ZAM part II

ZAM Part II

Each of these parts has a complete story arc. Part One begins with the Motorcycle trip leaving Minnesota and ends in Montana. The basic problem that inspired the Narrator’s search is illustrated by John and Sylvia’s reaction to technology, and the terrible way that the mechanics treated the narrator’s motorcycle. The Narrator’s relationship with Phaedrus is revealed, and the problems with his sanity, which are echoed in Chris’s history of mental illness. The quotes from the Goethe about a Boy riding with his father, both of whom are being chased by a ghost reflect the fact that both Father and son are being haunted by the possibility of Mental Illness. This also resonates with the Chautauqua about Ghosts like Gravity, and the Narrators remark that Phaedrus chased a ghost, and when he caught it, he became a ghost himself. This ghostlike aspect of rationality is its Platonic aspect. Plato thought abstract forms were realer than what is perceived by the sense organs.

The distinction between Classical and Romantic is described as a way of explaining J &S’s problems with technology. Although it’s easy to dismiss their objections as inconsistent, the Romantics are right about one thing. When Classical reason dissects things with the Analytic knife, something important is lost. When you understand things by dividing them into parts, you lose the whole. The Narrator hopes to recapture what is lost by finding Buddha nature in technology itself, as exemplified by the state of mind that emerges when one has a good relationship with a motorcycle. The relationship with motorcycles illustrates the Aristotelian aspect of rationality. It is more down to earth than the Platonic aspect, but still involves using the analytic knife to reveal underlying forms. (The Beer Can story.)

Part II takes place entirely in a few cities in Montana very close to each other. We could read this book romantically—as a story with an unbroken narrative—or we could read it classically by analyzing the ideas it contains. Here is the Romantic narrative flow, with recurring motifs. There is a sense of “having arrived” at the beginning of this section, contrasting with the trials of the previous section. In Part I, Cold, Heat, Rain, Mosquitos, Wind, etc. all gave a sense that there were obstacles to be overcome, along with the revelations of Chris’s and the Narrator’s mental illness. In this section there a sense of kicking back for a hard earned rest at the end of a difficult journey. They stay in a nice hotel owned by a nice old couple who built the cabin themselves. They are one example of a recurring motif of people who have a sense of quality in their daily lives. A man who has restaurant with really good hamburgers, a man who does really good welding work. There is a sense of all of these people that they what they do is not appreciated, but that it has value anyway. This is one of the first of his indirect attacks on Utilitarianism. Things can have value even if people do not notice the value, and therefore get no pleasure from them. They also have good steaks in a restaurant, visit friends and have trout and Chablis. John and Sylvia are utterly charmed by Montana, and say “you must have been crazy to live here (oops!).

From a Classical point of view, It begins with the Narrator working on his motor cycle, and explaining why motorcycle maintenance is a miniature study of the Art of rationality itself. As usual, When Motorcycle maintenance is discussed, the line between the Chautauqua and the Narrative gets blurred. The Narrator is repairing the motorcycle that he drives in the story, but the advice he gives about repairing it reveal the principles discussed in the Chautauqua. Motorcycle repair takes place right at the Classical/Romantic barrier. We are looking at the motorcycle as it is immediately given but we are also interpreting it in terms of the underlying form discovered by science.

As he examines Motorcycle maintenance, however, he begins to see that rationality is very different from it’s own view of itself. It requires accepting mysteries. (Why did X break? We’ll never know, we have to keep trouble shooting.) He also says he feels like he’s in Church when he does this—a reference to his later concept of the Church of Reason. And most importantly, he points out that a motorcycle is not really a collection of physical parts, it’s a system. Sylvia and John often criticize what they call “the system.” They’re basically right. The reason it works is that all of these parts have the right relationships to each other. It is thus an abstraction, like the Ghosts discussed in the previous chapter. Even steel is a ghost, there was no steel before people existed, none in nature. The potential for steel is another ghost. He begins to talk about other kinds of Rational abstract principles. Causation, Categories, Inductive and Deductiv reasoning. As the Narrator starts dealing with these kinds of abstraction, he begins to enter what he calls the high country of the mind. At the same time his motorcycle is starting to misfire, because the air is too thin, and he begins apologizing because he’s having trouble keeping some of these ideas straight. (Another parallel between the self and motorcycle, see opening dedication.) This is what happens as you enter the high country of the mind. There are also ominous portents of things that appear to be ghosts—boxes that blow into them in the wind as they drive down the road, and almost drive them into the ditch. This is a foreshadowing of the fact that he is going back to Phaedrus home, and Phaedrus himself is coming back.

The problems come when Phaedrus starts to question the philosophical assumptions underlying scientific rationality. The Narrator explains how science comes up with hypothesis, then tests them to see how nature responds. Phaedrus as a young science student was very good at coming up with hypothesis. This proved to be disturbing, because it was obviously always possible to come up with new hypotheses, and impossible to test them all. How can we know that the hypothesis we successfully tested is the best one, when all the others are left untested? This is what Peirce called the problem of abduction. We choose testable hypothesis on the basis of analogies and similarities, but everything is similar to everything else in some sense. How do we tell the difference between relevant and irrelevant similarities? There ‘s no easy answer to that question. This so disturbed Phaedrus that he neglected his studies, dropped out of school, and started drifting.

The Narrator calls this drifting lateral thinking, and eventually Phaedrus realized that he was dealing with philosophical problems. What he needed was not knowledge about the world, but knowledge about knowledge itself. He believed that there was a certain genetic defect in reason itself, and that this was what caused people like John and Sylvia to be alienated from the system called reason. (p.110)