Dating Pt. 2: Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance

Yes, there is a sequel. Bear with.

I recently finished re-reading Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--a wonderful novel, by the way. It concerns Pirsig's attempts to reconcile what he calls "romantic" and "classical" modes of thought, the two modes being roughly analogous to artistic and scientific forms of engaging with reality. The "romantics," Pirsig claims, are concerned with surface level experience, while the "classicists" are concerned with underlying forms; the romantics claim the classicists are emotionless, cold, mechanical, and alienating, while the classicists claim the romantics are frivolous, empty, vapid, and shallow. He situates the debate in the context of a motorcycle trip with his son and friends--he enjoys the sheer thrill of the cycle ride across America on a "romantic" level, but he also maintains the nuts and bolts (literally) of his motorcycle on a "classical" level.

Pirsig had experience as both a chemist and a rhetorician, and thus was familiar with both modes of thought. He found that scientists are as reliant on inspiration as artists, and that systematic analysis is inadequate for explaining rhetoric. In fact, he found dialectic analysis in general inadequate, and therefore came to the conclusion that the problem is dialectic itself in the first place; he claims that dialectic, this need to divide and sub-divide into categories, to alienate the part from the whole, is a fundamental flaw in all Western thought dating back to Aristotle and Plato.

As such, the very divisions of "romantic" and "classical" are themselves false divisions. They are in fact parts of the same indivisible whole, which of course takes him to Eastern thought, especially to concepts such as the Tao and Zen Buddhism (hence the novel's title).

He describes being a rhetoric and composition instructor at U. Montana, when he finds that he can't define "Quality." He finds both romantic and classic modes lacking in providing a comprehensive, satisfying definition of Quality. Focusing all his dialectic energies as both a scientist and rhetorician onto this problem, he makes what he calls a "Copernical discovery," as when Copernicus realized the earth orbits the sun, not the sun the earth; he decides that Quality is not defined by romantic or classical modes, but rather that the romantic and classic modes are instead defined by Quality, that whatever work of technology or art that one engages in, the overriding impulse is to make that work conform to Quality, not contain it.

All the elements that make a motorcycle engine function or that make a novel entrancing are parts of the same Quality; both mechanics and artists must attain comprehensive knowledge of their respective fields, but in the end both are reliant on Quality, the pre-intellectual condition before conscious thought (one thinks of Malcolm Gladwel's Blink) to filter all the limitless possibilities for perceiving reality in order to provide inspiration to work. Quality therefore cannot be defined, but instead defines us.

Now to connect: My last silly "Dating" post involved attempts to explain why so many people marry later in a community where no one actually wants to marry later. I listed all the various explanations typically proffered: "hanging out," nefarious effects of rom-coms and porn, higher divorce rates, the 60s, maybe simply that we have too much choice (and therefore a corresponding and paralyzingly higher possibility for rejection), etc, etc, etc, etc, and I finished by expressing my feeling that while we have certainly identified plenty of symptoms, "we are all somehow collectively skirting the issue, and we're not even quite sure what the issue is."

Maybe Pirsig is influencing my mind a little much, but now I wonder if the issue is that we are attempting to localize the dilemma in the first place; the same dialectic that Pirsig identifies as being the fatal flaw of Western thought, that constant categorizing and sub-dividing and alienating the parts from the whole, is also what is alienating us from each other, and leading to these later marriage ages in spite of us.

Roll with me a sec: Pirsig also says that the way to gain access to the "Quality" is, that, "you have to care." Comparing it to motorcycle maintenance, he notes how often a cycle-owner will encounter a problem that cannot be resolved with the instruction manual, e.g. the manual says simply to "remove the screws to remove the panel," but one of the screws itself is stripped and won't come off. You cannot get to the engine to repair the engine because the panel won't come off because that screw is stuck. It's so aggravating it's almost funny. You consider throwing this cycle that mocks you off a bridge, says Pirsig.

What must now occur, says Pirsig, is that you must care, about the screw specifically, about the cycle in general. This isn't just a screw anymore--this screw is now equal the entire worth of the motorcycle. You begin to contemplate not the screw in isolation, but how it functions as part of the whole. In short, you are no longer concerned with the parts, you are concerned with the relationships between the parts that form the whole.

According to Pirsig, how he avoids feeling alienated from the mechanical work on his motorcycle is that he has a relationship with it; he understands the relationship between all the parts, including himself. He cares, and thus he is able to find solutions to tricky problems; often after much research, the solution comes while he's taking a break, eating a sandwich, going for a walk, laying down for a nap. I myself have come up with solutions to perplexing problems--how to fix an awkward line in a poem, write a conclusion to an essay, how to repair the ear-jack in my ipod, just yesterday I suddenly realized how to teach articles (a, an, the) to Asian students--at my most innocuous moments. Because you care, the solution comes to you.

So how does this apply to (bleh) dating? Perhaps in our fury to diagnose the problem, we've forgotten how to care--about the person we are pursuing, about the act of dating itself, even about ourselves. We wish to fix the parts without addressing the relationship as a whole; maybe we analyze dating in isolation so much that we forget that it can't be isolated, we've forgotten how to perceive it as part of the general whole.

Clearly Pirsig's concept of Quality is related to Zen or Tao (hence the title of the novel); it is also doctrinal--both Paul (1 Cor. 13) and Mormon (Moroni 7:45-48) make explicitly clear that without charity ye are nothing. That is, without love, without a desire to care about something for its own sake, without thought for ourselves, then all we do is ultimately futile--the corollary being that with it, we are everything.

I bring this up because Pirsig says after realizing the metaphysical nature of Quality, he better understood the mind-clearing meditations and devotional performance to menial labors that he encountered in Buddhist and Hindu monks. When you are always attempting to conform to ineffable Quality, he says, then your relationship with Quality itself is improved. In his own words: "The cycle you are really working on is yourself." If you are always performing Quality, then the motorcycle itself will naturally be maintained and be in best running shape, as with anything else in your life.

These are not new ideas; if you strive to be Quality yourself, then your dating will likewise naturally achieve Quality. When we are filled with charity, that "perfect love that casts out all fear," so that we are willing a la Nietzsche to not only gaze into the abyss of dating but to embrace it as part of the whole, refusing to alienate the very act of relationships from our other relationships, then perhaps will achieve Quality in our dating.

Identifying specific problems is itself the problem; the issue we are collectively skirting is ourselves.

Of course, certainly I'm one to talk; thoughts, anyone?

Bueller?