Zen & the Art of Robert Pirsig

Robert M. Pirsig is well known for his book 'Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. He is much less known for his second book: 'Lila'. I think I want to compare them both to better understand the author's intellectual evolution.

Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a philosophical novel where the author relates of an intellectual odyssey: the question of the Source of All Things. He comes to a metaphysics, wherein he puts Quality before matter, as the originator of all. Quality, he explains, cannot be defined since there is no higher abstraction that can be used for that. But it exists, he pleads, because you can imagine how our world, when quality is subtracted from it - when nobody would be able de distinguish quality from trash - would be total chaos.
He then speaks of a Romantic Quality, a 'before-thinking' quality and a Classic or 'after-thinking quality'. (It reminds me of Korzybski's structural differential where there is a level of perception before any abstract thoughts are formed.) Classic quality, says Pirsig, then leads to the whole system of Aristotelian dichotomies with which we have been educated: mind and matter, truth and falsehood, etc...
The story is told via a motorcycle road trip of the author, his son and two friends. The friends hate motorcycle maintenance but the author thinks it's very important and nice to do. The difference between the two seems to be that the author practices motorcycle maintenance in a Zen kind of way: with a sensitivity to what is going on that is impossible to put in words. His companions can't seem to get this 'feel'. Either way both he and his companions seem to enjoy the trip and that's what gets the author to think that both ways have Quality, but that it must be a different kind of quality. Classic and Romantic Quality. (I myself can subscribe to the feeling of Romantic Quality. I often repair stuff and afterwards I can't really tell how I did it. I can say what I did, but I can't somehow explain my approach other than 'I felt like trying this'.)

Phaedrus - an important character from the book - is Greek for (lone) wolf. Phaedrus is also a key dialogue by Socrates. Phaedrus is the name given to the other schizophrenic self of the author. The realization that Quality is the source of everything and that everything is not 'matter' or 'mind' drives the author insane and schizophrenic, because everyone around him is acting like mind or matter are the prime essences. He feels like a lone wolf with his ideas.

In the end the author seems to have gotten over it - after a controversial shock therapy - and wrote his book. It became a cult classic.

In his second book, 'Lila", he contemplates on this success and elaborates more on this 'Quality'. He dismisses the idea of classic and romantic quality but rather opts for the division into Static and Dynamic Quality. Static quality is in established value patterns (e.g. constitutional laws, social rules, physical laws...) and dynamic quality is some kind of 'changing force'. When someone is in touch with dynamic quality and discovers an improvement over his current situation, such discovery is subsequently 'latched' into static quality. (I've also written about this in my article Life with Assholes.)

Static quality - or the value patterns - is to be found on four distinct levels: physical/chemical, biological, social and intellectual. Physical value patterns are for example the law of gravity. For two bodies with a certain mass it has more value to move closer to each other. Biological value patterns, is a higher level of value patterns because it is organized to go beyond the patterns of the inferior level. So birds (biological) defy gravity (physical) when flying. With chemical/physical 'patterns', biology would not be possible. But biology is organized in such way that it uses the previous level to break free from it's laws. Biology is based on chemistry much like a word processor needs a CPU and some memory banks. But when you know how a memory chip functions you cannot use that knowledge to account for the existence of a word processor. The word processor is dependent on the previous level but it is separate since it cannot be explained by the previous level.
It's small wonder, Pirsig goes on, that life is carbon based. Carbon is very versatile element in group IV that can bind with many other elements and itself. It is a fragile reactive balance and 'quality' tipped that balance in favor of the development of biological patterns, cells, DNA,...
And so it goes on to social levels (A well organized society of people can achieve more than a club of loners) and intellectual levels of value patterns.

Pirsig shows that these separate levels of value patterns lead to a logic system of ethics and morals. For instance on the biological level the greatest good is the continuation of life, reproduction. But on the social level the greatest good is the continuation of the group coherence. It then follows that on a society level having sexual intercourse without the mate's consent (rape) is immoral. With animals that have not formed any kind of society sexual reproduction is unconstrained.

So anything threatening the cohesion of society is found 'evil' by this society. It is important to note that this works two ways: upwards to the intellectual level and downwards to the biological level. Galileo Galilei could show a zillion observations to anyone proving that earth had to revolve around the sun, but this would threaten the earth-centered society Galileo lived in. So he was at first expunged as a heretic. Although from a 'metaphysics of quality' point of view this was an immoral act: intellectual patterns ought to be better balanced with social patterns, not choked by social patterns.

Robert Pirsig illustrates all this: The 20th and 21st century are marked by the growing strength of the intellectual quality over social quality. Communism, intellectual control of the nation vs. Fascism, dominance of single society. The exploding scientific advancements. The ever increasing pluralism and individualism, people moving away from big social dinosaurs like the catholic church. (Although I've met very progressive Catholics with a very intellectual mindset!) The democrats vs. the conservatives in the US. Like a strong society needs healthy biological bodies to function, a strong intellect needs a stable and enabling society to function, so social patterns and institutions aren't bad or inferior. They're just another level.


Maybe fundamentalism is a social pattern and globalism is an intellectual pattern and they will have to be balanced sometime, somehow...
All in all these are two strange books. Maybe there is a flaw in there somewhere, but I couldn't put my finger on it. If you are intrigued by this, I think you should read them both to fully understand Robert Pirsig's point.

Subject-Predicate

I've read two books recently, explaining how human perception is distorted by the subject-predicate structure of Indo-European languages - like English, German, French, Dutch, Italian,... Now what is subject-predicate and how does it influence our percepetion? And how can you avoid errors induced by the underlying assumptions of that language structure?

If you talk about subjects and objects you tend to talk about actors and the object acted upon. So you assume, often too quickly, a one-way transaction. The actor acts upon the object and voila, that's it. But in many situations, this transaction is two-way! Very often the effects of the object acting on the actor are not negligible. Examples are in quantum physics, where it is impossible to know both the position and the velocity vector of an electron. Examples are in consumer research and questionnaires: often the people filling in a questionnaire think different about their answers after having answered the questions. Your survey is outdated right away!
- For reasons explained above, when thinking in well separated objects and subjects, you get the false impression that objectivity is always achievable. You can be relatively objective when evaluating other people's math problems. But problems arise when for instance you've written a long essay on a scientific problem. Because you've been working on it for so long, you've become attached to your work, you defend it. You're not really objective anymore, your world view is already skewed by the work you've done. Your own personal problem solving toolbox, accumulated trough the years dictates how you perceive puzzling situations. It's like Maslow's hammer: "When you have a hammer, all problems seem like nails." In the same way it is also difficult to tackle problems involving people. How can you be objective about a group of people that you interact with? How can fish in a tank be objective about the tank they're in?
- If you talk in objects and subjects you tend to single out individual cause and effect relations, or maybe you build chains of cause and effect relations. In contrast to this, the most fascinating phenomena are better described as open dynamic systems: systems with a multitude of interdependent variables of which the borders are ill defined. Chaos theory is a way of describing these open dynamic systems. Examples are: atmosphere, the solar system, plate tectonics, turbulent fluids, economies, and population growth.

[Side note: I've come to think that the nonexistence of pure subject-object relations is what Buddhists mean with the term 'karma': every action, even just watching, or thinking, has a multitude of effects that rebound sooner or later, much like in a dynamic system. I once read a Buddhist saying: "Karma means: there is no escape."]

Don't think so, maybe, pretty sure

Bruce Kodish and Suzan Presby have an interesting chapter in their book 'Drive yourself sane' with regard to truth and falsehood. They quote a story from the European undergound under Hitler, as written by Korzybski:

In a railroad compartment an American grandmother with her young and attractive granddaughter, a Rumanian officer and a Nazi officer were the only occupants. The train was passing trough a dark tunnel and all that was heard was a loud kiss and Vigorous slap.

Now ask yourself: what happened. On what assumptions are my conclusions based? How sure can I be of these assumptions? Note to yourself what your thoughts are.

After the train emerged from the tunnel, nobody spoke, but the grandmother was saying to herself, "What a fine girl I have raised. She will take care of herself. I am proud of her." The granddaughter was saying to herself, "Well, grandmother is old enough not to mind a little kiss. Besides, the fellows are nice. I'm surprised what a hard wallop grandmother has." The Nazi officer was meditating, "How clever the Rumanians are! They steal a kiss and have the other fellow slapped." The Rumanian officer was chuckling to himself, "How smart I am! I kissed my own hand and slapped the Nazi."

Now think again about your previous conclusions how sure were you and what right did you have to be so sure?

The GS idea here is that there is a complete scale from certainty to wild guess, not just a polar true and false. It is wiser to evaluate in multi-valued way instead of a two-valued way. Closest to certainty come observable facts like 'The tunnel was dark'. Closer to wild guess come statements of inference: 'Two persons kissed each other in the dark,' where you assume that a kiss is always between to persons. Most people would even assume that the kiss was between a male and a female person, which is an even wilder guess.

This insight has been very useful for me in project management. A thorough scrutinizing of my assumptions and inferences has led to many timely discoveries of project risks. So I try to avoid thoughts of absolute certainty in the new product development, since you need to make a lot of assumptions when discussing something that does not yet exist.
But avoiding certainty in project team meetings has caused great nervousness, stress and even hostility in some of my fellow team members! Why? In the team I have the role of an expert. People need to be able to trust me in my field of specialization. What specialist that avoids affirmations in his field of expertise can you really trust? How sure can you be the project will finish successfully without experts you can trust? Some people seem to have a hard time living with uncertainty. So my advice is: Watch out for them and be careful to reassure them without over promising!

Zen and quantum theory, chicken and egg

I came across this article in Wikipedia (link in title) about a book called 'The Tao of Physics'. The author writes that in an interview with Heisenberg, Heisenberg told him about his influences from eastern philosphy.
I had to think of a book I read, by Steve Hagen, "How the world can be the way it is", where the author illustrates Zen/Taoist truths with quantum physical examples. As if to say: "See, if even the latest science arrives at the same conclusions as age-old Zen, there must be truth in there."
I started to wonder: "What if quantum physics is just some clever statistical math, inspired by eastern philosophy? A clever approximation for measured results? What was first? The chicken or the egg? Tao proven by quantum physics or quantum physics inspired by the Tao?"

Apart from the examples in physics that Hagen shows us, his book is not a bad book by the way.

I think I want to read this 'Tao of Physics'. I also want to understand more about quantum mechanics, because I really know nothing about it.

Intension and extension

Nope, that’s no typo in the title. I’ve been reading more about General Semantics. Here’s another part of Korzybski’s theory.

I’ve just read a bit about what Korzybski calls ‘describing by extension vs. describing by intension’. If you look up intension and extension in the Merriam Webster, you find that they are synonym to connotation and denotation. Denotation and connotation are nicely compared in the dictionary:
Connotation means: ‘an essential property or group of properties of a thing named by a term in logic’
Denotation means ‘the totality of things to which a term is applicable especially in logic’.

I think Korzybski’s words are easyer to memorize. For an INtensional definition you look INside the thing you want to define for properties and higher order abstractions. For an EXtensional definition you look EXternally for other EXamples for description. I remember similar definitions from basic mathematics where real numbers are extensionally defined as Z = {0,1,-1,2,-2,3,-3,4,-4,5,-5,…}. Whereas you could define even numbers intensionally as ‘any real number multiplied by two’, referring to a property of even numbers.

Now that we understand extensional and intensional, let’s get to Korzybski’s point: in standard logic, in most situations, we tend to ask for definitions in an intensionial way. We ask for descriptions with higher order abstractions if someone tries to explain a (new) word. ‘Intension’ is not a bad way to think and relate in, but Korzybski points out a few dangers and short comings of intensional definitions.
-As explained in my first GS post, you cannot be sure that other people share the same higher order abstractions. E.g. you can define Polyethylene as ‘a thermoplastic produced by the direct polymerization of ethylene at high temperatures and pressures’ but if you don’t know anything about organic chemistry, you have no clue as to what polymerization or ethylene really are. Is ethylene bigger than a rabbit? What sound does polymerization make?
-You overlook properties of things falling outside the definition. E.g. you can define war as ‘conflict, between relatively large groups of people, which involves physical force inflicted by the use of weapons.’ This allows you talk about war over a nice cup of tea and make many assumptions or reach conclusions without ever knowing the emotion, the smell, the fear and the ugliness of real war.
-You allow for un-sane generalizations. E.g. If you really dislike a guy named Smith, and you define Smith as ‘the only guy I know who likes Jazz music’, you tend to start disliking guys who like Jazz music. And as a result you might even start disliking Jazz music, because you don’t want to be associated with Smith and his hobby’s! But if you realize that Jazz-lover(Smith1) is different from Jazz-lover(Smith2) you would be more open to Jazz music. And if you realize that Smith(today) is a different guy from Smith(yesterday) you have no reason to keep the grudge against him.
So intensional definitions are OK if you know what you are doing, but generally it is 'saner' to refer to an actual and specific experience or set of experiences (extensional).

This is pretty complex theory, but what’s the use of it? What I intend to do with it is this:
-When I want to explain something new I’ll try to let the other people actually experience what I’m trying to explain. If that’s not possible I’ll try to find a metaphor or an example referring to a shared experience.
-I will start to collect a whole set of samples and examples of things I frequently need to show or explain.
-If someone wants to explain something to me, I’ll insist on examples and specific cases. If possible I’ll try to experience these first-hand. I’ll experiment with his reasoning, “to get a better feeling for it.”