
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - DanielBMarkham
http://hn-books.com/Books/Zen-And-The-Art-Of-Motorcycle-Maintenance.htm
======
prospero
Out of curiosity, how did people who had already studied philosophy find this
book? Nothing in it struck me as particularly revelatory, and I'm wondering if
maybe I just wasn't the intended audience.

~~~
tibbon
There have been a few books like this, that are supposed to be massive and
life changing, but when I read they just fell flat. Everything by Ayn Rand I
read was like this too.

I could get past the pacing, the circular storytelling, and largely the
premise of it just didn't work in my mind. It was not something I could get
into and getting past more than a chapter at a time was painful.

Oddly, I like philosophy and I ride motorcycles too.

My only theory is that since these books have been published, the core ideas
have worked their way through our culture so throughly that reading it now
just seems like 'duh'. This is the way I felt reading Ayn Rand and not a
single interesting thing there popped out at me as new or novel.

~~~
neutronicus
> My only theory is that since these books have been published, the core ideas
> have worked their way through our culture so throughly that reading it now
> just seems like 'duh'. This is the way I felt reading Ayn Rand and not a
> single interesting thing there popped out at me as new or novel.

Either that, or the ideas are presented within the pages as interesting and
novel, but they're actually simple takes on simple questions. You get all the
aesthetic of intellectual challenge and none of the challenge, and then you
get to congratulate yourself for understanding something so highbrow. Kind of
like literary video games.

I put a lot of hacker-culture sacred cows (Vonnegut, Twain, Huxley, Orwell) in
this category.

An alternate hypothesis is that being raised by two professors of literature
turned me into an insufferably snobby twat.

~~~
davidmathers
Orwell is revered precisely because he was both simple and correct. Whoever
told you that Orwell was supposed to be some sort of intellectual challenge or
deep philosophy did you a great dis-service, because that's entirely missing
the point. He cut through complex or pretentious intellectual bullshit like a
chainsaw through butter.

Imagine your job was to explain the Bolshevik revolution to humanity. Not to
intellectuals, to everyone. In the most clear, straightforward and plain way
possible so that the greatest number of people could read and understand what
you wrote. Now try to imagine a book better at that than Animal Farm.

~~~
neutronicus
I was referring more to _1984_ that _Animal Farm_. The only thing _1984_ does
a chainsaw/butter number on is nuance.

~~~
davidmathers
_It was back in 1990 that I set out on a project in memetic engineering. The
Nazi-comparison meme, I'd decided, had gotten out of hand - in countless
Usenet newsgroups, in many conferences on the Well, and on every BBS that I
frequented, the labeling of posters or their ideas as "similar to the Nazis"
or "Hitler-like" was a recurrent and often predictable event. It was the kind
of thing that made you wonder how debates had ever occurred without having
that handy rhetorical hammer.

So, I set out to conduct an experiment - to build a counter-meme designed to
make discussion participants see how they are acting as vectors to a
particularly silly and offensive meme...and perhaps to curtail the glib Nazi
comparisons._

\-- Mike Godwin: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/godwin.if.html>

1984 may be the most successful memetic engineering project in history. He
developed viral antibodies for totalitarianism and then injected them into our
culture. It worked so well that people say "Orwellian" to mean "totalitarian-
esque" in the same way they say "Kleenex" to mean "facial tissue".

Making ideas as simple as possible, but not simpler requires some amount of
creative genius. Nuance is not viral.

EDIT, a thought experiment: Your job is to write a short book that if it could
somehow be read by the population of North Korea would cause the Kim Jong-Il
regime to collapse. Could such a book be written? I think 1984 would do it.

~~~
neutronicus
_1984 may be the most successful memetic engineering project in history._

Dressing down your prose a little, you're saying " _1984_ successfully
manipulated a lot of [gullible] people".

And that is, in a nutshell, why I don't like it much. Orwell does not treat
his reader as a peer. There's no _respect_ there, just manipulation, because
the author doesn't trust the reader with nuance.

EDIT (in response to yours): Luckily for me, I am nobody's minister of
propaganda. I would (were I a much better writer than I am) tell it like it
is, nuances and all, and let them do with that what they will.

~~~
davidmathers
"1984 successfully manipulated a lot of [gullible] people"

1984 successfully _vaccinated_ a lot of people and helped stop certain
diseases of the mind from spreading and causing more damage to civilization.

Like Jonas Salk and polio.

Although.. I saw Victoria Jackson on a Fox News clip once ranting about how
Barack Obama is a socialist and she mentioned how she had read 1984 multiple
times and therefore understood how the socialists work and how they are coming
to get her. I wonder what will happen in her brain when someone explains to
her that George Orwell was a socialist.

In other words it looks like some people are so dim that the vaccine can't
work on their minds.

Tangent: I also wonder what would happen to Sarah Palin's brain if someone
explained to her what a kibbutz is.

~~~
neutronicus
"1984 successfully _vaccinated_ a lot of people and helped stop certain
diseases of the mind from spreading and causing more damage to civilization."

You're still just coming up with synonyms for "got them to do what I want."

I'll thought experiment you back. If _1984_ were largely ignored, would you
still think it worth reading? You claim that this book influenced the behavior
of a world ripe for totalitarian domination. That's a big claim in and of
itself, but let's let it stand for the sake of the point I really want to
make.

Basically, you care about _1984_ from the perspective of its effect on a bunch
of people you don't respect (you think their "minds" are weak enough to need
"vaccination" against a "disease"). Even you are treating it basically as a
remedial text for political idiots. You don't even mention anything you got
out of reading _1984_.

So, if it weren't effective at convincing people you don't respect of your
viewpoint, would you care at all? Would this book be worth reading if you were
the only person ever to read it?

That last is my measure of quality, and _1984_ falls short - sure, it's an
important cultural phenomenon, but I could have reaped the benefits of the
cultural phenomenon without ever reading the book.

~~~
davidmathers
No no no no. It didn't occur to me that my words might be interpreted this
way:

 _people you don't respect_ \-- _you think their "minds" are weak enough to
need "vaccination" against a "disease"_ \-- _remedial text for political
idiots_

I respect (former) East Germans. I don't think they're idiots or have weak
minds, or need remedial texts or any kind of higher education or higher
intelligence. I don't think they're any different from West Germans. Same with
North Koreans and South Koreans. There's no such thing as a mind which is
naturally insusceptible to bad ideology. We all need inoculation.

 _Basically, you care about 1984 from the perspective of its effect_

Yes. Orwell fought with a gun in Spain as a member of the Workers' Party of
Marxist Unification. He was fighting with a pen when he wrote 1984. He was
more successful with the pen.

 _would you still think it worth reading?_

Dunno. I never claimed it worth reading. But it's short, to the point, and
concisely illustrates some important ideas. It might be worth reading just to
add "memory hole" to your vocabulary. On other hand maybe Milan Kundera is a
more entertaining choice. I love this Kundera quote: "The struggle of man
against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Whether any given book is worth reading seems very personal to me. I don't
have much of an opinion about it. I, personally, didn't love the book. But I
did love the movie.

~~~
Gormo
I think there's quite a distinction to be made between the people who did
their best to survive under the East German system and the people who
_actively participated in establishing and maintaining that system_.

Consider _1984_ as being targeted at those who would otherwise be influenced
by equally-simplistic totalitarian ideologies, and who might otherwise be led
to collaborate with the equivalent the Stasi in the belief that they were
doing good.

There was - and is - an unfortunately large population of such people, and I
can't find much fault in Orwell's intention to shrink its ranks.

------
andrewce
The schism between classicism and romanticism, as presented in "Zen", changed
the way I view the world. I've been slowly teaching myself to see both, and to
switch between those views at will, though it's occasionally unsettling to do
so.

------
pirsig_fan
It never ceases to amaze me how often technical people in general and computer
programmers in particular read this book and can't see the point, which is
that your values can't be deduced by logic.

~~~
unoti
Here are some thought provoking ideas for computer hackers that he discusses
at some length: * Is it a good idea or bad idea to listen to music while
working? Why? * Do machines have souls, and can they? * Why do machines
frustrate me so much? What happens when I get frustrated? What role does
frame-of-mind play in productivity, and how do you control it?

A lot of the negative comments I see here are perhaps expecting too much from
the book. It's not like God wrote it and provided all the answers to life.
(And even if that did happen, probably a lot of people would hate it.) It's
just a very interesting and thought provoking book.

And with regard to the comparisons to Ayn Rand, it's nowhere near that level.
The book is very short compared to what Ayn Rand writes. It's not preachy at
all like her stuff. It's also far more practical. Ayn Rand writes about how
civilization as a whole should live. This book is far more personal and
contemplative, and not preachy at all. Ayn Rand might talk for 45 pages about
how socialized medicine is a parasite on the productive people. Persig might
talk for 3 pages about how if you keep working on the machine when you feel
frustrated, you're just building your frustration into the machine and making
it part of it. Totally different in scale and practicality.

~~~
mista_x
How about a computer hacker break into Cuban internet users with the news with
what happened in Egypt.

------
snissn
Very wordy review of a very good book.

My favorite take-aways from the book are that 'Good is a noun' and the concept
that not all questions may actually be formed properly and thus may not
deserve an answer
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)#Cultural_referenc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_\(negative\)#Cultural_references)

------
crcarlson
I recommend this book to young engineers all of the time for the side messages
on debugging, motivation and quality.

When I run into burnout problems I often use his simple advice to get out of
slumps: usually) actively recharge with rest/sleep, when under the gun)
coffee.

------
briandoll
Lila: An Inquiry into Morals is Pirsig's second book which is described as the
defining work of the Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ).

I loved ZAMM, but Lila is a much better book and even more though-provoking.
I've read it 4 times through, and I still don't think I could write a complete
review of it.

So if you liked ZAMM, definitely pick up Lila.

~~~
tjic
I loved ZAMM, and have read it a few times (in college at age 20, then a
decade later at age 30, and then once more in my mid-30s).

I tried Lila once in college and found it muddled and self-congratulatory, and
gave up on it after just a few chapters.

------
kalak451
I had to read this as part of my Rhetoric class my freshman year of college. I
hated just about every minute of it, very hard to absorb, more than a big long
winded in places. It also didn't help that my TA for the class was convinced
that the book was written about him (not really, but every other class was a
discussion about how what was happening in the book was related to his life.)
However, attempting to deal with, understand, classify, define "quality" is
one of the few explicit activities I did for a college class that I spend any
time reflecting on today.

------
Gilpo
The cornerstone of originality within this book is how Pirsig introduces his
philosophy of Quality. Yet, if you read ZAMM carefully, he never defines this
term. Overall, a frustrating and thought-provoking read.

~~~
wiredfool
Well, that's sort of the point.

psedo-qq/ Quality is that which is good, but if you try to put your finger on
it, it sort of squishes out and you end up with empty platitudes and
tautologies. / (my apologies, it's been 10 years since I've read it, and my
copy isn't here)

He goes into it in the class, teaching it but refusing to define it, and one
level higher, does it with the book.

~~~
praptak
This is similar to the "quality without a name" as described by Christopher
Alexander. Btw, his seminal book on patterns is totally worth reading - the
GoF patterns seem bland and uninteresting in comparison.

------
john2x
I failed at my first attempt to read this. I'll have to try again someday.

~~~
juiceandjuice
I'm about halfway through, and it's taken 5 months to get there. Although I
got through the first section in a week or so.

------
chwahoo
ZAMM and the follow-on Lila are both worthwhile reads. However, I was
uncomfortable with Persig's (pervasive) discussion of insanity.

He defines insanity as, roughly, holding beliefs that differ widely from those
held by an overwhelming majority of society. There seems to be an explicit
avoidance of physical causes for mental illness to the point of rejecting the
idea that mental illness is an "illness" to be treated. His "insanity" is a
natural result of pursuing complex paths of thought to their logical end
(beyond where most people take them).

Can anyone shed light about the current (medical) take on mental illness and
whether it jives with what Persig has to say?

~~~
TWAndrews
I don't think his account ever claimed to be a factual, science-based analysis
of mental illness, but rather a subjective account from someone who is/was
mentally ill.

~~~
chwahoo
I'm not sure what you mean by that. A major theme in the books is reconciling
science with subjective experience, but he doesn't advocate doing so by
_ignoring_ factual things. I would have a hard time believing that he
intentionally treated mental illness that way.

------
pavelludiq
I loved this book when i read it. I liked it mostly because it was able to
explain to me what i already "knew" but couldn't explain. I now had the
vocabulary and a road map to figure myself out. Its not so much that the ideas
in the book were life changing, they were interesting to think about, but what
i got out of it is that the book sparked a process in my mind to turn myself
from a depressed cynical high-schooler, into a pragmatic adult, who enjoys his
work, his studies, and his art, yet is not blinded by idealism or plagued by
cynicism.

I guess its a lot about timing, had i read it at any other point in my life, i
might have not liked it.

------
mitko
I've read the book twice once at age of 17-ish and once at 22. I got very
different things from it each time. I don't think that I learned some specific
knowledge or skill from the book. Rather it provoked me to look differently on
many things that surround me. What I found works best for me is to read few
pages, select the most important thesis he is making (because he states a lot
of things all over) and to write a short essay on the topic. However, at some
point I got lazier, and the book became more narrative, so I switched to
reading the book.

------
davidmathers
There's a great portrait of hacker vs non-hacker mentalities which I think is
on pages 15 and 16. I just went to Google Books to see if I could pull a quote
from it but those 2 pages are missing.

~~~
tjic
Agreed; that's a choice bit. It was the first time I realized how sad and
constrained the world-views of non-hacker types were.

...and the discussion of pistons and shims also got me interested in
metalworking!

~~~
davidmathers
That's it. The bit about the shim is what I was specifically thinking of.

------
jvagner
i read this entire book outloud to my girlfriend in college. we loved it.

------
Herald_MJ
I like the big "works best on kindle" advert on the right, despite the fact
that ZAMM isn't available in Kindle (or any ebook) format.

------
antihero
Well I've ordered it.

------
klbarry
This book did not appear to have value for me when I attempted to read it.

~~~
neutronicus
I completely agree - I put it down in irritation after ~100 pages.

