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748a870
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I make some jokes about it, but they're not funny and just add to the depression.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b44aff1
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It's sometimes argued that there's no real progress; that a civilization that kills multitudes in mass warfare, that pollutes the land and oceans with ever larger quantities of debris, that destroys the dignity of individuals by subjecting them to a forced mechanized existence can hardly be called an advance over the simpler hunting and gathering and agricultural existence of prehistoric times. But this argument, though romantically appeali..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1573764
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What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question "What is best?,"
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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304a927
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Zen is the "spirit of the valley," not the mountaintop."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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71413de
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And what is written well and what is written badly...need we ask Lysias or any other poet or orator who ever wrote or will write either a political or other work, in meter or out of meter, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?" What is good, PhEdrus, and what is not good...need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"
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Robert M Pirsig |
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59579e2
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do what is "reasonable" even when it isn't any good."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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44635ab
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Chris asks, "What are you going to stick to?" "Mah guns, boy, mah guns," I tell him. "That's the Code of the West."
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montana
wild-west
guns
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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e7f2a25
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Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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67c7db1
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The cause of our current social crises, he would have said, is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself. And until this genetic defect is cleared, the crises will continue. Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant th..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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7788234
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It's a problem of our time. The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them has to forego closeness with the people around him.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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569e13d
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I was an outsider who seemed more interested in attacking what was being taught than learning from it.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3342850
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A photograph can show a physical image in which time is static, and a mirror can show a physical image in which time is dynamic, but I think that what he saw on the mountain was another kind of image altogether which was not physical and did not exist in time at all.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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617ede5
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Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that for huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, i..
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philosophy
modern-problems
american-society
american-culture
food-for-thought
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6bfb23a
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To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting. Drifting is what one does when looking at lateral truth.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9bdbc40
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The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. "Art" when it is opposed to "Science" is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8392dbe
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The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws--which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d9003be
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There is a classic esthetic which romantics often miss because of its subtlety. The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos and make the unknown known.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5d73c22
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Fed'r se otkloni ot ut'pkaniia p't, kogato v rezultat na laboratorniia si opit zapochna da se interesuva ot khipotezite kato s'shchnost sami po sebe si. Toi be zabeliazval otnovo i otnovo, che onova, koeto mozhe da izglezhda nai-trudnata chast ot nauchnata rabota -- izmislianeto na khipotezi, -- neizmenno se okazva nai-lesnata. Kato che akt't na tochnoto po forma i iasno zapisvane na vsichko gi podskazva. Kakto si proveriava khipoteza nomer..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3911623
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It's the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5bf8ece
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Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that for huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c974590
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The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself,
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ad32780
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May, will you please, kindly DIG it," he remembered one of them saying, "and hold up on all those wonderful seven-dollar questions? If you got to ask what IS it all the time, you'll never get time to KNOW."
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groovy
quality
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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7faeec5
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But until then, and right now, the sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there's a whole day ahead of us, we're almost to the mountains, it's a good day to be alive. It's this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes.
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high-altitude
i-love-montana
montana
mountains
zen
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1e697c7
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You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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e057214
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To the ocean. That sounds right. Where the waves roll in slowly and there's always a roar and you can't fall anywhere. You're already there.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0d25451
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Can I have a motorcycle when I get old enough?" "If you take care of it." "What do you have to do?" "Lot's of things. You've been watching me." "Will you show me all of them?" "Sure." "Is it hard?" "Not if you have the right attitudes. It's having the right attitudes that's hard." "Oh." After a while I see he is sitting down again. Then he says, "Dad?" "What?" "Will I have the right attitudes?" "I think so," I say. "I don't think that will ..
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motorcycles
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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4e1fe7a
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After a while he says, "Do you believe in ghosts?" "No," I say. "Why not?" "Because they are un-sci-en-ti-fic." The way I say this makes John smile. "They contain no matter," I continue, "and have no energy and therefore, according to the laws of science, do not exist except in people's minds." The whiskey, the fatigue and the wind in the trees start mixing in my mind. "Of course," I add, "the laws of science contain no matter and have no e..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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4661957
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There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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344581c
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Now anybody can be "kind." And everybody's supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn't help. Now it's just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class."
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kindness
philosophy
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9b9ce8f
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preintellectual awareness. The subliminal self, Poincare said, looks at a large number of solutions to a problem, but only the interesting ones break into the domain of consciousness.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d1143a3
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Mathematical solutions are selected by the subliminal self on the basis of "mathematical beauty," of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric elegance."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6cbd8a7
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I tell him getting stuck is the commonest trouble of all. Usually, I say, your mind gets stuck when you're trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to com. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is separate out the things and do them one at a time. You're trying to think of what to and what to say at the same time and that's too hard. So separate them out. Just make a list of al..
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writing
writing-process
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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df5d566
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Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. This allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being conte..
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religion
religious-paths
philosophy-of-religion
mountains
zen
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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52bbd3b
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When you have mountains in the distance or even hills, you have space.
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nature
mountains
space
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a24afe8
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Overall goals must be scaled down in importance and immediate goals must be scaled up.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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cdebb7a
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Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything--from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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843470d
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Pretty mountains, pretty river, bumpy but pleasant tar road... old buildings, old people on a front porch... strange how old, obsolete buildings and plants and mills, the technology of fifty and a hundred years ago, always seem to look so much better than the new stuff.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6579703
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One deep breath makes me ready for the next one and then the next one and with each deep breath I feel a little readier until I jump out of bed and pull up the shade
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c3282c1
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You've got to live right too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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fc3f023
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I've said you can actually this fusion in skilled mechanics and machinists of a certain sort, and you can see it in the work they do. To say that they are not artists is to misunderstand the nature of art. 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..
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creating
philosophy
craftsmanship
manufacturing
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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da176d3
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If one person complains he just makes it that much harder for the others. They've got stamina. They know how to keep on going.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ed386ac
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A complex assembly is best described first in terms of its substances: its subassembles and parts. Then, next, it is described in terms of its methods: its functions as they occur in sequence.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8f83826
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Finally, if you're as exasperated as I am by the parts problem and have some money to invest, you can take up the really fascinating hobby of machining your own parts. [...] With the welding equipment you can build up worn surfaces with better than original metal and then machine it back to tolerance with carbide tools. [...] If you can't do the job directly you can always make something that do it. The work of machining a part is very sl..
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do-it-yourself
motorcycles
mechanics
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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090ba61
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It's all taking the customer's money and giving him exactly what he wants and then leaving him poorer than when he started.
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Robert M. Pirsig |