thanks for the compliments! Yes, fifty-fifty though I'one thousand no longer reviewing books here, I would like to go a copy of "Roquentin Was Wrong". Nice title. My mailing accost is:
Marc Eliot Stein
PO Box 751246
Wood Hills NY 11375
I will definitely ship you a copy–it'south an essay-type piece, not a book! As I await information technology over, I see it segues into my starting time and only Acid experience. All of a piece.
Am exploring your Globe Across War site with interest–reflecting dorsum to the Weapons Freeze Movements of the '80s. Time for a loud voice again.