It took me about 3 months to get through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM) in fits and starts but I found it a mostly enjoyable experience.
I understand why ZAMM falls flat as a philosophical text, and probably is tedious even as a pop-philosophy book. I get why that r/philosophy thinks of it as utter garbage. The book is overwrought and sometimes indexes itself heavily on academic discourse without much of a heads up. Still, there’s something about the way it is written, the worldview it presents, and the unique combination of metaphors it uses that materialized a sort of animating spirit in it for me.
Pirsig's takes in the book feel like the philosophy of a malfunctioning mind. It’s something I deeply relate to, and have spent a lot of time pondering on. I don't think I can write a proper review or critique, so intead here are some of my scattered and mostly unedited notes.
Much of this book is spent on studying the concept of “Quality” through a variety of lenses. Philosophical underpinnings aside, what Pirsig refers to as quality feels very familiar. Contemporary parlance around vibes and vibe-check are quite close cousins to this idea. We know intuitively that the feeling of deep resonance with something is not necessarily a result of its sophistication, or simplicity, history, maker, or anything. It is not a function of the thing itself – what resonates with you might not resonate with someone else; we all have favorite artists that nobody seems to get. Nor is it a function of the beholder - we frequently fall in and out of love with things, experiences and people.
Pirsig spends a lot of time detangling Quality from subject/object and intellectual/romantic dichotomies. He presents it as a precognitive experience of deep-connection that offers us a momentary peek into the oneness of everything. He suggests that all descriptions and explanations of Quality are inherently post-hoc, and hence a lossy representation of what it really is. I was reminded of Jonathan Haidt’s definitions around the conscious and unconscious mind while reading this book – specifically the "elephant and rider" analogy of how the unconscious does what it wants, often outside the bounds of cognition, and the conscious mind usually is left to find intellectual explanations and justifications for it after the fact.
The way Pirsing describes “Quality Hits” is also deeply relatable. I have seen several musicians and artists describe their artistic process as the search for a sort of “drug-like hit”. I have felt it myself. Phrases like “finding a way in” often get thrown around. Every artist/writer/researcher that has fumbled around for days and weeks before encountering something deeply resonant knows what this is. From personal experience, I can tell that this moment of deep-resonance is incredibly nourishing, and it’s easy to last on one for months.
As an aside, the idea of a Quality Hit also seemed incredibly similar to what Rosa Menkman alludes to in Glitch Momentum while she describes glitch as “an aesthetic event that alters the conditions of perception”.
“A glitch is not just a bug, error or artifact, but an unstable moment, a catalyst for discourse.”
In this, one could reframe glitches as potential vehicles for quality hits that can bypass our existing definitions of aesthetics and beauty while still offering something deeply resonant in a way that cannot be explained using available vocabulary.
I mentioned earlier about Quality presented as a peek into the oneness of the observer and the world. In that, I’m also reminded of “Tat tvam asi” and the idea of Atman–Brahman unity from the Upanishads, a concept that almost too conveniently parallels the dissolution of subject-object dichotomy. In the book, Pirsig gets pretty close to similar comparisons:
“Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions…the Quality which Phaedrus was teaching is the same as the Dharma of the Hindus, the Tao of Lao Tzu, the Areté of the early Greeks.”
The latter sections of the book explore “gumption” as a trait that aids in the quest for Quality. It then goes on to talk about “gumption traps”; ways in which one can find themselves utterly devoid of motivation to keep going at something that was once entrancing. One such gumption trap is “value-rigidity”.
Pirsig defines value-rigidity as the tendency to hold on to a certain set or system of values well beyond their context to the point where they no longer serve you. Often this leads you into strange cul-de-sacs and deadlocks in your project (or life), and the only way to get out is to retrace your steps, and briefly suspend your values while looking for the next step.
In a sense, value-rigidity can be thought of as a trauma-response. The source of value-rigidity often is a sort of traumatic (or just formative?) experience where adopting that value system was helpful.
What is it about calling it value-rigidity that feels better than calling it a trauma-response? Value-rigid is an adjective with a clear opposite: value-flexible. So if you don't want to be value-rigid, the alternative is fairly obvious. Though that's a lo-fi and binary definition, it opens the door to something actionable.
"Trauma-response" in comparison feels like an all-encompassing, monolithic idea. In theory, anything can be viewed as a trauma response without sufficiently defining what “trauma” and “response” really mean. "Don't succumb to trauma response" is a complex and negated instruction that's not very effective. "Be value flexible" is relatively easier to follow.
Is that it? There's also something else about the vibe.
I like the implication that there are many value systems out there with varying degrees of appropriateness to any given context – and that it's useful to be able to pick and choose. There is a certain healthy detachment implied in that way of thinking. "Trauma" feels more oppressive as a word, and suggests that in order to recover, you have to force yourself to do something that doesn't make sense. There is an inherent absurdity to it.
Outgrowing trauma response is also a call to abandon a very sensible (and historically useful) behavior without readily suggesting the alternative – a sort of blindsided behavior emigration. Value-flexibility focuses on logistics of the move.
Value-flexibility feels like something to strive towards. Vaguely encouraging. It doesn't promise a destination or an escape, but rather reveals a map of traversable paths connecting various value systems. Should the previous value become relevant again, value-flexibility accounts for going back to what served in the original "trauma" context. I like that better.
I do worry that value-flexibility on my part can be misinterpreted by others, and that misinterpretation will affect me. I personally know a lot of people that are quick to mistake value-flexibility for a lack of values altogether.
I’m just shy of a decade of living in the US, and am grappling with my relationship with this place. The question feels like a fresh lens through which to look at it: Does America have quality? I want to say yes. But where is it?
Contrary to what I used to think, it's not in the cool art, hip fashion or the all-pervasive witty and posh marketing material. Once you spend enough time in culture, the art feels far more pedestrian and repetitive than inventive or trailblazing. It’s certainly not in the tech either – at least not anymore. Consumer tech for the most part has also turned into drab bits of metal and plastic with a hyperfocus on utility, along with drabness brought on elsewhere by late-stage capitalism.
It’s not in the architecture. The gentrification of charming urban environments, and other sterile downtown public projects with unimaginative sculptures, overly playful fonts, astroturf and brightly-colored benches clearly do not have quality. Nor do the big box stores, highways or the suburbs. There is no Quality in Katy Interchange or Times Square, and nor is it in a warehouse club in Bushwick.
I believe a reliable source of quality hit is from from nature in this country – from the national parks and the hiking trails. This is something Pirsig very unsubtly hints in ZAMM; the book is stitched together via an overarching narrative of a motorcycle trip through the American west. There is Quality in the wide and massive expanse that you can take in on a drive through the prairies, the west coast beaches, the rocky mountains and the desert basins of Nevada.
You can also find quality in friends’ cozy houses, parties where people are open and friendly, in quiet neighborhood parks and coffee shops. Quality exists in bodegas guarded by cats, and steam rising from manholes. There is Quality in the diners, ranches and campgrounds. I’ve a lot more to say on this topic, and will write in more detail someday soon.
I must warn that this section is wacky.
I began reading There Is No Antimemetics Division (TINAD) almost immediately after ZAMM, and this seems to have had an effect on me. As I feel my thoughts and tenuous understandings around “quality” slowly slipping away, I begin to wonder if this is the kind of thing that TINAD talks about. So please indulge me with this weird take that ZAMM is in fact an adventure about Quality as a stubborn antimeme. I should perhaps file an SCP entry on it.
ZAMM in a way feels like an episode of TINAD – Quality is an antimeme so powerful that it has an adverse and profound psychological effect on Pirsig. He’s a character that has forgotten parts of himself, and is desperately trying to piece it together along with the ideas that the past self studied. This is very much in line with what someone from the Antimemetics division would do without the aid of powerful mnestics.
The final pages of ZAMM, which show the subtle morphing of the narrator back into Phaedrus as he regains an understanding of Quality, and its place in the philosophical framework. It suggests the same kind of cyclical warfare between humans and antimeme that TINAD goes to great lengths in illustrating.
I’ve rarely mashed two books together in my head, but the subject matter and abstractness of these two reinforce a suspicion I've had forever: You don't go mad from confronting the incomprehensible. You go mad from very briefly comprehending it, and then losing your grip. It’s deeply maddening for something deeply unfamiliar to make sense once, briefly, and never again while you continue living with a fleeting memory of some of the details and are unable to coherently explain it to anybody else. Quality feels like one of those things.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to reading Nadia Asparouhova’s new book on Antimemetics whenever that arrives.