Robert Pirsigs Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance...

Robert Pirsigs Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values Confronting crises of technological annihilation and personal madness, Robert Pirsig finds each to be a manifestation of a deeper crisis of Reason. In response) he suggests an alternative to our current paradigm of rationality, the art of motorcycle maintenance. By showing that our understanding and performance derive from our emotional and evaluative commitments, he challenges the cultural commonplace which construes subjective states as distortions of objective reality. In so doing, he asserts that wholeness or sanity may be achieved only through passionate caring, and an awareness and acceptance of how our emotions and values shape our†¦show more content†¦Yet whereas we are never left alone by our technology, we are increasingly lonely, alienated from our deepest selves. For we have lost touch with our own feelings, being educated to ignore them in order to function in a technological world. Like Bergmans intellectual illiterates, we are so uneducated about our inner fee lings that we only learn to talk about them when we break down, and have to be repaired by the analyst, at the Group, or in the asylum. For, we learn, our feelings distort our objective perceptions, and thus prevent us from functioning like our machines. In this vein, Andy Warhol wryly recalls that he had always wanted to be like a machine, for then it was easier to get along with people. We thus find ourselves fragmented, our feelings alienated from our world, our lives as well as our literature being characterizable by T. S. Eliots phrase, dissociation of sensibility. Parallel to this public, cultural crisis of technologically-induced fragmentation, Pirsig faces his own personal crisis of fragmentation or madness. Some years earlier he had been declared clinically insane, and underwent electro-shock therapy to annihilate his mad personality. This earlier self, whom he now calls Phaedrus, had gone mad as a result of a search for Truth which led him ultimately to repudiate Reason itself.[1] Pursuing the ghost of reason throughShow MoreRelatedZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Quality by Robert Pirsig815 Words   |  3 PagesZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance And Quality Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as written by Robert Pirsig, focuses on a number of philosophical life values. These values include quality, identity, duality, and Zen. This paper will focus mainly on the subject of quality and the effect dwelling on its definition had on Pirsig. Pirsig has put an incredible amount of thought into defining Quality. Starting just about at the start of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, theRead MoreReading Summary : A Portrait Of Managerial Powers1183 Words   |  5 Pagesthat is extremely difficult to accurately quantify in a book. Leadership is an art. As with the visual arts, there are numerous ideas how to accomplish a task; however, it is its appeal to the masses which sells the painting. Similarly, the success of leadership does not exist in the strategies that managers employ, it lies in the trust that followers place in the managers’ ability to produce their leadership art. There is not a specific recipe for quality leadership; if the employee does notRead MoreGroupthink Theory Essay3525 Words   |  15 PagesFirst of all, it is very difficult to avoid groupthink because as individuals, we tend to choose group members who are like-mind and tend to filter out those who aren’t. This is the concept of ‘Kin’, which is mentioned in Robert Pirsig’s â€Å"Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance†. As individuals, we have familiarity towards people that we feel connected to and who have a similar state of mind. We do this because we try to avoid conflict within the group. Contrary to popular belief, conflict can