Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

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Well?

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 20:04 (twenty-three years ago)

If you read books off-and-on over long periods of time, and are 19 years old at the time, and are smoking way too much marijuana, SO CLASSIC.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 20:17 (twenty-three years ago)

i liked it when i read it, but not enough to remember why i liked it. oh dear, i HATE when i forget what happens in books.

― Maria (Maria), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 20:20 (twenty-three years ago)

I remember being forced to read it in high school, and thinking it was babyboomer psycho-babble stuff. Now (having read it again a few years ago), I just think it was just a little preachy.

― dleone (dleone), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 20:22 (twenty-three years ago)

it was very important to me once. i haven't read it for at least ten years, so i don't know what i'd think of it now. i think that many of the ideas at the core are sound. this was a quote i extracted at the time:

"My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done - by individuals making quality decisions and that's all."

which, in looking at it now, seems too simplistic, but gosh darn it, makes sense to me

― ron (ron), Thursday, 9 January 2003 02:15 (twenty-three years ago)

nickalicious is otm. I wasn't smoking dope but it kinda felt like I was.

The thing I remember most about the book is that I read it while riding my bicycle across USA. I rolled into Gardiner MT, ate, and pulled out ZatAoMM. Almost immediately I read a line that said something about pulling into Gardiner MT. It made me wanna grab some stranger's sleeve and go "DUUUUUUUUDE, check THIS sh#t out!"

― Hunter (Hunter), Thursday, 9 January 2003 04:31 (twenty-three years ago)

i think it was utter dud. maybe because i already knew (too) much about philosophy, it seemed condescending. but 30 pages to figure out that everything is subjective?!? like HELLO. great idea tho: mix fiction and philosophy... (seemed one inch removed from crichton in some ways) but ah well i'll settle for walter benjamin and barthes these days.

― nathalie (nathalie), Thursday, 9 January 2003 10:55 (twenty-three years ago)

Is it good as a kind of 'My First Philosophy' book? Is his fascination with quality worthwhile? As someone who studied philosophy for my degree (albeit not too much), it was obvious even to me that there were big holes in his reason, but I did really enjoy the book. And it made me nip out and finally buy A History Of Western Philosophy by thingummy.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 9 January 2003 12:57 (twenty-three years ago)

"Is his fascination with quality worthwhile?"

Can anything be 'worthwhile' in the absence of some kind of qualitative context? I.E. doensn't merely asking if something is worthwhile presuppose quality as a fundamental criterion?

― andy, Thursday, 9 January 2003 13:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, now is his fascination with quality worthwhile?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 9 January 2003 14:11 (twenty-three years ago)

Alright, rephrase. Is his fascination with (and conviction that he had discovered/worked out the meaning of / relationship of / etcetera) quality a justification for writing 400 odd pages of occasionally indulgent occasionally insightful philosophy/cum road trip meta-bio type thing. How much quality is there in his thought on quality?

I must admit that there were several points during the book at which I was convinced it was the Most Important Book Ever Written EVAH, but these soon passed.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 9 January 2003 14:14 (twenty-three years ago)

I don’t know what he meant by ‘quality decisions’ (I read the book as a teenager, but can’t remember anything about it other than it impressed me at the time). But I’d say that quality was a precondition of all decisions – we don’t weigh up options in a vacuum – all thought occurs in a context of felt-value, take that away and there’s no reason (or capacity) to prefer any single thing to any single other thing. That’s not to say you just make decisions cos it feels good at the time – evaluating the comparative worth of possible outcomes involves a heap of conflicting considerations, just that whatever decisions you do make are only significant in terms of their potential qualitative consequences, and only possible to make in the presence of immediately sensed value as a basis for conceiving the future values they might lead to.

― andy, Thursday, 9 January 2003 15:46 (twenty-three years ago)

His thing was all about the collapse of dualism in the world, his schtick being that quality was the point at which the self interacts with the world; ie; the moment at which subjective meets objective therefore quality is neither, or seomething.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 9 January 2003 15:50 (twenty-three years ago)

That doesn't stop it being utter, utter toss. People who harp on about how great this book is should be tied down, gagged and run over with a particularly rusty mechanical scythe. As for a "my first philosophy" book, how about Sophies World?

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Thursday, 9 January 2003 17:07 (twenty-three years ago)

In spite of the title, it has nothing to do with zen. In spite of the main character calling himself Phaedras, it has nothing to do with Platonism. As philosophy, the ideas are few and shallow, but not actually harmful.

Where the book succeeds is in dramatic flair. The main character is a tortured soul, fresh from electroshock therapy, searching for his mysterious past... on a motorcycle! His past, it is slowly revealed, was as a dreamy, fiery associate professor of philosophy... or some such. Imagine Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in Easy Rider crossed with the crusty old prof in The Paper Chase.

Of course, the author can't help but drop into pedantry for long streches. What prof could resist? But, the whole thing makes philosophy sound romantic, which it hasn't been for a couple of centuries now. What could that hurt?

― Aimless, Thursday, 9 January 2003 18:31 (twenty-three years ago)

I prefer Lila.

― chris sallis, Thursday, 9 January 2003 18:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Aimless = OTM.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 9 January 2003 19:22 (twenty-three years ago)

seven years pass...

reading this now and loving it. i guess it's time to tie me down, gag me, and run over me with a particularly rusty mechanical scythe . . .

― there's a kind of transcendant thematic cohesion (dude) (jdchurchill), Wednesday, 30 June 2010 19:51 (fifteen years ago)

just read ch14 which is where the bombs get dropped abt putting together a rotisserie and 'mindset'

― there's a kind of transcendant thematic cohesion (dude) (jdchurchill), Wednesday, 30 June 2010 19:54 (fifteen years ago)

I was told by one of my professors to read this for research for my philosophy senior seminar final paper that was.. ummm about how "nature" came to be externalised by humans bla bla bla something and it didn't really help too much. I remember thinking it was boring at the time but if I sat down to just read it instead of using it as background research maybe I'd enjoy it more?

The guy's voice is irritating. Preachy is exactly the word I would use to describe it.

― peacocks, Wednesday, 30 June 2010 20:58 (fifteen years ago)

tbf he tells you it's a Chautauqua at the start.

― I saw Mommy kissing Santa Cruz (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 June 2010 21:15 (fifteen years ago)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chautauqua
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/ChautauquaStamp.jpg

― there's a kind of transcendant thematic cohesion (dude) (jdchurchill), Wednesday, 30 June 2010 23:18 (fifteen years ago)

i guess these vacation bible schools come directly out of the chautaquas

― there's a kind of transcendant thematic cohesion (dude) (jdchurchill), Wednesday, 30 June 2010 23:19 (fifteen years ago)

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Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance - Classic or Dud?