Comment

I am happy Dany and I have the same question on the relationship between the narrator and Phaedrus. I agree with him that Phaedrus is an actual person. Given all the evidence from the war's he participated in and his travels and life in other countries, in addition to being a philosophy student, it will be hard to prove that he is something other than a human being.  The way the narrator discloses a vast amount of information about Phaedrus also surprised me. Throughout the beginning of the novel i always thought that Phaedrus took on a role of a ghost, a mysterious being in the life of the narrator that he seemed to be petrified of, yet wanting to discover more about him. Now however, it seems like the narrator wrote his biography, he knows everything about Phaedrus! He does not seem afraid of the "ghost" and keep retracing his steps through the Midwest in pursuit of additional information I suppose. Even to the point of staying at Mr. Deweese's house, as Phaedrus stayed. Does the narrator even know Mr. Deewese? This was something Sylvia and John were questioning him about but I did not find a believable answer from the narrator explaining  their relationship. I am eager to discover more about the narrator's relationship to Phaedrus as that, I believe, will bring about a turning point in the novel.

Philosophy Class

            As I read through chapter 11, I constantly felt like I was listening to a professor ramble on and on about philosophy and the theories of famous philosophers. Unfortunately for me, this type of talk does not interest me and I realized I constantly drifted away from the reading.

            The way the narrator transitions from what is literally happening to a philosophy lecture annoys me. Especially when the group was on their way up to the high country. The narrator connects his travel to the high country with the high country of the mind, and he keeps explaining how thoughts and ideas are organized within the brain and how each person thinks differently. How objects in life are perceived, and how the senses see them, if they see them at all, and how a person would see life if he had no senses, and how a motorcycle displays different views for different people by the way they perceive it and so on, these thoughts just didn’t get to me.

            One aspect that I thought moved me forward with the novel was how the narrator provided much more background information on Phaedrus. Before I was not quite sure what he did in life, now I know, (and should have guessed) that he was a philosophy student that traveled around the world and had much diversity. He then settled in the Midwest and kind of gave up all of his previous effort in philosophy. Bu I feel there is still an aspect missing about his life that the narrator has yet to reveal.

            The narrator’s action of retracing Phaedrus’ steps throughout the Midwest brings questions to my mind. I still do not know what is the relationship between Phaedrus and the narrator. How does the narrator know so much about Phaedrus? About what Phaedrus said to different people, being in Philosophy class or to Mr. Deewee? We keep getting numerous accounts of Phaedrus actions and his philosophical life but are left without the connection back to the narrator. I am eager to discover the relationship between these two complicated and mysterious characters.

            Meanwhile, I will keep reading to find out more about the group’s travels through the Midwest, the narrators constant urge to retrace Phaedrus’ steps, and have to withstand the countless more philosophy lectures I am sure on their way.

Comment On Talia's Post

I think it is interesting how Talia and I have the same type of feeling toward Pirsig and his writing. The more i read, the more i also become uncomfortable. We have been taught to think that we are learning each and every day, but as Talia mentioned, are we really learning anything? She is right when she says that anything can be disproved by another scientific theory. It is very hard to get that thought through my head. For example, we have grown up to believe that life and society is a certain way. However, the more you think about it, at least in my eyes, the more you tend to realize that it is all made up and b.s. I think Talia would agree with me when i say that everything is made up, that nothing is real or concrete. Everything around us, whether it is an object, a subject or a mere thought, it is all a figment of our imagination. We react to certain things because of beliefs or views we have been "taught" before.  Talia is right again when she states that institutions are holding us back. During class, i understood everything we discussed, but i could not really see how going away from the institutions would bring true success. I still think that people can be happy while living under the institutions, but after reading Pirsig, i think that success itself is also a creation of our mind, an imagination. You can not really measure success, like you cannot measure knowledge.

Comment

I want to comment on Talia's post because I am not sure that she explained herself correctly when she says that she is scared of the ideas presented in this novel. Though I agree that some of Pirsig's ideas are a bit unsettling, I do not find them applicable to real life. I find that the more people dawn on the unknown, the less they focus on real life and the world around them. I feel that reading this book is like watching a scary movie, its shocking as you're in the middle of it, but once you're done you can't think about it too much because it will not bring you any good. I think that Philosophy is not for everyone and it is definitely not for me. I am too pragmatic and square minded for the abstract ideas that philosophy encompasses. I appreciate what Pirsig tries to explain to the readers but I do not feel that it is necessary to think that way. In fact, I think that it is harmful to many people because it distracts them from the real world and their mundane goals. This novel, is not for me as it creates a lot of confusion and it clearly is not for Talia either because it causes anxiety. 

Chapters 11 and 12 reaction.

The narrator seems to know much more about Phaedrus than I had expected him to. I am not so sure anymore that the narrator and Phaedrus are the same person. Phaedrus seems to be a generation older than the narrator, possibly his father’s age. This has become evident to me as the narrator states that Phaedrus took part in the Korean War which ended in 1952 and this story, from what I can tell takes place in the late sixties or early seventies. I have noted that as the characters get closer and closer to the mountains, the images and stories of Phaedrus get clearer and clearer. For example, the narrator shares that Phaedrus used the Red Lodge route to access backpacking areas in the mountains. We also get information about Phaedrus’ army career, we get information about some kind of turning loin he had while in Korea and a confusion between Phaedrus and the Koreans which he described in his letters. These pieces of the puzzle have completely ruled out the possibility that Phaedrus is an idea or an actual ghost, we are now certain that Phaedrus is an actual person. What is still unclear is his relationship to the narrator and his actual name. 

Apart from the information about Phaedrus, the mountains seem to bring about a sense of calm and happiness to all of the characters. This relates closely to the lecture we recently had on Kafka. In this lecture we talked about the importance of escaping the structure and rigid nature of society and going off to the mountains to be free and happy. It seems that the characters in this novel truly needed a break because all four of their moods became much better once they arrived in the mountains. Now in chapter 12, we get information about the type of relationship the narrator had with Phaedrus, the narrator seems to think that Phaedrus and DeWeese are superior to him and he becomes somewhat anxious in their presence. The last impression I got of Phaedrus after the first twelve chapters is that he is an enlightened hippie. 

Comment to Jose's Post

     I really understand what Jose is saying in his post. I felt the same way- my thoughts were changing drastically with each turn of a page. I really did not know what to think at some times because much of what was being said felt so radical to me. This is one of the reasons why I am not the biggest fan of philosophical readings. I know that they are enlightening in that they cause you to think of new things and change your ideas- it that makes me feel uneasy. I do not like the feeling of thinking that everything I have learned for so long is just wrong. I like that it gives me a new way of thinking but I really hate that it can completely disprove everything of that I have learned, if learning exists that is. 
    Like Jose I believe that the more we learn the less we known. I found it interesting that he connected it to the lecture just as I did. It is nice to know that someone thinks in the same manner as you sometimes. I found the comment that he made about the three institutions being made up to be interesting as well. The institutions are made up in that without civilization these things do not exist. Looked at simply, these things do not even exist in animal's lives. They are simply methods of control that people have created in order to instill " calm and order" amongst people. They are only methods of control. At the same time, I get that the Church is a form of manipulation but I cannot help but get my faith from the Church. I cannot completely degrade it knowing that the faith the Church has given me has gotten me through so many things I do not think I could have gotten through alone. I understand that the Church manipulates you to think exactly that- that you cannot do it alone- but I am still thankful for the faith the Church brings me. 
- Talia Akerman

The Idea of Knowledge

      It can be said for certain that we have gotten to the philosophical component of the novel. In all honesty, it is almost too philosophical for me. It is forcing me to doubt a lot of what I thought I knew which makes me really uncomfortable. I am not saying that Pirsig's words are making me think that my entire life has been a lie, but it is forcing me to be in a position where I am reconsidering much of what I have "learned". I put learned in quotation marks because one of the things this novel has forced me to think about is whether or not there is any actual learning in life.
     At one point in the chapter the narrator comments that "there is no real progress". I connect this quote to the idea that the more you learn the less you know. It seems that every time some one proves something or "learn" something new a bit of what was thought to be true before is disproved. It seems that scientific findings only pushes us further back while simultaneously pushing us forward. None of what we believe to be true is actually concrete because it has the ability to be disproved with the next scientific experiment. Even the theories that are so commonly taught in science classes fail to be concrete. I do not think that many people realize that even evolution is not something that is known for certain. It is called the THEORY of evolution and I think many forget that. Though it is intriguing that none of our knowledge is certain, it is quite unsettling at the same time. Actually, it is past unsettling, it is almost kind of scary to think that we actually know close to nothing. It is scary to think that we believe we know so much when we actually do not know anything.
     I am kind of conflicted in my views though. While I believe that science only disproves our knowledge I think that to be successful you do need to push boundaries. Here, I am measuring success in the things you know and how much "knowledge" you have. Obviously knowledge is not a quantifiable measurement, but for the sake of the argument it will be. Pirsig says through the narrator that "the harder you think... the slower you go." I found this to be highly connected to the class lecture we had this week. I think that the faster you go in knowledge the slower you really go is because the institutions do not want you to go that fast. The institutions are holding us back because their restraint makes us much easier to control. The only people to have really progressed in life are those that have gone past the restrictions of society. They go slower within the confines of society but as soon as they break through the barriers that society puts up as a control, they are able to progress at an alarming rate.

- Talia Akerman

Contradictions

During this week’s reading, I found that my thoughts were drastically changing and contradicting each other from page to page.  For starters, when Pirsig first asks whether or not we really know anything, my answer was that we do not. The more we know, the more we know that we do not know. This opinion was further supported by this week’s lecture. The three structures, church, family and state as well as any other invention is made up, it is created. The method in which society works is just a interpretation of how we, as humans see it and decide to act on it. Knowledge is based of something else, but that something else, but that something else was created by humans, so are we really gaining any knowledge?

Then, I had no idea what to think when Hume asks if a person without any senses has a thought. At first, my response was no. There is nothing to create a thought, nothing has been learned. However, after I thought that a thought could be possible. Hunger is not a sense, it is a feeling. You do not hear, taste, or touch sense, you feel it and that feeling then causes the thought that you are hungry. Although you have not learned to speak or formulate those thoughts into words, a thought still exists. 

My first thought when Hume said that nature and nature’s laws are our imagination was that he was wrong. For example, gravity is not made up. It is something that just happens on earth, how else does an apple fall to the ground? If gravity was made up, then physics would be made up as well. But then I realized that I was going against my very first opinion that everything is made up and the more I thought about it, I decided that nature could in actuality be our own imagination. Physics is made up; humans created it, it’s an invention. In all honesty, I have no idea what the real answer is, but then again, neither does anyone else.

I think I agree with Kant when he states that all components of knowledge come from the sense at the moment the sense data are received. I thought is based off something else, then something has to exist in order to think about it. Although, I think he is wrong because Pirsig states that he and his followers have a sort of understanding of how we know things. I do not think that we truly know anything, nevertheless how we know it. 

Comment on Talia's Post

I agree with Talia and feel that I am in the same place as she is in the novel. Whenever the narrator begins to talk about his philosophical components and ideas I drift away and lose interest. The same happens when he starts talking about how he conducts his mainteenace on his bike and gets specific on all the details. I do not have the minimal knowledge on motors or automobile maintenance, therefore, the only aspect i get out of it is that he is an expert in what he does and has passion for it.
This brings me to what Talia pointed out, how the narrator is ahead of John, not only in maintenance but in rational thinking. In the extreme heat, John gets frustrated and seems to be having an awful time during the rides, and keeps going faster and faster to try to get it over with, however, the narrator, knowing the dangers of such action, stays behind going slower. The narrator demonstrates his rational thinking when he explains how he divides his life and everything he does, especially his motorcycle maintenance, into categories. I do it as well, and having the same experience, can say that the categories  never end. One classification lead to another and another. The same way as one problem leads to the next and the next and one hypotheses leads to the next and the next, it is an infinite sequence that one needs to earn how to deal with since life is full of it.

Comment on Talia's Response to My Post

Now, after reading Talia’s comment on my post and thinking about it a little more, I agree with Talia. I think that due to the fact that I, myself cannot answer these questions, I become frustrated in a way.  Talia is right in saying that a question is usually meant to be answered because it is supposed to have answer. Even rhetorical questions have answers, just that the responses are not required. A question left unanswered does feel incomplete, as if something was missing.  Like Talia mentioned in class on Friday, after numerous unsuccessful attempts, I was frustrated. I was somewhat bothered by the fact that I could figure it out, when there was a way to solve it. However, even though I feel like every question is supposed to and should have an answer, it does not mean that they do. For example, the answer to why the Earth is round or why humans came to be is not one hundred percent accurate, they are all theories. Who is John Galt? I still do not know how to answer that question. No matter how much knowledge and insight we have, I do not think we would be able to answer the questions or ideas Pirsig leaves his readers. I mean, how are we going to do it, if Pirsig does not have a response to them himself?

Still, the questions that keep bothering me and ticking away at me the most is: Why Pirsig describes these ideas and has this sort of mindset? Who is Phaedrus actually and why is was he even created? And where in the world is this book headed?

Scientific Method Class

As I read through the next reading section of the book, I felt more and more isolated from it. As Pirsig talked about science and the scientific method, I felt like I was sitting in an 8^th grade science class all over again. I understand the steps, and understand how to attempt to solve a problem and make logical and plausible hypotheses, but was puzzled by the reason behind his need to explain all of that. In my opinion, the narrator was explaining to the reader the obvious. He told us how we should make the correct hypotheses and only state the problem that we know is occurring… Isn’t that obvious? Why would you make assumptions of the problem when you haven’t even tested for that assumption?

Moving away from the whole scientific class, I am now lingering on the thought of what or who Phaedrus is. At first I though he was a ghost, then I though he was a person in the narrator’s past, but now, leaning the Phaedrus was pursuing a ghost in his lifetime, and the narrator is following his steps, what is he? When the narrator said he was seeing through Phaedrus’ eyes and could see his hands as he was looking down to the motorcycle handles, I wasn’t sure of the exact connection Phaedrus and the narrator have. The narrator goes on to tell how it is dangerous to confront Phaedrus head on, and by doing it, one is inviting disaster, but he goes on t follow his path and finish what Phaedrus started. However, that is the problem. I am not quite sure what Phaedrus was after in his lifetime. He was a smart kid and learned molecular science well up to the point that he got expelled from college, and I wonder what occurred to make him earn the bad grades.

The one part of this reading segment I understand and agree on is the power of rational thinking. How the mind and knowledge has the power to rebuild anything that was ever created, and it is the mind that dictates the problems and solutions to aspects in life and not life itself. By understanding a subject material, one has its blueprints imbedded within his mind and can call upon it whenever he wants. That is why the mind is the most important aspect of a person; it guards and protects everything that one has ever attempted in life. 

Comment to Jose's Post

 I really agree with the point Jose is making about the way Pirsig manipulates his readers through the narrator. I do not know if I would consider them “tangents” but I do believe that a lot of what Pirsig says leaves me questioning many things, one of those things being what I just read.

            Not to psychoanalyze Jose, but I think the reason he continues to think about these questions he cannot answer is that he is bothered by the mere fact that he cannot answer it. I say this because I know that the same is the case with myself. A question seems like it should be answered, a question left unanswered feels incomplete to me. Any lack of answering things because to really bother me because I feel slightly incompetent, something I am sure no one likes to feel. I am not sure if I agree with the statement Jose made about the questions being “unanswerable”. I feel like sometimes when we cannot answer something we would rather think it unanswerable so that we feel better about being at a fault to answer. I think all of these questions that come to mind during Pirsig’s work are answerable, just not with the current knowledge and insight that we have.  I am unsure of what kind of knowledge it would take to answer said questions but I do not think them unanswerable. This point brings me to the activity we did in class on Friday. Many of us asked if it was possible to even connect three houses to three utilities without an intersection. It is possible we just did not see how. Our constant failure to answer the puzzle if you shall made us question its possibility in an attempt to cope with out failure.

-Talia Akerman

We'll Catch Up

For a great amount of time while I was doing this reading, I felt slightly incompetent. I could not seem to grasp the philosophical component of the novel. I knew for a fact that it was going to be insightful with regard to values since the cover says exactly that. While I was reading the beginning all I could get out of it was the narrator’s slightly egocentric tone and self-praising attitude.

Aside form failing to see any philosophical component I was starting to really hate the narrator. I could not find anything that he said agreeable. However, when he mentioned the knife that cuts the world into pieces I began to like him a little bit. I agree with the belief that any division (obviously not a literal one) only leads to more divisions. There is not a set way to define and categorize the world. Any cut will only lead to more cuts- not more, but rather an infinite amount of cuts. The world is so conditional and so greatly about perspective that it cannot be divided fairly.

I know it could be a stretch, but the philosophical part of the novel that I think I have begun to see comes out when the narrator tells John that he will go slowly so that John and Sylvia can catch up. I know that he literally meant he would not drive too quickly on the road but I think that John is behind him literally and figuratively. John is not only behind him on the road but also in thought. John seems to have a mentality and a set of ideals that are much more behind than those of the narrator. When I say this, I am not referring to the narrator’s views on maintaining motorcycles; I am referring to the narrator’s thoughts on what rationale is.

Regardless of the fact that the narrator gets many, if not all, of his thoughts from Phaedrus he has come to recognize that rationale is actually what drives people to irrationality. He speculates that Phaedrus became so irrational because of his pursuit for rationality. I myself do not know if I believe that something like rationality exists, at least not a common rationality. Each person has their own set of morals, who’s to say one set of morals is more rational than any other? Again, when the narrator said he was waiting for John to catch up he meant it literally but, I think that unknowingly he was waiting for John to catch up on a mental level. I think he awaited John’s recognition of his stunted mental growth.

-Talia Akerman

The truth about Phaedrus

In the seventh chapter, Pirsig reveals the much debated truth about Phaedrus, who he is and where he comes from. As it turns out, Phaedrus and the main character are the same physical person but different spirits. My assumption is that Phaedrus who is the first spirit to occupy the body was a regular person who developed some sort of psychological disorder that escalated until he became a whole other personality. Another possibility, is that Phaedrus suffered some type of trauma that caused him to take protective measures to psychologically protect himself from whatever event that caused was caused by the trauma. I do not think that Phaedrus is the original personality’s real name, I think that the narrator knows some of what is happening or has happened with his past and that is why he names his alternate personality. The nnarator is slowly finding things out about himself and his past. He gets random images of Phaedrus these to me represent a symptom of the physiological disorder that he experiences. Phaedrus is what is left of his old personality after the switch. 

I am convinced that many of the narrator’s inquiries into Phaedrus and who he is/was are his way of finding himself and coming to terms with his disorder. I do not agree with the narrator that Chris has a mental disorder, I think he is simply an immature boy who does not yet know how to overcome hardships without complaining. I see the narrator’s prediction of Chris’ mental illness as a projection of his own problems onto his son. The narrator’s disorder has not affected his passions, or other human carachteristics, for example, in the novel it is evident that he is genuinely passionate about motorcycles. I predict that Pirsig will in some way tie together the concept of Phaedrus and Motorcycle maintenance but I cannot yet see how this will be done. 

The mind

I found it ironic how when the narrator is trying to fix the jets in his motorcycle, he says you can never fix them all; that there's no immediate answer so he just leaves it as a hanging question. Not only does Pirsig do that to himself, but he does it to his readers. The entire reading so far has had many parts to it which are honestly dumbfounding and confusing. Many of the tangents Pirsig goes on leave me, and probably other readers as well asking themselves questions, wondering what and why something is going on. It’s interesting though, how even if I, as a reader cannot come up with an answer to what he is saying, I continue to think about it. In other words, I become captivated by what I cannot figure out and therefore try to answer such a question even though it is not possible.

I think it is fascinating how Pirsig makes one wonder about what's around him and how it was created. For example, how did books come to be? How were words created? Every invention, started off inside someone's head. Nothing was produced out of thin air; there is always a person behind every development. The motorcycle itself and all its parts were once just a dedicated person's idea that was put on paper, worked on, developed, and perfected. As Phaedrus said, it's all in the mind. 

However, I believe Pirsig contradicts himself two chapters ahead when he speaks of Einstein and hypotheses'. A couple pages before he is stating how everything comes and is run from the mind, but now he says that the formation of hypotheses is mysterious and unknown. It does not make sense to say that everything comes from somewhere, but a particular thing has no particular origin. I personally believe that the hypotheses also come from the curious mind of men. The flash he spoke about that suddenly triggers the beginning of a development of a hypothesis is uncertain, but the hypotheses itself is created in the mind. 

            I also really liked the line, "the more you look, the more you see" because it's completely true. If you glance at something at quickly or look at it without interest, you will retain a general picture, but when you pay attention to the details, you will observe things you weren't looking for and never expected.