How did 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' (An enquiry into values) (ZAMM) end?

Hi em!

One thing to say straight off, there is an industry out there, devoted to Robert Pirsigs classic ZAMM, his second book 'Lila' and a huge following for something called the 'Metaphysics Of Quality' (MOQ) that derives from Pirsigs thoughts and writings.

So you em, and anyone else reading this, could simply peruse the Wikipedia page, go to the section on external links, and then happy browsing!

But thank you, this is my 4th reading and it feels like I didn't really properly read ZAMM over the first times.
I'm really enjoying reading it now, and it's a great challenge to have a go at accounting for the whole thing, as well as how it ended.

But I'm going to cheat. Here is the Wikipedia entry that's a synopsis.

"Structure[edit]

The book describes, in first person, a 17-day journey on his motorcycle from Minnesota to Northern California by the author (though he is not identified in the book) and his son Chris. They are joined for the first nine days of the trip by close friends John and Sylvia Sutherland, with whom they part ways in Montana. The trip is punctuated by numerous philosophical discussions, referred to as Chautauquas by the author, on topics including epistemology, ethical emotivism and the philosophy of science.

Many of these discussions are tied together by the story of the narrator's own past self, who is referred to in the third person as Phaedrus (after Plato's dialogue). Phaedrus, a teacher of creative and technical writing at a small college, became engrossed in the question of what defines good writing, and what in general defines good, or "Quality". His philosophical investigations eventually drove him insane, and he was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy which permanently changed his personality.

Towards the end of the book, Phaedrus's personality begins to re-emerge and the narrator is reconciled with his past."

So what is the ending about, may depend on an understanding of  the whole book, in this case, that is, my understanding! Or yours too?
If it's just me, you are going to get a biased rendering, but I'm sure you knew that!

So how to proceed?

I did what I usually do, to anal retentively, count the Parts, Sections and Pages. Here's the report to that first approach.

ZAMM has four parts containing 32 sections.
Part I has seven sections (1 to 7),
Part II  -eight sections (8 to 15)
Part III  -eleven sections (16 to 26)
and the final Part IV  -six sections (27 to 32).

I am currently zooming in on various sections to get a sense of the part it's contained in. But I think the the whole thing may need re-reading (Yay!)

For example, section 29 in the final part, has the longest (most pages) and the most meatiest bit on classical philosophy, and how it pertains to his obsessional quest for 'Quality'.

The book length is about 396 pages of standard paper back length.

At one level the book is simply about

'Father and Son on the road in a shattering odyssey of self discovery'

But also

'...The trip is punctuated by numerous philosophical discussions, referred to as Chautauquas by the author, on topics including epistemology, ethical emotivism and the philosophy of science.'

And also

'...became engrossed in the question of what defines good writing, and what in general defines good, or "Quality'

So all the things I've bolded above are the 'wtf's, that could be chewed upon, and are are floating waypoints along a chautauqua odyssey, but essentially, from the beginning to the end it is Chris and his Father on a motorbike.


What the ending IS, is about is also the book as a whole, but essentially it is (and inspite of Chris nearly going mad with despair over his father's mental state) - a good resolution that is plucked from a drifting disaster.

The other 'things' are more complex and may not have endings so much as standing questions which are also persued and mined in various platforms around the Pirsig industry.

I have on order a book that explains more the philosophy in ZAMM.

So em, looks like I've got to re-read the whole book. and the one to come. Care to join me?!

[To be continued]

Illicit Love on Twitter. Is it really Twitter's fault?

When I was 12, my Mum decided to give me the ‘facts of life’ –Yes! the ‘facts’. After the mechanical details she added an extraordinary admonishment ‘if a woman or a girl asks you to do this with her, you say No!’

Dad just drew up his newspaper, so no comment from him, so I checked out these revelations of the mechanics of sex at school, some disputed my Mum’s account in favour of the bellybutton hypothesis, but that did not hold for long, and a consensus soon settled around the conclusion- ‘Yes you put your willie into her fanny –but then what?’

When I told my friends my Mum’s ethical rider, they looked astonished ‘what is the point then if you’re not supposed to do it’. But it stuck and it wasn’t until I was 22 and away from the UK in a kibbutz in Israel, that an uncomplicated Swiss female, showed me how the mechanics actually worked and insisted that we didn’t have to be married to do this.

That was it; I was a fan of penetrative sex with a woman, regardless of marital status. I was also a fan of European women, it seemed such a direct approach hadn’t crossed the channel, imagine my surprise then, when I returned home a year later to discover that a revolution seemed to have occurred. British girls were now up for it as well.

Or was it my mind had part-cemented Mum’s declaration; her contractual demand for me to refuse sex, only actually applied in the UK? 

Once Eros was tasted abroad, Mum’s ethics were put aside. It was too damn pleasurable, it was in fact bloody fantastic; I was a committed fan of lustful relations with women.

And there were those I fell in love with, and of those, some would, some wouldn't. The beautiful girlfriend I had before I went to Israel, kicked me out of bed when I tried to fondle her breasts ‘How dare you!!’ Kissing and cuddling through the night in the same bed was fine, in fact demanded, but none of the dirty stuff. Not until at least we were engaged.

Customs and practice, women looking after their reproductive rights, preserving their virginity for the one they will eventually marry –all reasonable positions. After all, we men are only after one thing, but some are romantics, and will not push it, (so to speak), but most would dump their newly acquired girlfriends, if they didn't put out.

As I went through my twenties, love, romance and sex were the main contemplations, the main desires, the most constant obsession, how to get it, then how to keep it, without being ‘tied down’. But my first marriage happened anyway, although helpfully, neither of us wanted kids, we had both strayed, had separate social lives in our separate social work social networks. When she left, I was astonished to learn that in the ten years we’d managed to stay together she’d had six affairs to my one. Damn.

My second marriage proved better in many ways, the sex was far better, we had kids, we stayed faithful to each other, we felt our love deeply, and we were soul mates. But even the most promising ‘happy ever afters’ have to deal with the vicissitudes of a long term relationship. Twenty two years in and I discovered Twitter, and through that I had in fact, unsown oats. There was a need, (or just a want?)  -To have an extra- marital affair. But while I had an inner block to do that in reality, Twitter afforded the opportunity to do this in the virtual, at a distance of thousands of miles, as well as with local married and single women.

So on Twitter, I had become a minor ‘Don Juan’, a serial adulterer, having only emotional affairs in the first year, then subsequently sext, phone sex, involving several relationships running concurrently. My mother’s admonition was so dead and buried it had been transported to the centre of the Earth, and held there with gravitational certainty, that no matter the ‘wrongness’ of these affairs, my Twitter partners in sin, had also put aside any moral concerns, whether married or single they wanted what I wanted, romance, love and sex.

But in fact most on Twitter have been lovely friendships, an exchange of minds, of poetry, a knowing without saying that this was enough. Only rarely the romance, that was a crushness, falling into the pit of obsessional ‘love’ with all its bitter sweet, helter- skelter, red- hot, green jealousy, and exhausting hours of obsessing the relationship.

My wife found out about an important affair I was having, but then I fell into a depression, and came out to find that she too had taken my lead, but on a different media platform (yeah, Facebook). It prompted us to look at our marriage, realise that in our relentless life pattern of work and child rearing we had both changed. The unspoken contract had needed to be spoken anew. And so we have.

Perhaps my case is a lucky one, my partner and I have stayed together when many divorces and separations have been blamed on social media. Twitter followers have flown thousands of miles to meet their crushes, in some places having an affair on twitter is grounds for divorce, in ‘Second Life’ the story of the woman that divorced her husband when discovering his secret bigamous life there.

‘Are we humans or are we dancers…?’

There is the dark side of Twitter.

I once had a crush on someone from somewhere in mid USA. An ex- soldier, she was hard and finally brutal in her rejection of me, but then her background her apparent emotional chaos, her promise to evict her boyfriend should I get over there, then finally exiting abruptly from Twitter proclaiming ‘You’re not my type, I’ve discovered’

Her life? Barely scratched the surface, but through her I discovered that every year, 25,000 American women soldiers are sexually abused, with little apparent redress on their abusers. In the UK recently the case of a woman military police corporeal, who killed herself when her two attackers were never prosecuted.

The ugly dark side of Twitter, fucktards abuse DM access, harass, even attempt to blackmail on the basis of images shared in good faith. Pose as young handsomes when they are anything but, some posing as women, some women as men. Perhaps Twitter should come with a warning, the worst of men here, comingle with the best, so discern and discriminate, because it’s very difficult to get the slimeballs to cease and desist.

Are we men the problem?

War often brings out the worst in men, some ‘ordinary’ chaps will take the opportunity to rape, presumably because they can get away with it, or that the effect of combat shatters what moral control, that only works in a peace time setting. Men are dangerous. We are. We start wars, we visit hideous punishments on each other, also on women children, sick and older civilians.

Twitter can be dangerous. Here are un reconstructed monsters, like pirates, they raid, hurt and abuse, with impunity it seems.

And also it can be wonderful. In the three years, I’ve had my emotions hammered formed charmed, worked like raw steel on an anvil. In a very real sense, having serial crush affairs on Twitter, has and still is like being in an emotional gymnasium.

But friendships can turn into love, or they can happily remain in a friendship zone. One of the dyad may want to change the deal toward hotter transactions or remain unrequited. I know, of one example where two twitter accounts, met here, then married in real life.

Has social media, by increasing such opportunities, corrupted people, undermined social morals, promoted such amorous behaviours that otherwise wouldn’t be performed in real life?

Durkheim found that migrants coming from the country to Paris, changed their faith abruptly at the train station –a case of –

‘how you gonna keep them down on the farm, now that they’ve seen Paris?’

Substitute Paris for Social media, and there you have it.

“They fuck you up your Mum and Dad” (Phillip Larkin), at least mine taught and modelled me an non-abusive loving relationship, they never strayed, they got bored with each other, but when Dad got ill with cancer they renewed their closeness, Mum never recovered his passing, but found joy in mine and my sister’s children.

But I was never like them. I lusted and flirted, while refraining from physical affairs, I dreamt of them. I have burnt throughout my life, whether single or married, the desire to have as much sex as possible, but even now from her grave my mother’s admonition (say No!) has force over my libido, but in some sort of virtual sexual sublimation, Twitter has helped me side step that.

There is no guarantee of anything, but I guess if my partner and I can navigate the opportunities to explore our promiscuous sides, then all is not lost, and what is avoided is the end of our relationship from extreme boredom and frustration, avoiding a life together in a quiet desperation, something of the lot of my Folks, but I choose different. Sorry Mum, maybe you would have liked Twitter too? Forgive your son his difference..

A Little Thing Called Love

A Little Thing Called Love. Actually quite a big thing, so big we don't see it so much as suffer and enjoy the emotion, experience as commonplace and yet keenly feel it's absence.

Most music is devoted to it, most relationships are founded on it, it is the definition of the ultimate happiness, and the destroyer of it. Is that all there's need to be said?

CP Snow's 'The Four Loves' made some smooth reading suggesting a spectrum from Friendship to Love, plus a prosaic form and an impossible one. I want to explore CPS's writing, but now I partly set the table and ask;-

Is twitter love any different from that in actual life?

In my case yes. In actual life I was, and am, monogamous, have had no affairs, but in twitter I'm a poly-amorous, serial womanizing, cheating, veteran flirt and crush operator.

How can this be?

In following posts, I shall explore this for the sake of my own sanity, and long-standing curiosity and interest.

I hope there will be others of you out there who will chime to this topic, and find in my treatment of it some value and and may even be moved to share and contribute!