Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I recently finished reading this book by Robert Pirsig and for most of the 420 pages, i really didn't know what the point was or what i was looking for. Still it was a good book and i would suggest it to anyone willing to take the time and put in the effort to understand a pretty deep and detailed piece of work. A few passages stuck out at me and i wanted to take the time to flesh them out a little further.The author speaks of gumption, an old, underused word which he defines as the desire to complete a task in the most quality way possible. He spends a portion of the book defining the different types of gumption traps, or in other words, the obstacles in the way of you completing a task in the most quality way possible

p. 315 - Anxiety, the next gumption trap is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Of this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from overmotivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle.

This particular anxiety trap struck a chord with me, especially of late. When i left my job, i had this grand -- yet obviously delusional -- idea that i would just sit on my laptop and write. I had so many ideas of things to say and topics to discuss when i was stuck in that cubicle that i felt the only thing i had to do was open up microsoft word and it would all pour out and pretty soon people would offer me large sums of money to continue gushing about any topic i felt like writing about. I obviously thought wrong.The thing about my life so far, is that i've realized i'm really only talented at one thing: writing. That and a quarter won't get me a cup of coffee anymore. You have to be a self-starter, you have to be driven and multi-task in a multitude of mediums. You have to be able to market yourself, you have to be confident that your stuff is good and that everyone else is missing out on something spectuacular by not reading what you have to say but you also have to be self depricating at the same time. Well, from what i've noticed lately, the only thing i know how to do worth a shit is write. And i haven't even been very good at that lately. I'm not working at it, i'm not sending out samples and clips, i'm not e-mailing my blog topics to other bloggers, i'm not even working at getting a job writing. At first i thought it was laziness. Then after reading Pirsig's book, it occured to me that it was almost entirely anxiety. It's pretty pathetic to talk about, and even worse to post online for my friends and family to see, but i'm honestly so petrified that i'm doing everything wrong, or that i'll fail when i try to strike out on my own, that i'm doing nothing instead. I have fallen into that gumption trap and it is keeping me from my dreams. It is wasting a lot of time too. Moving on.
I talk about needing to find an "enabler." Someone who is the a-type personality who makes plans and executes them. A partner like that would help me enact these ideas and philosophies and dreams i have. But that sounds more like a babysitter to me, and the bottom line is that eventually you have to man up, take a chance and get something done yourself. Otherwise you get to wallow in mediocrity your whole life. No thanks.

The author then talks about inner peace which is a peace that has no direct relationship to external circumstances.

P. 295 - I've sometimes thought this inner peace of mind, this quietness is similar to if not identical with the sort of calm you sometimes get when going fishing, which accounts for much of the popularity of this sport. Just to sit with the line in the water, not moving, not really thinking about anything, not really caring about anything either, seems to draw out the inner tensions and frustrations that have prevented you from solving problems you couldn't solve before and introduced ugliness and clumsiness into your actions and thoughts.

I don't think there is any real mystery about why i liked this passage, being a fisheman and all. I felt that inner peace on my last trip to Alaska and that is without a doubt why i needed to go. So much so that i quit in order to be able to go. I had hoped that it would follow me home and remain with me for a while but the stress of travelling and the typical nonesense associated with arriving home after 8 days with things to clean, bills to pay, etc. just thrashed that whole inner peace feeling that allows good thoughts and things to happen. Of course you don't need to go fishing to achieve that feeling. Some people can do it by reading or writing or sitting quietly, but i feel like we don't do it enough at all anymore. I don't just sit and eat breakfast quietly, i have the TV on. I don't just go running or work out with a clear head, alone with my own thoughts. I take my iPod. I don't travel with just a book in hand or with a pad of paper. I take my laptop and watch movies. And i honestly think that this attachment to constant entertainment is an extension of what i spoke about above. It's an anxiety blocker. If i don't have to be alone with my own thoughts then they can't scare me, i can push away the realities i don't want to face, i can fill my mind with the useless drivel of Meet the Fockers and ignore the truths i should be facing. I never looked at it as a crutch, but it's becoming more and more obvious to me that it is. Lately i've had a strong yearning to sell my plasma TV for 30 cents on the dollar, ditch my Cox bill forever and only maintain one, small TV with a DVD/VCR combo and only really watch a movie when it's raining or there is a riot outside. I've never felt like more of a slave to an appliance then i have with this TV. It's been nothing but trouble and expenditures and i'm addicted to it and it's keeping me from the potentially good things. I'll never part with my iPod but i feel that is in a somewhat different category. You can passively listen to music and actively be thinking about better things. Or you can actively listen to great music that will make you pursue quality when you are done listening to it. I could live with just my iPod. I could live with just my laptop too, because some pretty damn good things have come out of it, but it's a matter of discipline to keep it from being a distraction at the same time.

Then the author rides his motorcycle out of a big town -- relative to where they've been travelling -- and he talks about loneliness.

P. 356 - Lonely people back in town. I saw it in the supermarket and at the laundromat and when we checked out from the motel. These pickup campers through the redwoods, full of lonely retired people looking at trees on their way to look at the ocean. You catch it in the first fraction of a glance from a new face - that searching look - then it's gone.We see much more of this loneliness now. It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people are so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much.The explanation i suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed.There's this primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars. And people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what's immediately around them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely. You can see it in their faces. First the little flicker of searching, and then when they look at you, you're just a kind of an object. You don't count. You're not what they're looking for. You're not on TV.

This one doesn't need a whole lot of explanation and it's one of the few areas in the book where the author actually takes a tone of judgement about the current state of life. But it's not the TVs and the jets themselves that are to blame. It's the way we've been conditioned to think about those things in compartmentalized ways. I was talking to a friend yesterday who has been making friends on-line. Not a dating site or a myspace, but on Craigslist. I had no idea that type of thing even happened on that site, but miraculously, just as easily as you can sell a couch or a used car, you can find a friend. Someone to work out with, couples for other couples to go do to dinner with, someone to carpool with or form a book club with. When i asked why you couldn't just strike up a conversation with someone at the gym or at the bookstore, the friend said, "That's creepy." And i'm utterly shocked but i can't say that i'm surprised in the slightest. When i was younger and AOL was paid for by the hour, it was the weirdest and most foreign thing in the world to meet face-to-face someone that you had talked to online. In fact, it was downright scary. Now it has replaced face-to-face conversation as the "normal" way to meet people. It has gone so far that if someone strikes up a conversation with you at the grocery store, or a restaurant, then they are "creepy" but someone posting an ad for themself and you answering it and hanging out with them is the most normal and safe thing in the world. How did meeting online become more normal than shaking hands and saying nice to meet you? I'm not sure i'm ready to live in that world.

The author refers to college and the university enviroment as the Church of Reason.

P. 390 - The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.

Even though this book was written in 1975, this seems even more true today. Including the college comments, which i believe to be true, this seems to be symptomatic of other things in our culture. Shows like Surivor and Big Brother and other reality shows encourage contestants to band together against the strong contestants. In the business world, talent gets abused instead of cultivated and cheap distractions and overzealousness become rewarded. Politicians don't actually say what they believe, they say what keeps them in their jobs. Pander to the middle, and you'll always get paid.

If you've made it this far in the post, congratulations. That is all.