All MOQers:
It would be a strange thing if Pirsig's main ideas were tucked away in some
obscure corner of his writings. Maybe that's why he put the central metaphor of
his first book right there on the cover. By the time you finish reading the
title of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance you have already exposed to
a version of the book's central idea. The assertion that motorcycle maintenance
can be an art form is a metaphor for any human practice and at the same it also
serves as a concrete example. Even before you open the book, you know you're
dealing with some kind of art-technology fusion and the "Zen" part of the title
gives you a little hint that something deeper is going on too. By the time
you've read the title, your inquiry into values has already begun. "Mechanics
are artists? Hmmm, wonder what that's supposed to mean."
Motorcycle maintenance works well as a concrete example - and I suppose some
of the repair tips would be useful in actual situations - but the motorcycle
performs even better as a metaphor. Ultimately, the cycle is a metaphor for
yourself so that "maintenance" is about living right. Without the Zen and the
mysticism, the instructions on discipline and attitude might sound like the
self-help advice of a boring old scold. But by including the mystical element,
wherein the machine and the mechanic are not two different things, maintenance
becomes a sacred ritual. But being one with the bike isn't just about inducing
a groovy vibe or a holy mood. Art in this Pirsigian sense also demands great
precision and a certain kind of expertise or mastery.
"I always feel like I'm in church when I do this," Pirsig writes. "The gage is
some kind of religious icon and I'm performing a holy rite with it. It is a
member of a set called 'precision measuring instruments' which in a classic
sense has a profound meaning. In a motorcycle this precision isn’t maintained
for any romantic or perfectionist reasons. It’s simply that the enormous forces
of heat and explosive pressure inside this engine can only be controlled
through the kind of precision these instruments give. When each explosion takes
place it drives a connecting rod onto the crankshaft with a surface pressure of
many tons per square inch. If the fit of the rod to the crankshaft is precise
the explosion force will be transferred smoothly and the metal will be able to
stand it. But if the fit is loose by a distance of only a few thousandths of an
inch the force will be delivered suddenly, like a hammer blow, and the rod,
bearing and crankshaft surface will soon be pounded flat,.. it will soon get
louder and louder until the rod tears itself free, slams into the spinning
crankshaft and destroys the engine. Sometimes broken rods will pile right down
through the crankcase and dump all the oil onto the road. All you can do then
is start walking." (ZAMM 99-100)
“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself
perfect and then just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it.
The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the
rest of your existence. If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you
aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make
you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together.But if you’re a
sloppy thinker six days a week and you really try to be sharp on the seventh,
then maybe the next six days aren’t going to be quite as sloppy as the
preceding six. What I’m trying to come up with on these gumption traps I guess,
is shortcuts to living right.The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called
yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that
appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality
or fall away from Quality together.” (ZAMM 325)
The mystical phase of the journey is about ultimate goals like peace of mind
and even enlightenment but it grows almost naturally out of a philosophical or
intellectual phase of the journey, in which motorcycle maintenance serves as a
metaphor for rationality itself. "A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance
with the laws of reason," Pirsig says, "and a study of the art of motorcycle
maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself."
(ZAMM 98) On this level, Pirsig uses the metaphor to illustrate the contrast
between the artful mechanic and the sloppy, careless mechanic, to illustrate
the contrast between the narrator's attitudes and the anti-technological
attitudes of his groovy friend John Sutherland and he even uses it to
illustrate the contrast between Kant and Hume. He uses it to explain the nature
of technology and science, both of which are related to our modes of
rationality. But all of these uses serve a larger purpose. This "miniature
study of the art of rationality itself" is primarily used to illustrate the
contrast between subject-object metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Quality, as
it will come to be known in the second book.
More specifically, Pirsig's central metaphor is used to examine the difference
between scientific objectivity and a more artful way of thinking. One of the
central aims of his first book is root out this "genetic defect" known as
subject-object dualism and replace it with a "new spiritual rationality".
Toward this end, he uses the motorcycle metaphor to examine the nature of
concepts and ideas and thinking as such. For example, the following passage
helps to explain what it means to say that the motorcycle isn't really "out
there", as opposed to the ideas about it which are supposedly "in here". It
also beautifully illustrates the plasticity of concepts themselves:
“That’s all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel.
There’s no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone’s mind. …Iv'e
noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this -
that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with
given shapes - pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts - all of them fixed and
inviolable, and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does
machining or foundry work or forge work or welding sees 'steel' as having no
shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and
any shape but the one you want if you are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are
what you arrive at, what you give to the steel. Steel has no more shape than
this old pile of dirt on the engine here. These shapes are all out of someone's
mind. That's important to see. The Steel? Hell, even the steel is out of
someone's mind. There's no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could
have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There's nothing
else there. But what's 'potential'? That's also in someone's mind! . . .
Ghosts.” (ZAMM, 102-3)
Steel has no shape at all or rather it can be any shape you want. Even the
steel itself is shaped and carved out by the mind. It's a ghostly creature just
like the law of gravity and every other ghost that populates the mind of
mankind. And yet it's still true that if the fit on some parts "is loose by a
distance of only a few thousandths of an inch" your engine will tear itself
apart and "all you can do then is start walking." (ZAMM, 99-100) All this talk
about shapeless steel serves to illustrate the difference between the artful
mechanic and the mechanic with an objective attitude. Just as most people
associate metal with given shapes, all of them fixed and inviolable, so it is
with objective philosophers and their view of reality. They associate reality
with given shapes - sun, earth, oceans, rocks, and stars - all of them fixed
and inviolable, and think of it as primarily physical. Pirsig turns this
objectivity on its head in the same way that he turns steel into putty and
plastic. Despite this rejection of objectivity in favor of a more artful
approach, the need for precision remains - and this is just as true for steel
as it is for concepts.
"Precision instruments are designed to achieve an idea, dimensional precision,
whose perfection is impossible. There is no perfectly shaped part of the
motorcycle and never will be, but when you come as close as these instruments
take you, remarkable things happen, and you go flying across the countryside
under a power that would be called magic if it were not so completely rational
in every way. It’s the understanding of this rational intellectual idea that’s
fundamental. John looks at the motorcycle and he sees steel in various shapes
and has negative feelings about these steel shapes and turns off the whole
thing. I look at the shapes of the steel now and I see ideas. He thinks I’m
working on parts. I‘m working on concepts." (ZAMM, 100)
…Which bring us to his main thesis: Quality is the source and substance of
everything. In the same way that all the motorcycle parts are out of someone's
mind, so it is with "reality" as we know it. Every last bit of it is invented,
he says. In the same way as the steel and concepts, this reality is any shape
you want it to be and yet without some precision the whole thing will tear
itself apart.
"Reality isn't static anymore. It's not a set of ideas you have to either fight
or resign yourself to. ..With Quality as a central undefined term, reality is,
in its essential nature, not static but dynamic. ...classical, structured,
dualistic subject object knowledge, although necessary, isn't enough. You have
to have some feeling for the quality of the work. You have to have a sense of
what's good. ..It's not just 'intuition', not just an unexplainable 'skill' or
'talent'. It's the direct result of contact with basic REALITY, Quality, which
dualistic reason has in the past tended to conceal." (ZAMM 284)
Implicitly, quietly, my point here is really to say that the MOQ cannot rightly
be interpreted as anti-intellectual or as a vacuous relativism. Knowledge and
skill are still essential features of the "arts" he's talking about.
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