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The only expert he cites is Phaedrus....who turns out to be himself! Before a nervous breakdown! He talks about discovering the beautiful power of Phaedrus' logic and writing. And it's himself, all along. Very annoying. 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 characteristic of quality.”
They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they’re doing, but more than this – there’s a kind of inner peace of mind that isn’t contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there’s no leader and no follower. The material and the craftsman’s thoughts change together in a progression of smooth, even changes until his mind is at rest at the exact instant the material is right.” If the machine produces tranquility, it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.” Now, as to the philosophy behind the book. Pirsig offers a critical view on the western way of coping with reality (the divide between object and subject, the rational method to dissect reality, etc). Nothing really new, here. Plato and Aristotle are his culprits and the Greek sofists (of whom we know practically nothing) are his heroes, which is a very strange reading of the classics. Pirsig (or better, the mysterious alter ego Phaedrus) introduces a third way of coping with reality, next to the classical and romantic way, by focussing on the notion of "Quality". Unfortunately, he does not succeed in making clear what he means by this. He refers to "excellence", "thoughtfulness", and "accuracy", all very ambiguous notions. Apparantly, he opens up to the eastern way of coping with reality. The word "Zen" in the title of the book seems to confirm that, but in reality, there's is only one short piece in the book, with a citation of Lao Tse. Worse, it's not even well-written. I cannot recall a single lyrically memorable passage in the entire book. The dialogue sections, apart from being wooden, stodgy, and vacant of life, are completely disposable as mere segues cutting up the oration. And the way Pirsig uses the stuffy, hidebound university professor to validate his supposedly earth-shaking ideas is childishly bogus. Perhaps Pirsig has an axe to grind, or perhaps his opinion of himself is higher than it should be.
The Vincent in the Barn
When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.” An experiment is a failure only when it also fails adequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don’t prove anything one way or another.” Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.” Inspirational Quotes e. Impatience (results from an “underestimation of the amount of time the job will take” p. 317)—allow yourself plenty of time to finish the job, break the job down into smaller goals. If, like Robert Pirsig and me, you've found on your rude awakening from the Sleep of Innocence down many a subtle corridor of life's nightmare "to an overwhelming conclusion," that living is not at all what it once seemed, this Incredible Handbook will be Required Reading for you.
In a 1974 interview with National Public Radio, Pirsig stated that the book took him four years to write. During two of these years, Pirsig continued working at his job of writing computer manuals. This caused him to fall into an unorthodox schedule, waking up very early and writing Zen from 2 a.m. until 6 a.m., then eating and going to his day job. He would sleep during his lunch break and then go to bed around 6 in the evening. Pirsig joked that his co-workers noticed that he was "a lot less perky" than everyone else. [4] Themes [ edit ] Philosophical content [ edit ] But what’s happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we’re getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought – occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like – because they feel the inadequacy of classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.” Creative energy is “gumption” or enthusiasm ( enthousiasmos means literally “filled with theos” or God—appropriate since God is the inspiration of creativity). Kidadl is independent and to make our service free to you the reader we are supported by advertising.It's my opinion that ZAMM is well-known among pseudo-intellectuals who pretend to have discovered something profound in it. But we must be honest in recognizing that not all philosophy is profound. Some of it is deeply insightful and life-affirming, while some portion of it is poofy and, yes, low on quality. Period piece or not, this is just bad philosophy. Col seguito uscito ventisette anni dopo non ho voluto ritentare: anche perché da quel che ho capito nel secondo la moto è scomparsa, anche solo come scusa. Ma è rimasta la filosofia. Tanta ( Lila: un’indagine sulla morale). Through his real-life experiences of repairing his motorcycle, Robert M. Pirsig explains how fixing a motorcycle isn't different from real experience. For real improvements, you need to repair all broken aspects of your life. Here are quotes by Robert M. Pirsig.
What shortens the life-span of the existing truth is the volume of hypotheses offered to replace it; the more the hypotheses, the shorter the time span of the truth.” There is an extended analogy between the state of mind of Pirsig as he tunes and tweaks his motorcycle and his concept of quality as the leading edge of a train in time. I always found it helpful to recall and think about. At times, I wondered why the author didn't write more about his son. Why not write passionately about the other people on the trip? Why did the author dwell so much on Phaedrus, this other self that had been destroyed? Of course, that question is important for his son's sake -- understanding his own madness might get him closer to understanding what's happening with his son. But then you realize that there is something with the act of philosophy itself that might be wrong. That the author must embrace another "quality" or risk being destroyed. I have never heard of Krugman before, but he’s billed as “Hollywood’s go-to riding guru,” so I guess celebrities trust him, for whatever that is worth. Looking through this book, it’s definitely aimed at noobs, not so much for experienced riders. If you know the basics, you should invest in a copy of something like Twist of the Wrist or Proficient Motorcycling or one of a dozen other books that teaches advanced techniques. However, I think even veteran motorcyclists will enjoy looking through the book (before wrapping it up for their nephew for Christmas?). My first bike was a 2006 Triumph that I built myself, which won lots of awards,” he says. “My second was a 1961 Matchless that was my grandfather’s, then it went to my uncle and then it got passed to me.Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a non-thinking process.” The main story. It's a story about the narrator (Pirsig himself) and his son, Chris, on a motorcycle journey across the country with some friends. Chris is 11 or 12 and mostly just annoying, but the interactions between Pirsig and his son just make me think that Pirsig is a bad father. He always seems angry at Chris for no particular reason and Chris seems to cry a lot due to it. I wonder what Chris thought when he read this book. And it's no wonder to me that the guy's wife left him shortly after it was published (Wikipedia: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_P...]).
At the time of its publication, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in his book review for The New York Times, wrote,
Harley-Davidson
What I have found in the years of figuring out why programs or machines don't work, and fixing them, is that really very little in life and the universe is well-understood. We have this large mental construct of scientific understanding, and it's indeed impressive. We can cure typhoid now and build bridges that stay up (conscious irony). But even in the areas that we would like to think are very well known, and neat and clear, there is so much that isn't understood. Otherwise, why would these questions come up continually? Why doesn't this program work? Why is my pulper feed system not working the way we expected? Why did my motorcycle engine run so badly in the mountains? What made this bridge suddenly collapse during rush hour? When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things.” I kept thinking that Roberts (the author of Shantaram) and Pirsig would get on really well. They could sit in cafes in foreign parts swapping tales of derring-do, drugs and their fascinating insights whilst waiting for an audience to join them. That's a bit mean-spirited as Pirsig is a great deal more appealing as an author and person than the somewhat sleazy Roberts, but I think you get what I mean. And I will say that it's quite readable, the travel descriptions are very well done, the characters, apart from the hero, are in general interesting but... I still couldn't get into it.
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