My Brief History of Zen

My Brief History of Zen. It’s barely a year since I first even thought of reading ZMM – seems like a lifetime. Here is my first ever blogged reference, with no link to anything !!!

My thought process in the preceeding weeks was chaos / catastrophe / fuzzy / uncertainty / quanta / quantum-computing / eastern-philosophy-vs-science / Brian-Josephson / physics-of-consciousness / Zen …… and then a wondering why ZMM had been on a reading list on my MBA course 12 years earlier, and the fact that I’d never read it. The rest is history.

And now I find a link between Quantonics and Josephson.
Heres an interesting list on the subject of Cosnciousness.
A very useful Pirsig Timeline [via MOQ Focus]
Also find Kevin Kelly’s Out of Control listed by Dan Glover (MOQite) and Tim Allen’s I’m Not Really Here too, the latter (yes that Tim Allen) also quotes Pirsig as a major influence. (Kevin Kelly’s book recommended earlier by Leon.) What a tangled web.

Pirsig was a Blogger

In Lila, we get a great deal of description of the process Bob Pirsig used to manage his thoughts whilst creating ZAMM, and he gives us an insight into his trunkful of 3000 4″ x 6″ slips (index cards) in his letter of January 5th 1969 to his publisher James Landis. He mentions it again on page 129 of the 25th anniversary edition of ZAMM, and on page 189 he says …

Later, when I developed more confidence in my immunity to [the affliction of seeing every thought as archeological debris of some overall design], I became interested in the debris in a more positive way, and began to jot down the fragments amorphically, that is without regard to form, in the order in which they occurred to me. Many of these amorphic statements have been supplied by friends. There are thousands of them now.

I know how he feels – think I said in my intial review that the main thought to strike me was how much I identified with Bob / Phaedrus. I’ve just finished a third read of ZAMM, and I’m still amazed that I had never read it before the manifesto that started this quest. In fact I’d never read anything approaching philosophy before I read Pirsig either. It deserves some proper analysis because, like it or not, together with Lila, it certainly covers every thread of my blog. I think I shall create an analytical essay simply to capture and make some sense of the thousands of annotations and links I’ve made.

Since early 2002 I’ve had on my blog links to two Pirsig sites, MOQ and Quantonics. I’ve never interacted closely with these communities, despite being convinced Pirsig was onto something very important since the 50’s/60’s. I think the reasons for this were, and are, twofold. Firstly, I baulk at the almost religious zeal with which so many followers, nay disciples, seem to approach Pirsig. Secondly, if your aim is to establish MOQism through discourse ahead of any other “ism” and Pirsig ahead of any other philosopher, then be my guest, you will not be alone. My aim, like Pirsig’s I believe, is much more pragmatic.

Throughout ZAMM, he uses the recurring metaphor of looking and travelling up towards “heights” of one form or another, and on each occasion returning to earth or the ocean. In one of the climactic episodes [ch20 p244] when he decides not to complete the hike to the summit with his son Chris, there are questions and suggestions about his lacking the courage to do so [ch21 p255]. I’m sure achieving the rarefied heights of establishing a philosophy for philosophers to debate was never on his agenda. In fact fixed objectives are almost anathema to his dynamical / process view of reality – how many times does he use the aphorism of being better to travel than to arrive – he always returns to his comfort zone of the craftsman and the job in hand. As he says [Quote ch25 p297] Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think what I have to say has more lasting value. [Unquote] Fix a motorcycle ? How about help any kind of organisation to create and deliver any kind of product or service. That’ll do me.

Run Rabbit, Run.

To illustrate my recent points [eg here] about memes suffering from too much communication ….

In my manifesto I mentioned the fact that “rabbits run”. An idea, a piece of information released into the world, is very difficult to control being spread and multiplied by onward communication. Normally recognised in relation to subjects where there is some a priori reason for confidentiality or controlled timing, and where a misleading (or embarassing) half-truth escapes. My point relates even to the communication of well considered messages. You know the case. You’ve spent the last two weeks honing that presentation getting those bon mots just right, and the following week someone quotes you, but “That’s not what I meant, but, but, ….” Too late. Face the fact that in effect that IS what you meant, if that’s what was understood. The effort needed to change the situation to your original intent, or a considered revision of that view, escalates as the rabbits breed.

Always a suspicion of conspiracy theory – your words being twisted for someone else’s ends – or stupidity if not – did you deliberately misunderstand me you dimwit ? Speed of light communication of memes just accentuates the effect, conspiracy or cock-up is irrelevant, forget causality, it’s nature.

See, even me too. My apologies for doing it with the word meme itself – I actually no longer have any precise recollection of what Dawkins or Blackmore actually defined the term to mean, just the general idea – received / perceived wisdom – in practice I just mean “a thought shared by communication, which can be further shared and can mutate in the process”. A paradox I see, not something I’m advocating you understand, is that without some species boundaries to communication, mutation is degeneration all the way. Someone tell me I’m wrong, please. (Or is success just a numbers game ?)

The Nonsense of Knowledge Management

The Nonsense of Knowledge Management – Paper by Professor Tom Wilson [via Oryon] lamenting the fact that KM is just the latest fad in management bandwagons. Actually he’s more objective and less scathing than that, but I have offerred the same lament once or twice recently. KM is becoming de-valued jargon linked with every management issue, and the new followers would do well to research some of the more general organisational management subjects before adding the KM tag. Tom also, like me, is concerned with narrowing the definition of Knowledge itself to distinguish it from Information, something which I approve in theory, but accept that language defines itself. Interesting that Oryon’s only problem with this is the Popperian view that one cannot scientifically “prove” the meaning of any word – 100% correct, about as much use as an ashtray on a motorcycle – that’s science for you.

Actually this is the same issue I blogged about memetic evolution suffering from too widespread communication too soon. A term like KM can only ever come to mean some watered down mediocre average of what anyone who first coined the term could have really intended. Fortunately this doesn’t change the significance of the issue intended. Tom actually seems to shoot his own argument in the foot by placing any credibility on the numbers-game head count of of references to KM in various management consultant papers etc, though I guess that’s the Catch-22 of having to prove his point – scientifically.

The Future’s Bright … ?

The Future’s Bright … ? From Future Meetup (4th Thursday every month) a subset of Blog Meetup (3rd Wednesday every month) via Ming The Mechanic (A blog I’d lost contact with until today.) “Future” blogs are blogs by futurists, and their meet up agenda includes these two points.

? Ray Kurzweil has suggested that by 2099 humans and machines will be indistinguishable from each other. Can this be a good thing?
? How can we maintain the higher elements of the human spirit as computers begin to exceed human intelligence in our lifetime?

Anyone who believes that by 2099 humans and machines will actually be indistinguishable or that computers will begin to exceed human intelligence, is either barking or provocatively witty, I think I know which Ray Kurzweil is. The two questions posed suggest these futurists are actually taking the suggestion seriously.

Isolation is necessary for evolution.

Blinding flash – One point I picked-up from Dawkins, is that whilst genetic mutation leading to potential evolution occurs spontaneously, anywhere in any organism, in order it to get into a cycle of re-inforcement by natural selection of species, it is necessary for that population to become isolated (genetically) from other populations. In talking about cultural, technological human development, more memetics than genetics, could the same also be true. In the global village of mass media communications – there is no hope of isolating ideas, so no hope of cultural evolution except towards satisfying the mediocrity of the average of the entire global population.

This seems paradoxical, but might explain some slowness in truly beneficial exploitation of technological capabilities, and frustration at apparent negative consequences. Dialogue is clearly essential to developing ideas and turning them into “technology”, but you can have too much of a good thing – if ideas spread like wildfire converging into every domain of life too soon, are opportunities for substantive techno-cultural development actually being squandered ? An original thought, but no doubt someone else thought of this before – right ?

Re-reading ZMM

Re-reading ZMM It had to happen, after reading Phaedrus, and Dr Willis, and strangely after a dinner conversation alluding to Ahab’s peg leg. (The analogies with Moby Dick are patent – The New Yorker). Pirsig says …

[Quote] [Most] of the time I’m feigning 20th C lunacy …. so as not to draw attention to myself. [Unquote] I wish.
[Quote] Common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of ghosts from the past.[Unquote] Except that
[Quote] The scientific point of view has wiped out every other view to a point where they all seem primitive. It’s just all but completely impossible to imagine a world where ghosts [ie common sense] can actually exist.[Unquote] Which just about sums up the whole Catch22.