Loneliness

"It's the primary America we're in. It hit the night before last in Prineville Junction and it's been with us ever since. There's this primary America of freeways, jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars. And people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what's immediately around them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely. You see it in their faces. First, the little flicker of searching, and then when they look at you, you're just kind of an object. You don't count. You're not what they're looking for. You're not on TV." ~Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The Paradox

"Nothing personal in it." Here is a paradox. On the one hand, to be a good mechanic seems to require a personal commitment: I am a mechanic. On the other hand, what it means to be a good mechanic is that you have a keen sense that you answer to something that is the opposite of personal or idiosyncratic; something universal. In Pirsig's story, there is an underlying fact: a sheared off pin has blocked an oil gallery, resulting in oil starvation to the head and excessive heat, causing the seizures. This is the Truth, and it is the same for everyone. But finding this truth requires a certain disposition in the individual: attentiveness, enlivened by a sense of responsibility to the motorcycle. He has to internalize the well working of the motorcycle as an object of passionate concern. The Truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators." ~Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft