
Robert M. Pirsig has died - molecule
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/24/525443040/-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-author-robert-m-pirsig-dies-at-88
======
cypherpunks01
"Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as
unimportant. But now, as your Quality awareness becomes stronger, you realize
that this one, individual, particular screw is neither cheap nor small nor
unimportant. Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the
whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get
the screw out. With this reevaluation of the screw comes a willingness to
expand your knowledge of it."

~~~
philh
> Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole
> motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the
> screw out.

If I read the situation correctly, the motorcycle with this screw is certainly
not valueless. It can be turned into a working motorcycle far more easily than
most other things can be turned into a working motorcycle. If it would take a
competent technician an hour to remove the screw, then the screw shouldn't
affect the selling price of the motorcycle by more than a couple of hundred
dollars.

It's important to remember that small, trivial-seeming things can actually be
important, which I think is what he's pointing at. But it's also important to
remember that a thing's potential has value beyond its current abilities.

~~~
lsd5you
I would say, surely the author realises this and has decided to go for
'valueless' for dramatic effect. As a fellow somewhat pedant I totally agree,
it's not intellectually consistent and would probably change me into a more
disagreeable mode whilst reading it. That said I wonder how many flawed but
worthwhile things would not come to be if such consistency was universally
applied...

~~~
spathi_fwiffo
I'm not sure if that is true that he is using 'valueless' for dramatic effect.

One of the major themes of the book is defining "quality" and "value".

------
a_d
I spent a long summer in 1998 researching the life of Mr Pirsig. Here is some
little known trivia - some of the years when he disappeared, were spent in
Banaras Hindu University (Varanasi, India) with Prof Mukherjee (head of the
philosophy department) learning about Indian (Hindu) philosophy. I met Prof
MUkherjee, who was retired by the time I went looking for him. I tracked him
down and asked him if he remembered Mr Robert Pirsig (I took a picture that I
had printed from the internet). He told me about a curious "American fellow"
who used to "audit" the classes in the philosophy department, hang around the
library and the canteen - and would seek him out to have discussions with him.
He said that he was very quiet and nice guy.

Interestingly, Prof Mukherjee had no idea that Mr Pirsig has written this cult
book or that he was a famous author/philosopher. To him, he was just an odd
student (because of his age).

I wrote about this in our campus newspaper - but no one cared. I thought that
I was the only fan of Mr Pirsig in this small town in India. Once I found the
_internet_ I discovered that I wasn't alone. It was a great feeling.

Anyway, i was very proud that he went to the same university that i went to.
It was exciting to learn that in 1998! Also, while i didn't fully get the
philosophy-the father and son journey in Zen really meant a lot to me while
growing up.

Edit: by the way, Prof Mukherjee is mentioned in his book "Lila", and that is
how I found him.

Edit2: "Lila", the name of Mr Pirsig's second book, seems to have been
inspired by his stay in Varanasi (India). In Sanskrit, the word Lila is "a way
of describing all reality, including the cosmos, as the outcome of creative
play by the divine". Someone on Wikipedia also seems to have made this
connection:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila:_An_Inquiry_into_Morals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila:_An_Inquiry_into_Morals)

Edit3: I spent the last hour digging into a 15-year-old hard drive (oh, what
painful fun). I found a folder with my notes on Robert Pirsig! Most
interestingly, my meeting notes with Dr. Mukherjee. I gave him the book and he
flipped through the chapter for 20 minutes reading the sections I had
underlined (where his name was mentioned). This frail man of seventy, said
with a smile on his face: "He must not have been an attentive student. I never
taught him this way". Most of the notes are about him reminiscing about the
"golden years" of the philosophy department when according to him many great
philosophers came to visit and study at the philosophy department at Banaras
Hindu University.

~~~
icc97
Perhaps you should put your notes online?

~~~
laynnn
Yes, I'm also interested :)

------
rgrieselhuber
I was kind of a punk in high school and I was in a week-long suspension room
for skipping a bunch of classes. The room monitor was this cool older dude
with a long beard who talked a lot about life, philosophy, and things like
that.

We weren't allowed to read or do anything but sit in boredom during suspension
(school rules) but he made an exception for me if I wanted to read Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (at his recommendation).

I bought a copy and brought it to suspension the next day, read the whole
thing that week. Good memories thanks to the room monitor dude and an
excellent book.

~~~
stickfigure
This is such a strange punishment. Kid stupidly deprives himself of learning,
so to discourage it, we deprive him of another week's worth?

~~~
dclowd9901
Strange and prevalent (at least in the US). Every state I've lived in has some
form of this, be it in-school or out-of-school suspension. It seems like a way
to train kids for prison. It's mostly just a way to keep them from disrupting
others; in other words, it's the easiest way to deal with the kid (with no
thought toward helping them).

------
gerbilly
I read once somewhere that a reviewer said something along the lines of: "He
didn't understand Zen and he didn't understand motorcycle maintenance
either."[1]

However I read it several times and I think that interpretation is very
uncharitable.

It is a touching big hearted story about a fractured person struggling to put
himself back together while trying to connect with his son and while trying to
figure out what it means to live 'the good life.'[2]

If what he had was metal illness, I think that he might be an example of
someone putting it to the best use possible.

I'm honestly not sure if the MOQ holds up as philosophy or not, or even as a
coherent mystical system. But I can say that I wish there were more books like
it, that is to say: written by authors way on the fringe of mainstream
thought.

[1] My critique about the Zen aspect is that Buddhism is not something you
theorize about, it is something you practice. To theorize about Buddhism would
be like a guy who reads a lot about golf trivia, golf training, golf
biographies, but does not play golf. Golf is a thing you do, an aspiration to
get the ball into the little hole. It is something you have to embody and
realize in yourself. Buddhism more resembles learning a sport or a craft than
a philosophy.

[2] Many of us should be so lucky to achieve even one of those things in a
lifetime.

~~~
cypherpunks01
That's funny, my 1999 edition opens with a 4 sentence Author's Note that ends
with:

"..it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual
information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual
on motorcycles either."

Not sure if that was in the original?

~~~
gerbilly
Maybe that where i misremembered the quote from and assumed it was a reviewer.

the fact that he pointed it out himself makes me respect the author even more.

------
theprop
And you think you're having troubles with your startup?

"Zen was published in 1974, after being rejected by 121 publishing
houses...then Pirsig lived reclusively and worked on his second book Lila for
17 years before its publication in 1991."

"Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even
exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn't
exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist."

~~~
coderholic
And his son (Chris in the book) was murdered in San Francisco!

~~~
ternaryoperator
Your comment should have a spoiler alert.

~~~
mikestew
His son Chris was murdered long after the book was published, there is nothing
spoiled unless you're really into the plot of postscripts of later editions.

EDIT: (And, yeesh, it was _forty_ years ago. What "spoiler"? BTW, Vader is
Luke's father.)

~~~
ternaryoperator
Jeez, chill man. For some of us, the fact that we knew about this changed the
book. Why be insulting just because you don't agree?

------
ffdixon1
I must have ready ZMM at least seven times (so far) in my life. Back when I
was taking an undergraduate, I read it the first time and was inspired to take
as many English courses as I could. I wanted to be a technical writer. After a
series of co-op work-terms in the field (the companies loved a tech writer who
could also program), I landed a full-time job as a technical writer in a large
telecommunications company. I would read ZMM on the bus to work for
inspiration. Pirsig could write with such clarity that I tried to emulate him
in my writing (as I'm sure all poor writers do). I eventually returned to
programming as it was my first love. The job as a tech writer definitely
improved my writing skills, and reading ZMM definitely improved my life.

~~~
roymurdock
Pynchon worked as a technical writer for Boeing, and Vonnegut worked as a
publicist for GE. You can see how their appreciation of tech shaped their
future work. You're in good company!

~~~
stinkytaco
Also Ted Chiang, who is a technical writer for Microsoft.

------
cypherpunks01
If you love the book and haven't seen the other photos from the trip, check
them out—it's 12 photos Pirsig took during the summer 1968 trip! Pirsig sent
them to a professor who was doing ZMM-related research:

[http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/galle...](http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/gallery/Pictures-
Robert-Pirsigs-original-1968-trip)

~~~
mikestew
Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen but one of those pictures before.

And for those thinking a 900lb. Honda Goldwing is required for cross-country
travel, Pirsig's bike was Honda Hawk 305, as in 305cc. It put out 28
horsepower. I'll bet there are scooters today that put out more power. And
Pirsig loaded it with two people and camping gear and rode it cross-country.

~~~
jeremysmyth
Yeah but bear in mind the maintenance became a significant part of the
experience (motorcycle maintenance is not just in the title for decoration).
Some people prefer not to do that.

------
nickbauman
While I enjoyed the book, for me going back over it years later, in the
afterword for the second edition: a crushing blow. It now overshadows the book
for me. It describes the murder and aftermath many years later of his son that
was featured in the novel. Here. I found it. Read it.

:'(

[http://theaetetus.tamu.edu/online-texts/zen/zen-
afterword.ht...](http://theaetetus.tamu.edu/online-texts/zen/zen-
afterword.html)

~~~
thesmallestcat
You have to wonder what his son said to earn that treatment.

~~~
jackhack
There is no reasoning nor bargaining with evil. It simply is, and its job is
to destroy.

~~~
thesmallestcat
Did you read it?

 _Chris said something which the witnesses could not hear. His assailant
became angrier. Chris then said something that made him even more furious. He
jammed the knife into Chris 's chest._

There's "evil," and then there's turning a mugging into getting knifed in the
chest. Unless you're saying that this was the norm for SF muggings in the
80's. It's pretty likely that 22 year-old guy acted smart. That doesn't make
it right, all I said was that I'd be interested in what exactly he said to
provoke the response.

~~~
nf05papsjfVbc
Matters not what said he. He who wields the weapon bears the charge.

~~~
thesmallestcat
So if you get mugged, you might as well spit in the face of the robber, right?
Or tell him it's a shame he didn't apply himself in school, then quote
Socrates, and laugh at his ignorance? Seeing that things are totally out of
your hands, or something.

------
Insanity
May he rest in peace.

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance was one of the first books on
philosophy that I read outside of my philosophy curriculum at university and
it stayed with me.

It's a great book discussing the metaphysics of quality, but not just that.
It's written in a captivating way, mixing both the 'food for thought' as well
as a pleasant narative about a father and a son on a motorcycle trip.

It's one of the philosophy books that I can recommend to people who are not
directly interested in philosophy as well, which gave me some quite fun
discussions with my friends about the topics in the book without being too
deep into the philosophy itself.

~~~
vermontdevil
I read it three times. Still trying to grasp everything. Will keep on reading
it. Great book.

~~~
sonabinu
It's one of the few books I've read multiple times! And it's still on my
reading list.

------
dap
"Zen" has its strengths and weaknesses, but I found its discussion about
"gumption traps" (Chapter 26, I believe) to be absolute, solid gold. Pirsig's
description of what it's like to do gritty work on a complex system -- and all
the logical, mental, and emotional blocks associated with that -- really
resonated with my experience as a software engineer, and they've helped me get
better at being aware of those blocks and getting past them.

May he rest in peace.

~~~
nbanks
The "gumption trap", both the term and the definition, is a great insight. I
tend to find gumption traps really annoying and it's good to know why I'm
annoyed and how to push through. When a friend of mine recommended the book he
used this concept as the example of why it was amazing.

------
Turing_Machine
"Phædrus' provocation informed the Chairman that his substantive field was now
philosophy, not English composition. However, he said, the division of study
into substantive and methodological fields was an outgrowth of the
Aristotelian dichotomy of form and substance, which nondualists had little use
for, the two being identical.

He said he wasn't sure, but the thesis on Quality appeared to turn into an
anti-Aristotelian thesis. If this was true he had chosen an appropriate place
to present it. Great Universities proceeded in a Hegelian fashion and any
school which could not accept a thesis contradicting its fundamental tenets
was in a rut. This, Phædrus claimed, was the thesis the University of Chicago
was waiting for.

He admitted the claim was grandiose and that value judgments were actually
impossible for him to make since no person could be an impartial judge of his
own cause. But if someone else were to produce a thesis which purported to be
a major breakthrough between Eastern and Western philosophy, between religious
mysticism and scientific positivism, he would think it of major historic
importance, a thesis which would place the University miles ahead. In any
event, he said, no one was really accepted in Chicago until he'd rubbed
someone out. It was time Aristotle got his."

------
CurtMonash
I wish more people had read that book.

Anybody with some education in philosophy figures out that utter, logical-
proof certainty can't be had. So what does one do for epistemology instead?
There are two main alternatives:

\-- Religious-style faith. This is not my preferred choice.

\-- An aesthetically-tinged approach to epistemology.

What I mean by the latter is, for example, generalizing Occam's Razor into
usability. The problem with Occam's Razor is that it says, in effect, "In case
of doubt go with the simpler answer", without giving a general way to judge
what's simpler. Any solution to that problem winds up being an aesthetic kind
of judgment.

~~~
GavinMcG
Why does one need it to be aesthetically tinged? Another approach is virtue
epistemology, where we count as true that which trusted sources and processes
say is true. That is, the drug dog who has been right in the past is one we
listen to in the future. The scientific project that makes predictions that
turn out to be accurate is the one we listen to.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> That is, the drug dog who has been right in the past is one we listen to in
> the future

If we're in a situation where we get good data about what's right, we can just
do science and it doesn't really matter what authorities or dogs think.

The place where you need non-scientific epistemologies is when you don't have
good feedback data.

And sometimes even when there is data, bad predictors can mutually self
reinforce. Racist cops arrest more black kids, more black kids get convicted,
that proves racist cops are good predictors of criminality. It's not true, but
the data says it's true.

It's equivalent to a scientist doing many studies and only publishing the ones
that are positive. The stats only work for independent measures but nothing is
independent especially when you are using predictions to make policy.

~~~
GavinMcG
Those are fair criticisms, but they can be addressed without demanding
aesthetic judgments as a component of epistemology.

------
matt4077
There's a rather negative critique floating around that someone is bound to
post, sooner than later. And it is, in itself, worth reading. It's possibly
even right–I read both the book and the critique twice, and came away
believing both, somewhat paradoxically.

But I wish to make the case that the book is worth reading for its literary
value alone. The narrative parts are a gentle, beautiful telling of this
father/son trip across the northwest, and reading it will leave you with
enjoying nature (or, more generally, reality) with something like a calm
optimism.

~~~
ep103
What's the critique? I've never heard of it.

~~~
stinkytaco
That he's a "phony, self-congratulatory, pretentious buffoon" according to the
top rated review on Goodreads [1]. That it's new-age, pseudo-psychology
masquerading as philosophy.

I don't share these views, personally. But knowing a fair few philosophers
myself, I think the Analytic school is powerful in the US. Dominated by
figures like Bertrand Russell, who rely on a formal grammar and logical
syntax. Philosophy is a science in this view and there's no room for
narrative.

ZatAoMM falls into the Continental school and has more in common in its
approach with figures like Nietzsche and Marx, relying on a narrative or
historical approach. Neither of those particular figures, nor the Continental
school in general, are much in vogue and thus I think Zen gets rejected for
being both Continental and popular.

[1]:[http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/16210395](http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/16210395)

EDIT: It's also frequently observed that Pirsig offers nothing new to
philosophy. This is probably correct. I think the narrative aspect is what
really separates the work. I found this while searching around a bit looking
for further information, and it really sums up what I feel is ZatAoMM's
greatest contribution:

'hat makes Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance superlative (and unique,
to my knowledge) is that Pirsig successfully blended the history of philosophy
with the history of his psyche, allegorizing each into the other." [2]

[2]:[https://www.quora.com/What-do-philosophers-think-about-
Zen-a...](https://www.quora.com/What-do-philosophers-think-about-Zen-and-the-
Art-of-Motorcycle-Maintenance/answer/Matt-Kundert)

~~~
ep103
Yeah, sounds more like a review of the reviewer than an actual review of the
book. I mean, fair enough. The first time I read siddhartha I thought the main
character was an asshole, and couldn't figure out why anyone would live a life
like that character. Read it again a few years ago, and realized I was an
idiot, had _completely_ missed the point the first time through as a teenager.

These things happen :)

~~~
jackhack
Agreed. A painting tells us more about the painter than the canvas.

------
vr46
The conclusion to one of my favourite sections:

"In other words, any true German mechanic, with a half-century of mechanical
finesse behind him, would have concluded that this particular solution to this
particular technical problem was perfect."

Anyone else remember that bit? I now ride a big BMW R1200RT. I wonder if this
book influenced me to do that? RIP Mr Pirsig

~~~
mikestew
If anything, the book would have kept me away from the clueless, snooty BMW
riders that don't have a clue about their bikes. Real riders like Pirsig ride
Hondas, just like I did for most of my riding career. :-)

\--

Signed,

Owner of a '14 R1200GSA

~~~
jacquesm
It took me a while to make sense of that. Apologies for the (corrected)
downvote.

~~~
mikestew
Why would you downvote it in the first place? That's exactly how John in the
book struck me. I'd even argue that it was kind of the point of the section
that was quoted.

------
cm2012
Not a fan of the book (it calls to mind an acid trip - the author sounds like
he understands something deeper, but there's no clarity to it), but the author
undeniably had a thought process different than the mainstream, which is
always valuable.

~~~
rfrank
I totally get you on your critique, but I think the ambiguity is somewhat
intentional - think koans in Zen Buddhism. Haven't read it in over 10 years
now, so if I were to read it again I might not think the same, however. He
probably directly mentions the koans thing himself haha.

Around the same time I read Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman [1],
and Illusions by Richard Bach [2], and felt they were both better than Zen. At
the end of the day I think the real value of any of those texts is the
introduction to philosophy/self-discovery in general, in a really accessible
form.

"A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a
speed, it feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now.

But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will
know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons." \-
Illusions

1\. [https://www.amazon.com/Way-Peaceful-Warrior-Changes-
Lives/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Way-Peaceful-Warrior-Changes-
Lives/dp/0915811898)

2\. [https://www.amazon.com/Illusions-Adventures-Reluctant-
Messia...](https://www.amazon.com/Illusions-Adventures-Reluctant-Messiah-
published/dp/B00E31NEB4/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493083015&sr=1-2&keywords=illusions)

------
lanbanger
It's no exaggeration to say that this book changed my life. I learned so much
from it, and apply what I learned on a daily basis. I was only thinking a
couple of weeks ago that it's time for another re-read: that's definitely the
case now.

RIP Robert M. Pirsig :-(

------
oska
A couple of other obituaries:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/books/robert-pirsig-
dead-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/books/robert-pirsig-dead-wrote-
zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance.html)

[http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-robert-
pirsig-...](http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-robert-pirsig-
obituary-20170424-story.html)

------
pasbesoin
I remember -- belatedly, after a few suggestions to do so -- reading "Zen" the
summer after I graduated. I rarely notate in a book, but that copy ended up
full of notes in the margins.

At the time, I thought it was one of the most significant things I'd read. Of
course, I was young, and it was a long time ago. (And then, life and injury
and illness and... well, a distinct _lack_ of quality happened, and I never
got back to it.)

I've been meaning, intending, lately, to reread it. Last year, I was invited
into a book club. I've considered suggesting it -- I think I will.

Quality. Eloquence, in a word.

P.S. I've been thinking about getting a bike and riding for a summer.
Adequate, but not overdone -- and quiet.

Piece by piece, this rough idea has been sketching itself in.

Don't know why I'm telling HN, this, or why you should care. Except that we
all should care about quality. And about a man who thought and felt hard on
the topic and in turn gave us much to think about. Reflected much of
ourselves, to ourselves -- giving us eyes and ears into ourselves and our
choices.

Anyway...

------
temp246810
>>>"The book is brilliant beyond belief," wrote Morrow editor James Landis
before publication. "It is probably a work of genius and will, I'll wager,
attain classic status."

Amazing when things like that are foretold. (Yes I know, survivorship bias
blah blah)

------
sizzzzlerz
Was there a US university philosophy class in the 70s and 80s that didn't
include reading this book? Maybe outside the US, as well. Someone said about
it that it was as much about riding and fixing motorcycles as Moby Dick was
about whaling. Much like the book, I'm not sure I totally understand that but
you can't deny its importance.

~~~
nickbauman
It's a book about technology in general and our qualitative relationship to
the things we make, really.

~~~
chubot
Eh, that's doesn't really cover it either.

I've always told me friends that it's about Western philosophy and mental
illness. Those two subjects are covered just as much as Zen and Motorcycle
maintenance.

The parts about your relationship to the machine will definitely resonate with
engineers, but that's not all it's about. I guess that is why it is a great
book -- there's something for everyone and it can be read in multiple ways.

------
dwe3000
I don't remember how I came across it, but I remember reading it early in high
school - 9th grade, I think - and loving it. While the philosophy was a great
read, the ideas of understanding and caring for your equipment influenced my
thoughts on all the technology I use, even if I'm not a mechanic.

~~~
oska
I read it at about the same age and it had a similar impact on me.

------
phlakaton
I stumbled across this quote somewhere in my university days: "The errors of
great [people] are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of
little [people]." (It's Nietzsche reflecting on Schopenhauer IIUC – and it's a
quote I think can apply equally well to Nietzsche himself!)

I think this applies to a lot of the great writing I have loved, and perhaps
Pirsig's ZAAMM falls into this bucket. After all, for all of its classical
philosophical underpinnings and serious intent, it does not seem to have
achieved much status as as work of philosophy. You won't find Pirsig's name
(except in passing) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for example.
The book is also over a generation old. I suppose there's a question,
therefore, of whether it will endure as a book that future generations will
draw inspiration and ideas from.

Nevertheless, I think it stands admirably as a iconoclastic, genre-bashing,
cross-pollinating, fascinating exploration of philosophical ideas, and, as
Pirsig himself observed, as a "culture-bearer" of the time and place it was
written. This makes it a classic of American writing as far as I am concerned,
if not a classic treatise in philosophy.

RIP, Mr. Pirsig.

------
craneca0
“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself
perfect and then just paint naturally.”

------
dugditches
If anyone hasn't heard this(hour long):
[http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2623057085](http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2623057085)

An interview with someone who interviewed Pirsig. With clips from that
original interview.

Very, very good radio.

From personal relation to the book. When I was young I went on a motorcycle
trip on the back of my father's motorcycle, with his friend and son.

We pulled into a small rural gas station, and there was a younger guy filling
up a small foreign car. And he just started laughing upon talking to us. He
had just taken time off his undergrad after reading a book about man and his
son on a motorcycle trip. And wrote the name down on the back of our map.

While I was far to young to understand the book at first, reading it over
again and again as I got older it was a different learning experience each
time as I grew.

~~~
fineline
It has spoken in a changing but relevant way to me each decade that I have
read it.

------
andrewbinstock
A wonderful book that I'm amazed ever got published. Still, as noted in
wikipedia: "It was originally rejected by 121 publishers, more than any other
bestselling book, according to the Guinness Book of Records."

[edited to remove spoiler I shouldn't have mentioned -- my apologies]

~~~
coss
I was also shocked but come on man, spoilers.

~~~
jfoutz
FWIW, i read and old copy, it lacked the afterword. I found out years later
when talking to someone about the book. I get your point, but it wasn't part
of the original work.

------
jackhack
For those who enjoyed "ZenATAOMM", I found another in a similar vein: "Shop
Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work"

"...author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning
everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of
thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic,
Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a
moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract
world."

[https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-
Value/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-
Value/dp/0143117467)

~~~
randcraw
I really wanted to like Soulcraft, perhaps for an echo of ZAMM. But Crawford's
writing lacks passion or verve, as only excess time in academia can do.
Crawford's perspective remains strictly objective: ever the professor, never
the investigator or mechanic. As I recall, the narrative lacks even a single
hands on illustration akin to Pirsig's adjusting valves or shimming a
handlebar, which left me unconvinced that the author had ever been one with
his machines, much less with his thesis. Soulless.

In contrast, John Jerome's "Truck" was a light-hearted but engaging foray into
the rebuilding of a 1950 era pickup truck. It lacked the philosophical
ambition of ZAMM or impact, but it was an agreeable read that left me
wondering what kind of renovation project _I_ might choose, toward gaining
insights from dirty fingernails.

------
dustinkirkland
I've (re-)read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance every time I've
bought a motorcycle [1997, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2014].

Pirsig's concept of "quality" sticks with me in every decision I make as a
parent, engineer, and product manager.

RIP, Mr. Pirsig.

------
rmc
_Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ is a great philosophy book, but
kinda rubbish as a motorcycle travel book. I recommend _Jupiters Travels_
(from the same era) for an excellent motorcycle travel book.

------
arh68
A thought occurred to me the other day. What if it's not so good to "be one
with the bicycle" ? What I mean is, I feel the narrator identifies too
strongly with the machine. The frustrations of the machine translate directly
to him, leading to crap avoiding gumption traps.

Like composition v. inheritance, you don't always want to _become_ the thing,
you just want to use it. It's dangerous to become a thing, especially one
without any Quality.

Maybe I resonate more strongly now with the BMW driver. I don't know. Maybe I
didn't really understand the book.

~~~
ep103
Because it isn't about the bicycle. What are you doing, right now? (Besides
posting on the internet). What are you working towards?

That's the bicycle.

And if you are spending your time working on it or towards it, then that means
it is something you value.

And if it is something you value, then "becoming one with it" as you put it,
will allow you to both do better at the task/goal, as well as reap a more
rewarding experience from pursuing that task/goal.

You could take the opposite approach, and not truly value any thing that you
do, but I a) am not sure that could be rewarding and b) am not sure that is
possible. As DFW said, everybody worships something, whether they know it or
not. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-
ydFMI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI))

So the book takes the opposite perspective. It says, well, whatever you are
working on is what you value. Whatever you spend your time on is what you
value. And if you can remember to truly embrace the things you value, or
conversely, ensure you spend your time pursuing the things you truly value,
then your experiences towards those topics/goals/tasks will be more rewarding
and as a result, your life can be more enriching as well.

------
inimino
This book was on my reading list for many years, and I finally read it a
couple years ago. A wonderful book.

Highly recommended to anyone who likes reading. It's not just the philosophy
and it's not just the story, it's the way they are part of the same whole,
with deep roots in the American landscape, that makes this book so special.
Now I want to revisit it and see if I can pick up his later work as well.

If you still haven't read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, do
yourself a favor and pick up a copy.

------
seanxh
“I think its important now to tie care to Quality by pointing out that care
and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who
sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who
cares about what he sees and does is a person whos bound to have some
characteristics of Quality” Thank you and RIP Mr.Pirsig

------
udkl
If you are thinking of purchasing this book from the kindle store, buy the
mass market paper book for $3.99 and then matchbook it to get the kindle
version for $2. This way you end up with 2 copies for the price of the
standalone kindle version and you can give one away.

I borrowed the book from the public library just last week.

~~~
pfd1986
Thanks!! I just bought it a couple months ago and wasn't aware of the
matchbook option.

------
westoncb
I read a little over half of ZMM about a year ago, and there's one aspect of
it that caught my attention which I'm surprised to not see mentioned here.

He gives a break down of a certain style of thinking about things where you
break the subject down into parts and the relationships between the parts. He
gives examples in technical writing that this process has a degree of
arbitrariness to it. His circumscribing the general process of conceptualizing
things suggests that the process itself has limits, and while valuable, is not
everything (despite the tendency of certain mentalities to see things that
way. He has an ongoing contrast between himself who is inclined to think that
way and others who aren't.) I see this as a bridge to understanding Eastern
philosophy's low opinion of language and penchant for indirect explanations.

------
botswana99
There is a lot for an engineer to love in the ZMM -- fixing things, a
meditation on screws, the quality of shims, and father-son story. It's
tempting for a rational engineer to laugh at philosophy. But it's a quality
book.

------
iaw
My first thought: why is that name so familiar?

My second: Oh.

Pirsig's book was there for me during a challenging time of my life. I never
finished it, but I'm not so confident that I really needed to. Just starting
the book in many ways can be enough.

------
luckydude
I love the Zen book but did not understand it at all the first time I read it
(somewhere in grade/high school). All I got the first time around was that it
was sort of a boring book about a dude taking a motorcycle ride and there was
a lot I skipped over.

Read again when I was a bit more ready to hear it and wow, profound book. The
church of reason lecture is awesome. And timeless.

I hope this guy found some peace in his life, I did get the sense that he was
struggling but that's just a guess.

------
baali
I had finished reading the book(ZAAMM) recently. I have been sharing its
snippets with friends and talking over them. I found it really insightful and
reflective.

------
emmelaich
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is _not_ a very good book but it
_is_ a good book.

I loved it and will always remember it when I have forgotten many other books.
It is not a 'philosophy' book but it is quite philosophical.

It's worth a read but it's slow in parts. Push yourself through or skip a few
chapters.

Like many other readers my favourite part is the drink can as shim.

~~~
fineline
I used this many years ago with friends (a touring band) on the side of a
German autobahn on a ~10metre coach that was shearing its wheel studs, not so
much as a shim but to hold the new studs in place until the nuts torqued up.
We all enjoyed drinking the beers required to get the job done too.

------
bariswheel
Rest in peace, Mr. Robert Pirsig. Your books stimulated and entertained my
intellect during my high school/undergrad years, served as a gateway to get a
better grip on philosophy in general, and had a lasting influence on me this
day. Thank you for sharing your life with us. ﻿

------
simonebrunozzi
I am surprised the article doesn't cite how his son Chris was murdered outside
the San Francisco Zen Center in the '80s. I assume that single event changed
Robert's life forever, and certainly inspired a lot of what went into Lila.

------
HAL9OOO
I never post here but this saddens me greatly, his ideas spoke to me on
another level.

------
amy12xx
I found the road trip part of the book enjoyable, but the philosophy (Quality)
talk a bit drawn out and something I didn't get. Have been intermittently
reading it, but haven't finished it yet.

~~~
cedex12
Same situation for me. I find the philosophy to be too judgemental, and the
belief that Quality is the metaphysical key to the understanding of the world
seems really overstretched.

~~~
fineline
As I understood, it boils down to: Quality is the cutting edge of experience,
which is the totality of any "reality" we can know. Things like science,
religion, etc. are static value patterns that we assemble to explain that
experience, and that allow us to use a process of "static latching" (from
Lila) to climb higher up the mountain of quality.

Whilst possibly a gross over-simplification, I do find this perspective a
really practical philosophy for personal growth as well as a good basecamp for
approaching other philosophical viewpoints.

------
coss
Really enlightening book. Definitely among my top three of all time.

------
MrBra
I remember reading his book years ago and thinking it was an amazing read. I
don't remember much about it now and I will for sure take a look at it again.
I highly suggest it!

------
slvrspoon
RIP RP.

For those who are interested, a little more info to contribute...

RP, apparently though I can't substantiate, was tested as having a "Genius
level IQ" as an early child.

After reading both ZMM and LILA carefully, I believe he has gotten as close as
anyone to a philosophy that explains humanity and blends successfully eastern
and western history and perspective on such.

LILA is the serious effort and a far more important book, though it has gone
largely ignored.

Some interesting info for fans to dig into here:
[http://robertpirsig.org/AHP%20Transcript%203.html](http://robertpirsig.org/AHP%20Transcript%203.html)

------
runevault
I've owned the ebook of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for years
but never read it. I think I need to finally make time for that book.

------
musgravepeter
Easily the book I have re-read the most times.

------
DubiousPusher
Zen is still a great gateway text into philosophies Eastern and Western. It's
nice he lived to a ripe old age.

------
Arkaad
"Zen was published in 1974, after being rejected by 121 publishing houses."

 _121_ publishing houses...

------
fineline
Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind. \--
Goethe

Vale Pirsig

------
shirazi
Very sad to hear this news. May he rest in peace.

------
mmaunder
RIP Phaedrus.

------
winter11
how did he die and when

------
winter11
how did he die

------
mtempm
It's amazing public schools are permitted to do this. There's nothing for the
kid to grow from in a child sitting around doing nothing. Children grow from
experiences and challenges. Minds forced into isolation with no stimulation
are stunted, and there's scientific evidence to support that. Obviously one
week is not going to make or break a person, but this school policy is
exceptionally ignorant.

~~~
inimino
Sitting quietly for a half hour with only one's own thoughts is hardly as
terrible as you make it sound. If anything, it builds character. It is an
experience and a challenge.

Keep in mind that detention was introduced after corporal punishment became
socially unacceptable.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
This was sitting all day, not for a half hour.

~~~
inimino
I missed that. Still, I think it's reasonable. Being forced to sit and think
is not such a terrible punishment, and it seems that it "fits the crime" in
the case of truancy.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
Well, I got a good book recommendation out of the deal.

------
camperman
My introduction to Quality Without a Name and motorcycling. I still ride and
still appreciate engineering that somehow manages to be greater than just the
sum of its parts: the Leica M3, the Blackbird SR71, the HP 12C.

~~~
DonaldFisk
Quality without a _definition_ , surely. Quality Without a Name was
Christopher Alexander's idea, described in A Timeless Way of Building. Though
the two are related. I've read both ZatAoMM and Lila, and can recommend both.

~~~
chubot
I've read both books and I'd be very interested in reading how they are
related.

I do agree they are related, but though the use of the word "quality" in both
contexts probably confuses issues rather than illuminates them.

I agree with Paul Graham when he says that most philosophical discussions
reduce to disagreements over the meaning of words:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html)

It's also true that both Pirsig and Alexander are reluctant to define their
respective "quality". I think there are profound core truths in both of their
ideas, but I think they're also too ambitious.

They're both trying to apply one concept to a multitude of things. It's almost
religious -- there is one answer to all problems.

~~~
anigbrowl
Good points. I was very heavily influenced by the book and still am in many
respects, but ended up completely rejecting his conclusory argument. (Readers
who don't want to spoil their experience of the book should move on now.)

Where I think he goes wrong is his conflation of quality with desire, as
summed up in the phrase 'quality is what you like.' Something about this
gnawed at me because from an early age I noticed that that aesthetic quality
and taste were poorly correlated for me; there are things I like that are
objectively crap and conversely there are art objects of high quality that I
don't like or were even hostile towards at first.

My go-to example for this sort of thing is Francis Bacon, the English painter.
I hate almost everything of his I've seen. It repulses me on a visceral level,
such that I find his work almost physically painful to look at. But his
painting is of very very high quality. Bacon was a true master of composition
and other measurable factors of aesthetic quality. It is his mastery of those
painterly techniques that make the unpleasantness of his work so impactful.

I have my doubts about Pirsig's relationship to art. You'll recall the tale of
when he was on the faculty at Boise, and his friend (an art professor) came
around one evening for a social purpose, to find Pirsig wrapping a table in
string for the eminently practical purpose of holding it under tension so that
the glue he had just applied could set properly. The art professor is
surprised and Pirsig decides to have a little fun with him by saying it's an
art project, which naturally intrigues the art professor who begins evaluating
it without any awareness of its more quotidian nature.

this bothered me; Pirsig aimed to point out the arbitrary and unfalsifiable
nature of art so as to disqualify it as a vehicle for truth, and indeed he is
not alone; many people have such a reaction to modern art because abstraction
or the fetishization of expression (in the MArxist rather than the Freudian
sense) devalues the representational aspect, even though the latter is the
easiest for people to evaluate by simply observing the degree of convergence
between the quality of representation in the art work and their experience of
the physical world.

But Pirsig was writing from the perspective of a technician or engineer, in
which _qualia_ can be ranked objectively in terms of their contribution to
some truth-seeking function, _qua_ his masterful exegesis of the scientific
method for solving ordinary problems like undesirable behavior of a
motorcycle. Valuable though this is, it falls apart in three ways when Pirsig
sails too close to the rocks of aesthetics: function, scope and
intentionality.

First, Pirsig has a poor understanding of artistic function; he doesn't seem
to understand art in contexts other than pictorial. Art consists of implicit
assertions about proportion and harmony which are more or less successful
depending on the degree to which those assumptions reflect our understanding
of nature.

To an artist, the pictorial content of a work is often the least interesting
aspect - it's not uncommon to evaluate a picture upside down or through
squinted eyes so as to be able to see less of the distracting subject matter.
We are often much more interested in the claims that are being made about
proportionality or symmetry - spatial, chromatic, luminous, or other types.
These things are what abstract art is _about_ , and the clarity with which
such assertions are made are what cause some people to rave about the quality
of what may seem like random splotches or clumsy daubings to the unseeing eye.
Education helps but I'm not sure you can teach taste; I knew _what_ I admired
from a very young age, decades before accumulating enough knowledge to be able
to objectively explain _why_ I liked it.

By scope I mean the degree of universality in the cumulative assertions of the
work, the specificity or generality of the truth it is asserting. This is very
hard to put into words - and arguably the better the art, the less the degree
to which the underlying concept _can_ be expressed by other means, or it
wouldn't have been necessary to go to all the bother of rendering it in paint
in the first place. It is perhaps the degree to which the different elements
of the work support and reinforce its central thesis, which extends to the
semantic and symbolic levels.

The last question, of intent, is an especially thorny one. For Pirsig, the
professor's enthusiasm over the string table was foolish because Pirsig's
intention was aesthetic rather than practical, and he assumes that aesthetic
value stems from authority, that is the economic decision to create something
at a cost in time and effort. But is it? This is a very tricky question and
one that modernism has failed to answer.

The most famous art example of this is _Foundtain_ , which consists of a
urinal which has been laid upon its back and declared an art object and duly
signed 'R. Mutt', a pseudonym of the Dadaist artist Marcel duchamp. Or was it?
There's evidence to suggest that both the submission and the signature were
actually the product of his friend, the enigmatic Baroness Elsa von Freytag-
Loringhoven, and that Duchamp simply took the credit when the rest of the art
world came around to his view that found objects could be art.

Anyway, let us imagine a situation in which Pirsig, overwhelmed by amusement,
suffered a heart attack and died immediately after conning the art professor
into evaluating his String Table as art rather than furniture repair. Let us
assume that the professor saw some or other formal quality about the work that
made it attractive to his experienced eye, regardless of whether this
aesthetic quality was the product of accident or some subconscious aesthetic
impulse on Pirsig's part. Let us further imagine that Pirsig's tragic death by
laughter following on the completion of his first and only artwork was
sufficiently interesting to hook the attention of the art world, which then
fell in love with the piece on its own merits, and that it now occupies pride
of place in a great museum, viewed and loved by millions who know nothing of
its provenance. Are they all idiots?

I argue that art inheres in the work, regardless of the intention with which
it was created. It is sufficient that it was wrought (natural objects are
merely pretty), but Pirsig's artistic intention or lack thereof is irrelevant
to the question of whether it embodies aesthetic truth. To see why, let us
consider a parallel paradox of monkeys with typewriters. We are all familiar
with the idea that infinite typewriting monkeys might reproduce the work of
Shakespeare, but also with the extreme remoteness of such a possibility. But
once you've persuaded monkeys to take up typing, it's not so hard to imagine
that one might crank out 'E=mc^2' in a reasonable timeframe, say by Wednesday
of next week. Would that be a valid theorem?

Obviously the monkeys know nothing of physics and can only be persuaded to
bang on the typewriter because I keep supplying them with bananas. Indeed we
could dispense with the monkeys altogether and instead draw Scrabble tiles out
of a bag or something to underscore the random nature of the process. But now
here comes that bum Einstein, with his inchoate intuitions about the nature of
space and time, perplexedly pondering the relationships between energy,
matter, and the speed of light. The monkeys flee the scene in terror, crying
'Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair!' and the commotion
distracts Einstein enough to look at their output, which equation results in
his illumination and subsequent adulation.

Chance favors the prepared mind, of course, and it is only because Einstein
was obsessed with such topics that the random keystrokes on the page were
imbued with meaning for him, and him alone - but thanks to your familiarity
with relativity, that same page would be imbued with meaning for you too if
you were to see, regardless of whether you knew about the monkeys. It
_happens_ to be true (assuming you believe in relativity), notwithstanding the
fact that it was produced by a system that produced a mixture of both false
and true theorems through a random process. Following Godel, we can not prove
the truth of the assertion within the system that produced it due to its lack
of a truth-selection rule, but this is no barrier to be it being _recognized_
as true from within the confines of a more rigorous system where its truth
could be rigorously asserted.

I argue that it is this recognition of truth, however inchoate or hard to
articulate, on the part of viewer that invests a constructed object with art
value independently of the intention with which it was created. I do not meant
hat truth shines out from art like a lamp, only that it is independent of the
intent with which it was created. In this sense a piece of 'accidental art'
would be a discovery rather than invention, but science and to some extent
mathematics is full of such accidental discoveries, and we don't hold those
discoveries to be any less valuable even if we sometimes suspect the
discoverers of having been lucky rather than clever.

I do think that ultimately Pirsig's argument is indeed religious, in that he
equates successful function with mastery of Plato's ideal forms and the
subsequent realization of the imaginary hypothesis - a conclusion that might
reasonably be extended to the material world as a whole. In his follow-up
book, _Lila_ , he attempted to derive a moral philosophy from first principles
and I feel his narrow determinism limited the scope of his exploration, though
perhaps I'm associating his philosophical argument too closely with the bounds
of the rover on which his houseboat was situated for that story, not unlike
the freewheeling motorcycle journey that was nevertheless constricted by the
necessity of staying on the road.

------
accountyaccount
There's a lot to pick at about the book, but it's a great introduction to some
basic philosophical concepts.

------
anigbrowl
_We weren 't allowed to read or do anything but sit in boredom during
suspension (school rules)_

What kind of fucking school discourages people from reading even if they're in
detention. Stories like this make me glad I didn't grow up in the USA.

~~~
unethical_ban
I loathe this comment. When I find a person on HN or reddit who comes off as
an ass, I look up their recent comment history to see if it's an anomaly or a
pattern.

Without further context, I hope you recognize your hypocrisy when you plead
with someone asking them not to treat "entertainment" as "Hollywood".

The person above gives an anecdote from an unknown decade, and an unknown city
of an unknown part of one of the most diverse countries in the world. And you
cast aside the entire American experience because of it. Your comment had no
purpose.

~~~
anigbrowl
_And you cast aside the entire American experience because of it._

I did not. Try again.

~~~
adrianm
What did you mean by "Stories like this make me glad I didn't grow up in the
USA" then?

~~~
_pmf_
One might very well discard the US school system as a the petty farce that it
is, but acknowledge the greatness of the "American experience" as a whole.

------
breeze_em_out
Let me guess, there will mysteriously be no black bar.

------
maerF0x0
I didnt understand apple until I read this book. Before then I was a total
robot.

~~~
cirgue
How do you mean?

~~~
cypherpunks01
With no other context, I assume it means that since the book is in part an
attempt to reconcile "romantic" and "classical" viewpoints, commenter was able
to gain a new appreciation of the Apple design philosophy after reading the
book.

