Book notes: Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

These are my notes on Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.

Not an IT book but a philosophy one.

A fellow developer had recommended it, and finding the following snippet:

If a factory is town down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves ... There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

in the Thinking in Systems book convinced me to read it, and was a good use of my time.

Someone recommended reading the continuation Lila to fully understand Pirsig's Quality concept.

Key Insights

• When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it.
• Some things you miss because they're so tiny you overlook tem. But other things you don't see because they're so huge.
  • Familiarity can blind you too.
• The formation of hypothesis is the most mysterious of all the categories of scientific method.
  • They should be the hardest part, but it is the easiest.
• The more scientific activity, the shorter the life-span of scientific truths.
• The current modes of rationality do not work anymore because the need for food, shelter and clothing is not longer dominant.
• When people are fanatically dedicated to faiths or goals, it is because these faits or goals are in doubt.

How do you know all that?

It is obvious.

Well then, why didn't I see it?

You have to have some familiarity.

Then it is not obvious, is it?

• To live only for some future goals is shallow.
• Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it.
• Any effort that has self-glorification as the final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.
• You get stuck when you are trying to do too many things at once.
• Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding.
• Technology ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness.
• The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outwards from there.
• Gumption traps:
  1. Internal:
     1. Truth traps:
        • Missing the "mu" (aka. nil/null) as a possible answer.
  2. Value traps:
     • Block affective understanding.
     • Largest and most dangerous.
     • Subgroups:
       • Ego: if you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened.
• With all the scientific power, we have lost the understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.

Part I

1

• We want to make good time, measure with emphasis on "good" rather than "time".

2

• Bad service: mechanics were involved in the job, but not in such a way as to care.
• When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it.

4

• If someone's ungrateful, and you tell him he is ungrateful, you've called him a name. But you haven't solved anything.
• Interested in what things mean versus what they are.
• Some things you miss because they're so tiny you overlook tem. But other things you don't see because they're so huge.
  • Familiarity can blind you too.
• Dichotomy:

Art	Science
Feelings	Facts
Frivolous/irrational/erratic	Dull/awkward/ugly
Parasite/pleasure seeking	Oppressive/grey/death force
Appearance	Analytical/Underlying form

• Analytical properties:
  • Impossible to understand, unless you know how one works.
  • Observer is missing, is not part of the system.
  • No "good" or "bad".
  • Split into components: the split is arbitrary, depending on who splits it, so it fits their view/purpose.

7

• The process of selection of information mutates what is perceived. What is and what we perceive is not the same.
• Ghost of modern rationality: One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose.

Part II

8

• Thinking in System quote.
• The real/true system is our present construction of systematic thought itself.

9

• Scientific method:
  • Mixing long strings of inductive and deductive logic.
  • The real purpose is to make sure Nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you don't actually know.
  • Steps:
    1. Problem statement: state absolutely no more than you are positive you know.
    2. Hypothesis.
    3. Experiments:
       • An experiment is only a failure when it fails to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don't prove anything one way or another.
    4. Conclusions: state no more than the experiment has proven.

10

• The formation of hypothesis is the most mysterious of all the categories of scientific method.
  • Einstein: there is no logical path; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience.
  • They should be the hardest part, but it is the easiest.
    • The more data/fact/information, the more hypothesis.
    • If number of hypothesis grows faster than the experimental method can handle, then not all hypothesis can be tested, hence any experiment is inconclusive, and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.
• The more scientific activity, the shorter the life-span of scientific truths.
  • Instead of selecting one true between a multitude, it increases the multitude.
• The cause of our current social crisis is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself.
  • The current modes of rationality do not work anymore because the need for food, shelter and clothing is not longer dominant.
    • Seen as what it really is: hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty.
• Sometimes it is better to travel than to arrive.

11

• Philosophy is the highest echelon of the entire hierarchy of knowledge.
  • Science is just a branch of Philosophy.
  • "What does it all mean? What is the purpose of all this?"
• David Hume: Empiricist: All knowledge is derived exclusively from teh senses.
  • Scientific method experimentation is carefully controlled empiricism.
• Kant: But though all our knowledge begins with experience, is does not follow that it all arises from experience.
  • A priori knowledge. Time as an example.

12

• The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists, and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him.

How do you know all that?

It is obvious.

Well then, why didn't I see it?

You have to have some familiarity.

Then it is not obvious, is it?

• When people are fanatically dedicated to faiths or goals, it is because these faits or goals are in doubt.
• What is quality?

Part III

16

• Schools teach to imitate.

17

• To live only for some future goals is shallow.
• Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a non-thinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined. But even though Quality cannot be defined, you know what Quality is.
  • This statement is completely irrational.
  • If you can't define something you have no formal rational way of knowing that it exists. Neither can you really tell anyone else what it is.
  • There is no formal difference between inability to define and stupidity.
• Any effort that has self-glorification as the final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.
  • You will find yourself forever probing yourself to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out.

18

• Quality is what splits classic (technological) vs romantic (humanistic).
• Quality is also what it can unite them.
• Qualityless world:
  • No arts, no comedy, no flavours, no sports.
  • Only pure science, math, philosophy and particularly logic would be unchanged.
  • Life would be so dull to be hardly worth living.
• A real understanding of Quality captures the System, tames it, and puts it to work for one's own personal use, while leaving one completely free to fulfill his inner destiny.

19

• Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it.
• Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu.

24

• You get stuck when you are trying to do too many things at once.
  • Like thinking what to say and what to say first at the same time.
    • Make a list of things to say, and later order them.
• The difference between a good mechanic/mathematician and a bad one, is the ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. He has to care!
• Quality is what carries you forward.
  • Looking for something better.
• Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding.

25

• Identity is what modern technology lacks.
  • The creator/owner/user feels no particular sense of identity with it.
• Technology ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness.
• Inner peace of mind is what produces good work and destroys bad work.
  • Is a prerequisite for a perception of that Quality that is beyond romantic Quality and classic Quality and which unites the two.
• Self-awareness != self-consciousness.
• Inned peace of mind occurs on three levels of understanding:
  • Physical quietness.
  • Mental quietness: no wandering thoughts.
  • Value quietness: no wandering desire.
• The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outwards from there.

26

• Gumption traps:
  1. Externals:
  2. Out of sequence reassembly.
  3. Intermittent failure.
  4. Parts setback.
  5. Internal:
  6. Truth traps:
     • Block cognitive understanding.
     • The yes-no logic.
     • Missing the "mu" (aka. nil/null) as a possible answer.
     • It is a great mistake, a kind of dishonesty, to sweep Nature's "mu" answers under the carpet.
  7. Muscle traps:
     • Block psychomotor behaviour.
     • Bad tools.
     • Uncomfort.
  8. Value traps:
     • Block affective understanding.
     • Largest and most dangerous.
     • Subgroups:
       • Value rigidity: inability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values.
       • Ego: if you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened.
       • Anxiety: you're so sure you'ill do everything wrong you are afraid to do anything at all.
       • Boredom: You have lost your "beginner's mind".
       • Impatience: comes from an underestimation of the amount of time the job will take.

Part IV

29

• The ghost of reason: to do what is "reasonable" even when it isn't any good.

Areté implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself.
Kitto in The Greeks

• With all the scientific power, we have lost the understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.

You never gain something but that you lose something.
Henry David Thoreau