I remember being profoundly disappointed by the judgements made during the story of the beer can shim. His anticipatory condescension doesn’t seem to be working in the direction of any kind of enlightenment. Indeed, the narrator seems to be stuck in a painful cycle of suffering. His motorcycle might be working, but something else isn’t.
Some people set out to study problems that must be solved, that simultaneously can’t be solved. The idea is to trigger a breakdown, and a breakdown is what we see in the book. I (and others) believe that deliberately triggering a breakdown is irresponsible if you don’t do it in a safe place. The importance of safe and supportive environments is easy to overlook when you think you’re reading a book of Japanese jokes.
I had a similar reaction when I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The main character is a terrible friend. There’s a passage in the book where his friend is clearly frustrated with his motorcycle, trying mightily to start it, and instead of clearly and patiently explaining, “No, the engine is flooded, let it rest for a few minutes and then try again,” he says, “It smells like a refinery,” or something equally cryptic. And then he sits back, smug in the knowledge that he has imparted great wisdom, but his friend is too stupid to understand.
Similarly, when he was at his friend’s house and noticed that their faucet was leaking, his reaction was to reflect on the superiority of people who know how to work with their hands and have a talent for dealing with mechanical systems, rather than asking to help. Even defusing the tension with an offhand remark about the unreliability of modern appliances would have been more helpful, and earned more of my respect as a reader, than his actual course of action.
Put bluntly, Pirsig comes off very much like the sort of edgelord presented in this meme. Whenever I have to help my non-technical relatives with computer issues or mechanical issues, I ask myself, “What would Pirsig do in this situation,” and then do the exact opposite of that.
I remember being profoundly disappointed by the judgements made during the story of the beer can shim. His anticipatory condescension doesn’t seem to be working in the direction of any kind of enlightenment. Indeed, the narrator seems to be stuck in a painful cycle of suffering. His motorcycle might be working, but something else isn’t.
Some people set out to study problems that must be solved, that simultaneously can’t be solved. The idea is to trigger a breakdown, and a breakdown is what we see in the book. I (and others) believe that deliberately triggering a breakdown is irresponsible if you don’t do it in a safe place. The importance of safe and supportive environments is easy to overlook when you think you’re reading a book of Japanese jokes.
I had a similar reaction when I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The main character is a terrible friend. There’s a passage in the book where his friend is clearly frustrated with his motorcycle, trying mightily to start it, and instead of clearly and patiently explaining, “No, the engine is flooded, let it rest for a few minutes and then try again,” he says, “It smells like a refinery,” or something equally cryptic. And then he sits back, smug in the knowledge that he has imparted great wisdom, but his friend is too stupid to understand.
Similarly, when he was at his friend’s house and noticed that their faucet was leaking, his reaction was to reflect on the superiority of people who know how to work with their hands and have a talent for dealing with mechanical systems, rather than asking to help. Even defusing the tension with an offhand remark about the unreliability of modern appliances would have been more helpful, and earned more of my respect as a reader, than his actual course of action.
Put bluntly, Pirsig comes off very much like the sort of edgelord presented in this meme. Whenever I have to help my non-technical relatives with computer issues or mechanical issues, I ask myself, “What would Pirsig do in this situation,” and then do the exact opposite of that.