Oblique Divorce Strategy #13 — “Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.”
What does putting together a Japanese bicycle have to do with divorce?
The answer is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (hereafter ZAMM), which was rejected by 121 publishers before it was released in 1974.
It’s been in print ever since and has sold five million copies.
Almost everyone I knew during the late 1970s read it as a companion during the transition into early middle age. Although we talked about it, no one claimed to understand it or even like it.
If Robert Pirsig finished his book today, I think he’d upload it to CreateSpace and consider it “published.” Thereafter, no one would read it or even hear about it.
Any description of this book will be inaccurate and misleading. For example, it’s 380 pages long and there are less than ten pages about Zen — and less than fifty pages about motorcycles, which are used as metaphors.
It is a story, of sorts. Narrative conflict is mostly unresolved, and I don’t know of another book that employs the kind of third party voice used in ZAMM.
Sometimes the author, narrator and main character are individuated; sometimes they are the same person — and most of the time the reader doesn’t know who’s doing the talking.
The ostensible subject of the book involves an attempt to describe a personal philosophy based on “Quality,” which begins as a simple undefined term and ends as a confused and confusing undefined term. Even the narrator doesn’t claim to understand it.
The book has at least two properties that have contributed to its success. The first is its power to keep many readers engaged, though how and why this works is a mystery.
The other property is the inclusion of material that causes cognitive dissonance.
I use the term “cognitive dissonance” to mean the uncomfortable state of a mind unable to reconcile two contradictory propositions when both are believed to be true. Cognitive dissonance can be compartmentalized into a discrete subject area or it can be so pervasive that it challenges one’s notions about the meaning of life.
Oblique Divorce Strategies are brief statements of facts or ideas that can help people going through divorce to exploit that painful, miserable, exhilarating experience and make a midlife correction by reconsidering their old ideas, values and beliefs and by being open — however briefly — to new and different ideas, values and beliefs.
Before getting to the relationship between bicycle assembly and divorce, here are three examples of cognitive dissonance I experienced while reading ZAMM.
The central importance of geometry
In Chapter 22 Pirsig explains how the discovery of ‘non-Euclidean’ geometry undermined the foundations of science. To get the gist of what non-Euclidean geometry is and its effect on Western thought, you have to first get the gist of Euclidean geometry and its effect on Western thought.
Geometry wasn’t about screwing around with a compass and straight edge; it was the route to knowledge. A proper geometric proof is a demonstrable, replicable proof beyond reasonable doubt.
It’s the gold standard for knowing and it’s an opportunity to learn how we know what we know. It should be taught in exotically designed classrooms by teachers wearing robes to only those students willing to attend to the instruction and participate in an Initiation To Knowledge.
Gumption Traps
Chapter 28 is about Gumptionology 101. We all know what gumption is and what it’s like to be stuck. Pirsig explains that we get stuck because we fall into Gumption Traps.
He describes the “Gumption Traps [He] Has Known.” After giving each a name he explains how it gets you, what you can do to get out of it and what you can do to avoid it. I thought my gumption traps were unique, specific to me and usually intractable but for the passage of time.
Apparently, everyone gets stuck in gumption traps, which may or may not be like Pirsig’s. In any event, they can be identified and, once identified, they can be neutralized or avoided if given enough forethought and analysis.
Maintenance
It will sound strange to most people, but I hope there is at least someone “out there” whose family of origin didn’t recognize the notion of “maintenance.”
My family didn’t. We simply used our stuff until it broke, wore out or we got something better to replace it. This was true for our house, our cars and our appliances — all objects with and without movable parts.
It was also true of us (both my parents died rather young).
In the Army, a regular schedule would call for one day a week dedicated to “Repair & Maintenance.” It was an odd but appealing idea whose value was discounted in my mind because of how I first encountered it.
ZAMM has nothing to say about the military, but it is, among others things, a 380-page argument on the fundamental necessity of maintenance of all things.
I hope this gives you a vague idea what the book is like. I’ve read it three or four times. I’ve had three or four copies of the paperback; the one I have now is full of tabs and dog-eared pages so I can find certain sections, like the ones above, that I keep going back to.
Yet, it’s not a book I would ever recommend to someone else.
• • •
Now for the Japanese bicycle.
During the trip described in ZAMM, Pirsig (in various combinations of author and narrator) travels through Montana.
He stays with a friend called DeWeese who teaches art. DeWeese has been flummoxed in an attempt to assemble a barbecue rotisserie. He brings the instructions to Pirsig in the expectation that Pirsig will condemn them as wrong or at least inadequate.
Pirsig studies the instructions and they don’t look bad, but he explains that you can’t know for sure until you use them. He notices, however, that part of the text is on the back of a page with an important diagram so you have to flip back and forth to follow the directions. He points to this formatting as a possible source of difficulty.
But upon reflection, he decides that formatting isn’t the real problem.
“While I’m jumping on this and describing some of the agonies of misinterpretation that bad cross-referencing can produce, I’ve a feeling that this isn’t why DeWeese found them so hard to understand. It’s just the lack of smoothness and continuity, which threw him off. He’s unable to comprehend things when they appear in the ugly, chopped-up, grotesque sentence style common to engineering and technical writing. Science works with chunks and bits and pieces of things with the continuity presumed, and DeWeese works only with the continuities of things with the chunks and bits and pieces presumed.”
Pirsig begins to explain this to DeWeese: “I’ve a set of instructions at home which open up great realms for the improvement of technical writing. They begin, ‘Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.’”
There is general agreement that these instructions are funny because of the lack of agreement between the subject and the verb and because of the unintended slam on the low quality of Japanese products. DeWeese concurs with Pirsig, who then summarizes what they both believe:
“Peace of mind isn’t at all superficial, really…It’s the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate test is always your own serenity. If you don’t have this when you start — and maintain it while you’re working — you’re likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.”
This statement is made with reference to a specific rotisserie and to machines in general, but it has equal application to any human activity. In fact, the more the activity involves human interaction (as opposed to interaction with a thing), the more important it becomes.
My wife, Alice, has always seemed more concerned about the spirit or attitude of people who have done work in our house than she is with other kinds of qualifications. On things like this I willingly yield to what I know is her good judgment.
Pirsig explains why she is right. We build our psychological stuff — good and bad — all our projects. The people who work on and in your house build their attitudes into your walls, windows, doorways and toilets!
Divorce is a life-defining psychological process. We have the power to assume an attitude that’s apt for a specific situation.
It’s often difficult to find the “right attitude,” and it can be even more difficult to find a way to assume it, but it can be done.
With divorce the stakes are high because that attitude is going to be built into the person you are about to become.
That’s why: Completion of divorce require great peace of mind.
Next column: Oblique Strategy #14 — “Stop making left turns.”
— Brian H. Burke is a certified family law specialist practicing family law and mediation in Santa Barbara. A researcher and educator in the field of divorce and family conflicts, he is also the creator of the Legal Road Map™. Click here for more information, call 805.965.2888 or e-mail info@burkefamilylaw.com. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.