Matt, Dan and all would-be writers:
"Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to
them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major
religion. The allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands
between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those
in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains
all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who
have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains
accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes
by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and
untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but
occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there
they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed
number of routes. There are as many routes as there are
individual souls." (ZAMM 187-8)
"As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil
that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. ...Schools
teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad
grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were
supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you
were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead
with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get
you anything - from A to F. the whole grading system cautioned against it."
(ZAMM 192-3)
"Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without
desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you
become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the
mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when
you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but
a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose.
From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things
you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's
the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things
grow." (ZAMM 204)
dmb says:
Imitation is a real evil but originality is risky business. Blazing your own
trail up the mountain can get you killed and writing something original can
earn you an F. Doing what the teacher wants and following the well-worn routes
is less dangerous. See, this isn't just a lesson for creative writers. Pirsig's
rhetoric lessons are analogous to the spiritual mountain-climbing lessons and
both are really lessons in living. There are as many routes as there are
climbers and the speed of each climber should be determined by the reality of
his own nature, he says.
I suppose that you can see what he's getting at here, eh gents?
"Right," said the extremely imaginative psychology professor who lived next
door, "Eliminate the whole degree-and grading system and then you'll get real
education." (ZAMM 193) These parallel lessons sort of come together to serve
his overall theme, namely "Corruption and Decay in the Church of Reason". (ZAMM
205) He makes a case that the purpose of "real education" is to produce free
men, not mules or slaves. The cart of civilization or "the system" should be
moving forward by efforts of knowledge-motivated people, as opposed to
grade-motivated mules who are only led forward by the dangling of carrots.
Phaedrus worked up a story about a hypothetical student who flunks himself out
of the gradeless and degreeless college. After some time working as a mechanic,
this story goes, he returns...
"...but with a difference. He'd no longer be a grade-motivated person. He'd be
a knowledge-motivated person. He would need no external pushing to learn. His
push would come from inside. He'd be a free man. He wouldn't need a lot of
discipline to shape him up. ..Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold is
a ferocious force, and in the gradeless, degreeless institution where our
student would find himself, he wouldn't stop with rote engineering information.
..And, in the process of intellectual maturing that these abstract studies gave
him, he would be likely to branch out into other theoretical areas that weren't
directly related to machines but had become a part of a newer larger goal. This
larger goal wouldn't be the imitation of education in Universities today,
glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of
something happening, when, in fact, almost nothing is going on. It would be the
real thing." (ZAMM 197)
The dull student with thick-lensed glasses, he says, was strangely unaware that
she could look at things with her own eyes. She didn't know that she could
venture off the beaten path but forcing her to start with that upper left hand
brick left her with no options. There were no paths by which she could approach
that brick. There were no essays about that brick for her to imitate and that
brick conformed to nobody's idea of a standard essay topic. What made it work
was the way it precluded the possibility of taking a path already cut by
somebody else. She had no choice but to find her own way, to speak with her own
voice, to see with her own eyes. However you like to imagine it, fresh eyes or
new roads, the idea is the same. Quality is the goal of every creative person
but the route to that goal should be determined by your own nature, not imposed
by external rules or standards. The latter can be helpful so long as you
realize such rules are abstractions based on somebody els
e's journey and so some of them may not apply in your case. Imitating somebody
else's success might very well be a betrayal of your own nature or otherwise
work against you.
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