Quality Engagement
I'm doing a disservice to myself not posting especially during this momentous anniversary year of 50 years since Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was published!
I admit I have been very absent in this forum for the past year or so. I have felt like I’ve had nothing new to say, and that any further exploration of MoQ was irrelevant since I have already integrated it into my being. I have expressed in various videos and writings that the entire purpose of the project was personal - to learn, and to learn well Pirsig’s work so I could indeed put on that lens more or less permanently.
But now, as interest in Pirsig is once again coming to the fore slowly through the efforts of the Robert Pirsig Association, the exhibition at the Smithsonian commemorating and by virtute of the fact that more “non-materialistic” theories, metaphysics, TOEs, POVs, however you want to characterize them are becoming more accesible due to the plethora of philosophical podcasts run by first-rate minds.
Here is one of the latest I’ve been listening to lately as an example:
This fellow is a genius…Rupert Sheldrake said he’s the best so far in interpreting Sheldrake’s work. Notice how a theory non-materiality is beautifully described by the early electrical theories of Tesla, Steinmetz, Maxwell et al…
I’ve been talking an thinking about these things in my monthly book club a a handful of brilliant people I met via my channel…so the superior minds in this group are helping each other take Pirsig’s work further by relating it to some of these wonderful ideas out there: Don Hoffman, Formscapes above, Ken Wheeler, our buddies the Pageaus, Tim Freke and and and…
So I’m starting to get the yen to engage again…these ideas are irresistable, and I feel the disconnection isn’t serving the Pirsig cause well. Not that I’m any great addition or figurehead representative, but I do CARE (because…Quality), and all this great stuff going on, the 50th anniversary and the activity of the RPA and dedicated members such as Ian Glendinning of Psybertron and David Matos of ZMM Quality starting to make it interesting again to engage.
Plus the fact that people are actually starting to both follow and subscribe to this Substack. What a paltry and pale destination this has been with no new content…not fair to people who are looking for another interlocutor to join the Pirsig convo!
So thank to everyone who subscribed and who have reached out to me via my YouTube site.
I am beginning a project of compiling interviews with people influenced by Zamm. I have 2 so far in this new cycle and plan to keep going! I know I’ve started and stopped projects a lot lately, but this time I actually am beholden to others via the RPA…and that’s a good thing!
Great to see these things joined-up Sevilla. (Who is the person behind "Formscapes"?)
Don't undersell your contribution to the RPA :-)
I was talking with Artun, and he reminded me that if we keep it collaborative we can all have different but nevertheless valuable and sustainable roles.
That feeling of having nothing new to say about Pirsig was where I was in the past decade, before this 50th year - as you say, it was mostly embedded in the worldview I was using whatever I was doing anyway. But like you, I think it's valuable to introduce new people to why it works that way. Keep up the good work.