Quality Reading

What I am is a heretic who’s recant­ed, and there­by in every­one’s eyes saved his soul. Every­one’s eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.

I sur­vive main­ly by pleas­ing oth­ers. You do that to get out. To get out you fig­ure out what they want you to say and then you say it with as much skill and orig­i­nal­i­ty as pos­si­ble and then, if they’re con­vinced, you get out. If I had­n’t turned on him I’d still be there, but he was true to what he believed right to the end. That’s the dif­fer­ence between us, and Chris knows it. And that’s the rea­son why some­times I feel he’s the real­i­ty and I’m the ghost.

Great stuff. This book is a reread for me. I picked it up some­time in my teens. The book mean­ders pleas­ant­ly across the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy, hit­ting some very crit­i­cal points as it jus­ti­fies the «insane» notion that there is a Qual­i­ty, or Virtue (I think the Taoists would call it Te) that pre­cedes dialec­tic. Pir­sig con­scious­ly res­ur­rects the Sophists and strikes out at the val­ues of a soci­ety ruled by pure reason.

I thought it beau­ti­ful the way that Pir­sig simul­ta­ne­ous­ly demon­satrat­ed the fal­la­cy and util­i­ty of dual­i­ty. He showed that a motor­cy­cle is made up not only of parts, but of sys­tems and sub­sys­tems that pro­vide inter­re­lat­ed func­tions. It’s impor­tant and nec­es­sary to see a gear’s rela­tion to the dri­ve­train, but a dri­ve­train is not an item that one can find at the auto­mo­tive parts store. These are arti­fi­cial bound­aries that allow us to encap­su­late cer­tain chains of events and see things func­tion­ing or mal­func­tion­ing. Dual­ism is hat­ed by those that love a val­ue­less life and espoused by those that see val­ues as lim­its. Very few peo­ple seem to see it as a use­ful and valu­able cre­ation of the human imagination.

And of course there are 10 kinds of peo­ple in the world, those who under­stand bina­ry arith­mat­ic and those who don’t.

Read­ing this book now feels almost as though I’m com­ing full cir­cle. When I first read it I did­n’t under­stand the fear of los­ing myself, only the fear of being seen as insane. Now that I’m try­ing very hard to redis­cov­er my own Qual­i­ty, after spend­ing so many years con­cerned only with what oth­ers think of me, I can see the way out of the trap that Pir­sig presents instead of see­ing the trap as a desir­able tech­nique. Say what they want you to say, or else face elec­troshock ther­a­py. Being six­teen and watch­ing friends get cart­ed off «to get the help they need» was enough to teach me the les­son that this book rebels against: Keep your mouth shut and for gods sake don’t let any­one find out what you real­ly are.

Read­ing ZATAOMM now I hear a dif­fer­ent les­son: you’ve wast­ed thir­ty-five years, don’t let the rest go to the dogs.

5 Replies to “Quality Reading”

  1. “there are 10 kinds of
    “there are 10 kinds of peo­ple ” reminds me of the joke about why pro­gram­mers have so much trou­ble dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between Christ­mas and Hal­loween. They know that Dec 25 = Oct 31.

    Dad

  2. I have a copy of Lila by
    I have a copy of Lila by Pir­sig which I haven’t found time to read yet. I may reread ZMM again first. ZMM is sub­ti­tled “An Inquiry into Val­ues.” Lila is “An Inquiry into Morals.” He has also co-authored “Lila’s Child, An Inquiry into Qual­i­ty” which has been panned pret­ty bad­ly. I have been look­ing for­ward to Lila as this time the jour­ney is on a sail­boat. How­ev­er, my rec­ol­lec­tion of ZMM was that Pir­sig real­ly did­n’t say as much as it sound­ed. He puts the words togeth­er beau­ti­ful­ly, though, and if one has­n’t stud­ied phi­los­o­phy you might think he is a bril­liant thinker. I think he is a great writer. Sort of the Carl Sagan of astronomy.

    Dad

  3. Of course, I meant “the Carl
    Of course, I meant “the Carl Sagan of phi­los­o­phy.” Lots of style but not nec­es­sar­i­ly rig­or­ous science.

    Dad

  4. Yeah, I knew that’s what you
    Yeah, I knew that’s what you meant.

    I think you’re right. What Pir­sig did with ZAMM was clar­i­fy and make palat­able some his­tor­i­cal ideas. He made some attempt to rec­on­cile some seem­ing­ly incom­pat­i­ble ideas and I think he made some valu­able con­jec­ture about “what was real­ly meant” but there was­n’t very much new there at all. As I wrote, I think he did a great job of illu­mi­nat­ing dual­ism. He also made the debate over non-Euclid­ean geom­e­try rel­e­vant, where I’d always found it to be academic.

  5. I just start­ed reread­ing
    I just start­ed reread­ing ZMM. I am enjoy­ing it a lot. I take issue with some of his rhetoric, though, such as claim­ing that the law of grav­i­ty did not exist until New­ton dis­cov­ered it. What held every­thing togeth­er before? And com­par­ing math­e­mat­ics to indi­an ghost spir­its???? Say­ing they are equal­ly real??? I am not argu­ing that the indi­ans did­n’t TRULY believe in spir­its, sim­ply that believ­ing in them does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make them real.

    Dad