A Close Study Of The Pioneering Efforts Of Princeton Physicist J. J. Hopfield’s Mathematical Model Of The Mammalian Brain, Is Necessary To Understood How => In Response To Life’s Problems Coming At Us => Our Problem Solving Brain, Automatically, Spontaneously, Generate, Construct, Create Into Conscious Mind, Best Or Near Best Solutions (Answers),For Life’s Oncoming Problems:

… OF COURSE, IT IS A FIRST ORDER PUZZLE, Just How The Above Is At All Possible (Even Indeed Thinkable), For A Physical Biological Brain, To Accomplish This!!
… AND THE ANSWER TO THIS PUZZLE, Is Factually And Mathematically Established by the Physics Theory of Princeton Physicist J. J Hopfield. To understand just how this could be possible, please read below =>

Physicist J J Hopfield, Provides a Clear Mathematically Established Foundation For Just How A Physical Biological Brain, Can Accomplish What We Know Actually Happens. … Professor Hopfield’s Theory Gives Us A Needed & Rock Bottom Basis & Proof For ANY “Theory Explanation Of How Our Mind Works”. And thus indeed Professor Hopfield Indeed Shows Us That A Coherent Theory of Mind Is Thinkable, & Indeed Ultimately Possible.

… TO UNDERSTAND MIND, THE ABSOLUTELY MOST VITAL CLUE Is Supplied By Princeton Theoretical Physicist J. J. Hopfield’s Neural Network Model. =>
… The Hopfield Physics Theory, with its Mathematical Proof, tells us in broad brush strokes how a collection of interconnected neurons automatically, spontaneously, unsupervised, following its own rules, indeed might truly be able to find optimal, “Best Or Near Best” Solutions (Answers).
… In addition, Hopfield’s Physics & Mathematical Theory, With Its Mathematical Proof => Solidly establishes how a network of neurons will produce a good, but not perfect, result very quickly. For a biological organism, this is clearly an ecologically advantageous trade off … (This is in contrast to the usual digital computer that will produce a Perfect, highly accurate, result but may take a very long time on certain problems).

Prof Hopfield’s Theory Can Be Introduced By An Analogy =>

THIS ACTION SHOULD BE SEEN AS ANALOGOUS TO =>

To learn More Details About Hopfield Theory =>
In this Seminar I gave a brief simplified overview of Professor Hopfield’s Mathematical Physics Theory of Mammalian Brain Operation which shows us how our Mind Works:
… This above Blue Link will take you to My MPPS Article => “Memory, Perception, Insight, and Problem Solving – AHA---!!!” This is A Fun, Easy To Read Introduction To The Essentials Of My Theory Explanation of How Our Mind Works, Please Study:
This above Blue Link will REALLY Help You Learn A Deep, Full Understanding Of The Flash Of Insight Phenomena And Other Similar Mental Arrivals (such as => Suddenly Realized, It Hit Me. Light-Bulb, Lightning Bolt, Bolt-From-The-Blue, It-Just-Dawned-On-Me, Epiphany, Etc) : You must learn this understanding, because this AHA experience (and the brain machinery which creates it), is what my Theory (Explanation) is totally built around. => As You Will See => It Is Important To Experience AHA’s First Hand, And Clearly Observe VERY Important Facts That =>

SUMMARY OF THE THIS PAGE DOWN TO THIS POINT =>
… As Viewed By Constructivism, Our Problem Solving Brain Generates, Constructs, Creates => Solutions (Answers) To The “Problems of Life Coming At Us”, Which Suddenly Automatically Spontaneously Mentally Arrival Into Conscious Mind!
… These Are Examples of the “Stepping Stones” Used By All Humans To Generate, Create,-Construct,-Build, An Entire Self-Organized Mental-World.
… In Other Words => Our Problem Solving Brain Generates Constructs Creates “Reality”, Or Better Said “Construct In Our Mind’s Eye, The World Around Us”.
… It is hoped that the reader will realize that, such Self-Constructed Reality (in total), is vitally necessary (and corollary) to assembling the mental machinery for a properly self-organized behavior, plus “Primary Consciousness , '' in the “Building, Creating, & Getting-On-With-Life”!!!
… Moreover, this spontaneous self-organized, self-built machinery, is a result of our evolutionary heritage, and is in common with all animals (or at least mammals). Survival is thus accomplished.
… To see how this admittedly fantastic assertions (really hypothesis), could be true, is well supported by an understanding of the pioneering efforts of Princeton Physicist J. J. Hopfield. This document will mention why Hopfield’s work is important, and how his Mathematical Model of the Mammalian Brain, provides the solid mathematical based secure foundation, for what could be called => “A Strikingly Different New Science of How Our Mind Works", => Learn More Here =>
In this Seminar I gave a brief simplified overview of Professor Hopfield’s Mathematical Physics Theory of Mammalian Brain Operation which shows us how our Mind Works:
… The above was Presented In My 1987 Seminar “Memory, Perception, Insight, And Flash Of Insight Problem Solving *** AHA!! ***”

The Hopfield Model, Is A Physical Theory, That Provides Solid Foundation Support For All These Brain Actions Are Indeed Possible, For These =>

B) Now => Understanding Pirsig & Hopfield, should prepare you for (the remainder of this page below), where you find Titled Sections => “Henry Gurr’s 26 Major Categories “List Mental Arrivals“.

A CONSTRUCTIVIST BOTTOM LINE THIS PAGE DOWN TO THIS POINT =>
… As Robert Pirsig says =>
"…Quality is the continuing stimulus which causes us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it."

Click Here For => Starting With Topic Of Constructivism, ~Two Pages Of Notes, Details, & Further Explanations For Henry Gurr’s List Of Mental Arrivals . Here You Will Learn More About Constructivist Thinking.

To Repeat => Our Problem Solving Brain Generates CONSTRUCTS Creates “Reality”, Or Better Said “Construct In Our Mind’s Eye, The World Around Us”.

For The Above Stated Reasons, I Believe, The Princeton Physicist J. J. Hopfield Ideas (And Theory) Are An Exceedingly Important Conclusion Of How Our Brain Does Its Work!

… Physicist J J Hopfield, Provides a Clear Mathematically Established Foundation For Just How A Physical Biological Brain, Can Accomplish What We Know Actually Happens. … Professor Hopfield’s Theory Gives Us A Needed & Rock Bottom Basis & Proof For ANY “Theory Explanation Of How Our Mind Works”.
… Professor Hopfield Indeed Shows Us That A Coherent Theory of Mind Is Thinkable, & Indeed Ultimately Possible,
… And I believe this, in turn, will open up "New Science of Mind" with a potential for a Brain Science Paradigm Shift of similar to Charles Darwin's book "Origin of the Species". And I don't say this lightly!

Moreover, I believe these ideas (Like Darwin’s 1859) are the leading edge of yet another “Copernican Inversion!! The term “Copernican Inversion” is in Robert Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (ZMM). In Ch 11, Robert Pirsig quotes Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”, which discussed such a major change in scientific point-of-view.
(Pirsig, following Kant, called such major changes a “Copernican Revolution”, or a “Copernican Inversion” where => “The objective world producing our sense data did not change, but our a priori concept of it was turned inside out. The effect was overwhelming”. (You can find Pirsig’s discussion in his “High- Country of the Mind”, overview of philosophers, on p 119, of his ZMM Book.)

YES: I believe Professor Hopfield’s Theory is a New Copernican Inversion, that broadly helps us understand how =>

And Thus A Close Study Of The Pioneering Efforts Of Princeton Physicist J. J. Hopfield’s Mathematical Model Of The Mammalian Brain, Is Necessary To Understood The Workings Of The Human Mind!

Let me know what you think.

Sincerely Henry Gurr

The Hopfield Model of the Human Brain, Is Entirely Consistent With The Findings of Gestalt Psychology:

… I just discovered this introductory summary statement in Wikipedia and instantly realized you, dear reader, should be aware of it.

An Important Excerpt from Wikipedia’s Page on Gestalt Psychology,
… " Gestalt psychology or gestaltism (German: Gestalt "shape, form") is a theory of mind of the Berlin School. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies. This principle maintains that the human mind considers objects in their entirety before, or in parallel with, perception of their individual parts; suggesting the whole is other than the sum of its parts. Gestalt psychology tries to understand the laws of our ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world.”
… “In the domain of perception, Gestalt psychologists stipulate that perceptions are the products of complex interactions among various stimuli. Contrary to the behaviorist approach to understanding the elements of cognitive processes, gestalt psychologists sought to understand their organization (Carlson and Heth, 2010). The gestalt effect is the capability of our brain to generate whole forms, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of global figures instead of just collections of simpler and unrelated elements (points, lines, curves...).”
… “In psychology, gestaltism is often opposed to structuralism. The phrase The whole is other than the sum of the parts is often used when explaining gestalt theory, though there is a common mistranslation of Kurt Koffka's original phrase to ‘The whole is greater than the sum of the parts'. Gestalt theory allows for the breakup of elements from the whole situation into what it really is.”
To Read The Whole Wikipedia Page On Gestalt Psychology, Click Here.

The Hopfield Neuron Network Model Shows Us How => A Problem Solving Brain, That Automatically, Spontaneously, Finds => Best Or Near Best Partial Fit Solutions (Answers):

… This Is Entirely Consistent With The Findings of Robert Pirsig =>
Who’s Quality Describes That ''' =>

… NOTE: I just re-discovered the following Robert Pirsig statements that support the Hopfield conclusions and instantly realized you, dear reader, should be aware of them.

In The Next Passages D, E), & F), We Learn Of Robert Pirsig’s => Meaning Of The Word Quality, As Presented In His Book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (ZMM).

And Eventually We Begin To See That Mr Pirsig’s Quality => Names Our Human Ability Automatically & Spontaneously To Know “What Is Best?
… ''' And From This Realize That Mr Pirsig’s Quality => Can Be Understood As An Operation Of Our Mind
***************
… Now, with above understandig, please read Mr. Pirsig’s below
Statements D), E), and F). And as you read, pay special attention to Mind Active Words => “cause”, “create”, “creates”, “created”. “building” and “Guides”: ALSO attend to Mind Active Words => “Best” and “Better”.
*********

D) "…Quality is the continuing stimulus which {+causes us to {+create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it." … “Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are. … It’s an analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can’t be anything else. And the mythos grows this way.”
… “By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it. The Quality is the track that directs the train. What is outside the train, to either side—that is the terra incognita of the insane. “The facts do not exist until value {Quality] has created them. If your values are rigid you can’t really learn new facts.

E) “…Quality is not just some abstraction; it's something that guides your life every minute of every second [of every day] even though you do not intellectually recognize that it is so”…..”When you're trying to {+create a painting or a piece of music you've got to have this feeling of what's better. ““And just this feeling of what is better, will guide to whatever you want to do.”

F) “…Quality, in terms of this analogy, isn’t any "part" of the train. It’s the leading edge of the engine, a two-dimensional surface of no real significance unless you understand that the train isn’t a static entity at all. A train really isn’t a train if it can’t go anywhere. In the process of examining the train and subdividing it into parts [dualism] we’ve inadvertently stopped it, so that it really isn’t a train we are examining. That’s why we get stuck.”
… “The real train of knowledge isn’t a static entity that can be stopped and subdivided. It’s always going somewhere. On a track called Quality. And that engine and all those 120 boxcars are never going anywhere except where the track of Quality takes them; and romantic Quality, the leading edge of the engine, takes them along that track. [Thus] .. [Quality] is the cutting edge of experience [and what then becomes in our mind generated, constructed, created reality}. … ”
… “It’s the leading edge of the train of knowledge that keeps the whole train on the track. At the leading edge there are no subjects, no objects, only the track of Quality ahead…” [our problem-solving-brain, is dynamically choosing , and creating, what next we are going to do =>] “So we preselect on the basis of Quality, or to put it another way, the track of Quality preselects what data we’re going to be conscious of, and it makes this selection in such a way as to best harmonize with what we are becoming.”

G) “…"Man is the measure of all things." Yes, that’s what he is saying about Quality. Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists and materialists would say.”
… “The Quality which {+creates the world+} emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things—it fits. And they taught rhetoric—that fits.”

H) EXPLANATION: These Passages Above A) Thru G), Are Really Statements Of-Modernism’s So Named “Constructivism”, Or More Properly “Constructivist Epistemology”.
… “Constructivist Epistemology is a branch, in philosophy of science, maintaining that natural science consists of mental constructs that are constructed with the aim of explaining sensory experience (or measurements) of natural world. According to it, scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, seeking to measure and construct models of the natural world.”

Of interest to Philosophers: Hopfield’s Neuron Network Model Shows Us How => A Problem Solving Brain, That Automatically, Spontaneously, Finds => Best Or Near Best Partial Fit Solutions (Answers):

… Is Entirely Consistent With The Findings of Robert Pirsig =>
Who’s Quality Describes That ''' =>

And The Above Goes A Long Way To Explain => How It Is We Humans So Quickly & Easily => “Know “What Is Better” or “What Is BEST” !
… In other words, from an understanding of “How Our Mind Works”, and confirmed by the Hopfield Neuron Network Model => We have an explanation of => How we instantly recognize “What Is Best” and “What Is Good”, and “What Is OF High Quality”, when examples of such are presented to us. In his book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” '' (ZMM).
… For example, when Robert Pirsig asks => "And what is good Phaedrus And what is not good - Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?” Below is my discussion, which expands on this quote.
… In an interview (link below) Mr. Pirsig, again asks the above italicized question, and then goes beyond to some VERY important insights which would benefit everyone to study at length and take to heart! Pirsig gives us some very practical messages, really a theory, for guiding our every action, and ultimately our lives!!!! To help you get started, I show below the portion of Anthony’s transcript, a part where Pirsig discusses just how “BETTER” ... comes into our daily actions ... each moment … leading to the next moment.
From Interview (Blue Link Below) Mr. Pirsig Said =>
… “And, of course the answer is "No!" [to the above question “need we ask anyone to tell us these things” ] Everybody knows what Quality is. You can't take a step forward without deciding that step is better than standing where you were. You can't take a meal without feeling it'd be better to eat than not to eat and you can't go upstairs without deciding that it will be better to go upstairs… and so on.
… And so Quality is not just some abstraction; it's something that guides your life every minute of every second [of every day] even though you do not intellectually recognize that it is so.
… “So, I found that certain people know this automatically and they are usually skilled artists. When you're trying to create a painting or a piece of music you've got to have this feeling of what's better. And just this feeling of what is better, immediately will guide to whatever you want to do.” (Bolds are by Henry Gurr)

Thanks Go To Dr. Anthony McWatt, For Making Available This Above Important Transcription of Mr. Robert Pirsig’s Interview Discussion, Titled => ‘’An Overview of the MOQ by Robert Pirsig’’, July 2005.
Pirsig’s words (given paragraphs above), were excerpts from his “complete and definitive” => “The transcript of the third film on the "The MOQ at Oxford" DVD”. =>
Click Here For This Transcript at Archive.org.

More Information Concerning Robert Pirsig and His Book “Zen And the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” Is Here:

1) http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Main/HomePage
2) http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents/ZMMLinksPage

The Above Robert Pirsig Three Paragraphs Really Get My Attention Because Professor J. J. Hopfield’s Theory Says Pirsig’s Message and Observations Are A Directly Observable, Intrinsic Consequence Of How Our Mind / Brain Works!!
… Professor Hopfield’s work (in essence) says that our brain is a biological mechanism to seek the “best" line of action for whatever situation is encountered. Here you should recognize that each new situation, is really “a problem to be solved” as Pirsig says "every minute of every second [of every day]" !

And all the more so, because (as I recently realized) Professor Hopfield’s PHYSICS THEORY of BRAIN operation, shows FACTUAL REASONS for the LITERAL TRUTH of what Pirsig says! Specifically, Pirsig statements:

We Instantly Know What Is Best!!! What Is Quality!!! It Is Built Into Us!!! It From Our Evolutionary Heritage, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY!!!! AMEN !

No Matter What Is A Living Organism Encounters, Its Survival Depends, Moment By Moment, Instant by Instant, The Deducing Of The “Best Line Of Action”, Irrespective Of The organism’s Circumstances!!!
… Automatic, Spontaneous, FAST and ACCURATE, and Yes BEST, Is Of Utmost Importance For Survival!!! (Of course, by “Best”, I mean “best”, most of the time.)
… As a summary of the above discussion we must realize that any living organism, in any place and at any time, must deduce (or know) what is best. (Which is a mental (brain) operation, Mr. Pirsig calls Quality.)
… No matter the situation and no matter what is to be done about it, whether foraging for food, choosing a mate, or taking quick, appropriate action, if suddenly in danger or attacked. In all circumstances the organism must immediately automatically spontaneously, formulate a BEST plan of action, and simultaneously start to activate an optimal overall body action response.
… And very soon thereafter coordinate (and accomplish), the organism’s continuing optimal muscular action responses, such as body motions, and then decoding of the ongoing new circumstances in response to those continuing and changing body motions, orientations, and spatial locations of the body, not to mention the changing circumstances of the external world, that surrounds the organism. That’s a tall order, but one that we daily see very successfully accurately accomplished, all around us!!
… AND because we humans have received the evolutionary benefits of the living organisms that went before us we humans, of necessity, have all this same body and mind machinery. In other words, we are not different! (Or at least, not too much when it comes to this ability.)
… Thus we likewise have built into us, through biological evolution, brain machinery to instantly, automatically, and inescapably, deduce and know What Is Best! This is precisely what is necessary for any creature (or species) to survive, nay excel, on this fair Earth! This overall mental (& brain) operation to find Best Or Near Best Solutions, Pirsig names Quality. This is Pirsig’s central focus in his above interview, and also throughout his books “ZMM” and “Lila”.
… Thus In Reading Robert Pirsig’s ZMM, We Should Keep In Mind His Stated Book Purpose On Page Seven => “I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question "What is best?”
… Strange to say, our society does not seem to intellectually recognize the full impact of the Above Robert Pirsig Three Interview Paragraphs! … As Pirsig Points out in “ZMM”, at least since the time of Aristotle, What Is Best has been subordinated to what is Logical (Rational or Scientific). And at least since the First World War our Western Culture, in addition, seems to have been infected by the whole attitude of Nihilism:

SIDE NOTE1: My Summary of the Whole Attitude Trap of Nihilism: A Similar Trap Comes From Materialism.
… In the Nihilist View, as well as a large portion of our society, this universe is “just” here because of the “accident” of the Big Bang, which made the Laws of Physics and all the atoms. Thus we are just this accidental pile of atoms following the laws of physics, and the laws of tooth-and-claw biology! The only things “real” and material are objects made of atoms. As an extension of this, Ideals, Values and Quality don’t exist because they are not material, rather they are a collection of thoughts put together by piles of atoms! Thus, there is no meaning (or value) to our existence; Nothing has Quality. Somehow, the facts (described above) that we know and seek What Is Best escapes the persons of the Nihilist persuasion. Likewise it escapes them that that Ideals, Values, and Quality are the prime movers of people and societies!
… In fact, the Nihilist and many (or most) mail line philosophers go out of their way to prove and promote this conclusion. Even Philosophers the likes of Existential Nihilist, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, were driven to deep emotional depression, to the point of suicide, but still promoted this viewpoint with no attempt to find a way out of it! Somehow the adherents to Nihilism considered this valuable insight and the “airtight logic” of the Nihilism viewpoint convinced these persons there was no use to look for a way out of their predicament, no matter how depressing!
… This at least was where I was some 30 years ago. They and I forgot that there were 200,000 years of happy human beings on this earth, before Nihilism set in, in the aftermath of 1st World War! They, and I, failed to observe children, or to even remember themselves as a child, and see that Nihilism is NOT true as an observable fact. Even the Ancient Egyptian paintings of happy domestic scenes were ignored. In other words, what should be (or have been) obvious from direct observation: persons infected with Nihilism, most of our culture, are blind to its consequences and blind to seeing their way out! What’s worse, they will fail to even question the depressing, suicidal conclusion of either Materialism or Nihilism. Moreover, it is an observable fact that the literature that would help such persons out of their position, such as Pirsig, Polanyi, Barfield, and more, have practically NO effect and are ignored for the most part. For examples continue reading down to the double line.

SIDE NOTE2: Owen Barfield, In His Writing, Says or Implies: “What Do You Mean, There Is No Meaning? Just Look Around You!!! This World Is Pregnant With Meaning!!
Barfield’s book “The Rediscovery Of Meaning”, starts off with a passage that (approximately) says “How is it that the more we are able to control the physical world, the less we see any meaning in it??

SIDE NOTE3: The Conclusions of Nihilism, Come From A Totally Wrong Interpretation Of What Science Is, Or Can Say!!!
… These Nihilistic (or Materialistic) conclusions (seemingly based on good science and inescapable logic), are the unquestioned starting point of most 20th Century Philosophers. Even I, as a PhD physicist, was caught in this devastating, demoralizing, deadening, trap! I was stuck, with no way out until I read various works of Owen Barfield, Michael Polanyi, and Robert Pirsig. They pointed out these conclusions of Nihilism come from a totally wrong interpretation of what science is, or can say! (These three authors share similar distress with our culture’s Modernism, Materialism, Nihilism trend, thus propelling them to seek (and write up), their answers. All three see an improper understanding of science as a major cause.)

SIDE NOTE4: In actual fact The REAL Situation Is Exactly the REVERSE of The Whole Attitude of Nihilism!!
… Robert Pirsig points to the “real” situation: Quality is ‘’’NOT’’’ non-existent and un-real!!! Rather, Quality is the most real, and central “thing/force/action” around you!!
… This, for me personally, illustrates the importance of Pirsig’s writing, just to mention one importance of many in his books “ZMM” and “Lila”.
… As Pirsig says in “ZMM”: “Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects."
And in later chapter, Pirsig continues:

APPENDIX I: Our Darwinian Evolutionary Developmental Heritage, Has Given Animals A Problem Solving Brain. This Is The Reason Primates, Especially Humans, Excel At Problem Solving.

TO REPEAT THE TITLE AT TOP OF THIS WEBPAGE =>
… The Close Study Of The Pioneering Efforts Of Princeton Physicist J. J. Hopfield’s Mathematical Neuron Network Model Of The Mammalian Brain, Is Necessary To Understood How => In Response To Life’s Problems Coming At Us => Our Problem Solving Brain, Automatically, Spontaneously, Generate, Construct, Create Into Conscious Mind, Best Or Near Best Solutions (Answers),For Life’s Oncoming Problems:
… The above is the basis for => We have a natural ability to see => "What is best?." And this naturally extends to "What is good, and how do we know it?,"
… From the above it follows that humans are Natural Problem Solvers, and Robert Pirsig is among the most outstanding. This is studied next below.

APPENDIX II: Lets Extensively Study Robert Pirsig’s Book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, To Find His Words “Comes To Mind”: These Are Examples Of What Henry Gurr Calls “Automatic Spontaneous Mental Arrivals”!

… Below are examples of Mental Arrivals, when Robert Pirsig says => “What comes to mind … “ or similar.

What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important.
… What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua—that’s the only name I can think of for it—like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer.

… would never have become magnified if we didn’t spend so much time riding together and sitting in country roadhouses drinking beer and talking about whatever comes to mind. What comes to mind, usually, is whatever we’ve been thinking about in the half hour or forty-five minutes since we last talked to each other.

I’m more tired now than I can remember having been in a long time. The others too. But we drag ourselves through a supermarket, pick up whatever groceries come to mind and with some difficulty pack them onto the cycles.

When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts. Mark Twain’s experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts—something is always created too.

Unless you’re just looking for trouble in this heat you don’t run tires at eighty-five. A blowout on this stretch would really be it.
… I suppose they took what I said as a kind of rebuke but I didn’t have that in mind. I’m no more comfortable than they are in this heat but there’s no point in dwelling on it. All day while I’ve been thinking and talking about Phædrus they must have been thinking about how bad all this is. That’s what’s really wearing them down. The thought.

The image of a laser beam comes to mind instead; a single pencil of light of such terrific energy in such extreme concentration it can be shot at the moon and its reflection seen back on earth. Phædrus did not try to use his brilliance for general illumination. He sought one specific distant target and aimed for it and hit it.

As he was testing hypothesis number one by experimental method a flood of other hypotheses would come to mind, and as he was testing these, some more came to mind, and as he was testing these, still more came to mind until it became painfully evident that as he continued testing hypotheses and eliminating them or confirming them their number did not decrease. It actually increased as he went along.

"It’ll be cold." In the middle of the snowfields in my mind appear the cycles and us riding on them. "But just tremendous."
We meet John again and it’s settled. Soon, beyond a railroad underpass, we are on a twisting blacktop through fields toward the mountains up ahead.

and I keep wondering as we get closer if some tombs are better left shut. Chris, sitting behind me, suddenly comes to mind, and I wonder how much he knows, how much he remembers.
We reach an intersection where the road from the park joins the main east-west highway, stop and turn on to it.
… From here we go over a low pass and into Bozeman itself. The road goes up now, heading west, and suddenly I’m looking forward to what’s ahead. End Chapter 13.

This picture-postcard scenery vaguely fits memory but not definitely. This interstate freeway we are on must not have existed then.
The statement "To travel is better than to arrive" comes back to mind again and stays. We have been traveling and now we will arrive.

DeWeese says. "You know how cold it is up there. You used to spend all your time up there."
"It brings back memories," I say.
… A single fragment comes to mind now of night winds all around a campfire, smaller than this one before us now, sheltered in the rock against the high wind because there are no trees.

After conjuring up this vision of a Qualityless world, he was soon attracted to its resemblance to a number of social situations he had already read about. Ancient Sparta came to mind, Communist Russia and her satellites. Communist China, the Brave New World of Aldous Huxley and the 1984 of George Orwell.

Squareness. That’s the look. That sums it. Squareness. When you subtract quality you get squareness. Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.
… Some artist friends with whom he had once traveled across the United States came to mind. They were Negroes, who had always been complaining about just this Qualitylessness he was describing. Square. That was their word for it.

A whole new flood of philosophic associations came to mind. Hegel had talked like this, with his Absolute Mind. Absolute Mind was independent too, both of objectivity and subjectivity.
However, Hegel said the Absolute Mind was the source of everything,

Chapter 24
The chrome of the cycle gleams beside me and then I see the pines and then Idaho comes to mind.
The door and the shadowy figure beside it were just imaginary. We’re on a logging road, that’s right . . . bright day . . . sparkling air. Wow! . . . it’s beautiful. … Good old reality.

Harry Truman, of all people, comes to mind, when he said, concerning his administration’s programs, "We’ll just try them . . . and if they don’t work . . . why then we’ll just try something else."

Boredom is the next gumption trap that comes to mind. This is the opposite of anxiety and commonly goes with ego problems. Boredom means you’re off the Quality track, you’re not seeing things freshly, you’ve lost your "beginner’s mind" and your motorcycle is in great danger. Boredom means your gumption supply is low and must be replenished before anything else is done.

Chapter 32
As we ride now through coastal manzanita and waxen- leafed shrubs, Chris’s expression comes to mind. "I knew it," he said.
The cycle swings into each curve effortlessly, banking so that our weight is always down through the machine no matter what its angle is with the ground. The way is full of flowers and surprise views, tight turns one after another so that the whole world rolls and pirouettes and rises and falls away.
"I knew it," he said. It comes back now as one of those little facts tugging at the end of a line, saying it’s not as small as I think it is. It’s been in his mind for a long time. Years. All the problems he’s given become more understandable. "I knew it," he said.

APPENDIX III: Lets Extensively Study Robert Pirsig’s Book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, To Discern What Words (Verbs Or Other Actives), He Uses When He Speaks About ~ The Problem Solving Dynamic Actions Of Our Mind ,Which He Calles Quality.

… Throughout ZMM, Mr Pirsig’s attention is on "What is best?," as he said on ZMM page 7. This naturally extends to "What is good, and how do we know it?," And then this naturally extends to practical applications, to show these “play our” in daily life.
… I scanned through ZMM in search of ~good example paragraphs, and as you see below, have underlined Verbs Or Other Actives (as written by Pirsig) that roughly show “mind process at work.
… Now, To Discern What Words (Verbs Or Other Actives), Mr. Pirsig Uses, it is a tough, many faceted task =>
… In many cases below, you will see Mr. Pirsig’s purposeful Problem Solving At Work: You can see he is moving to better & better. You can sees he is moving forward into new practical useful ideas and discoveries, and new understandings. These are on =>

… Of course my “underlines” are somewhat arbitrary, and other choices might be more realistic. Please send email with your suggestions or comments.

*** ZMM PASSAGES, WITH “UNDERLINES” BY HENRY GURR ***

a) The ZMM Narrator’s Problem Solve On His Honda Motorcycle As He Travels The ZMM Route.
… This eternally dualistic subject-object way of approaching the motorcycle sounds right to us because we’re used to it . But it’s not right.
It’s always been an artificial interpretation superimposed on reality . It’s never been reality itself. When this duality is completely accepted a certain nondivided relationship between the mechanic and motorcycle, a craftsmanlike feeling for the work , is destroyed. When traditional rationality divides the world into subjects and objects it shuts out Quality, and when you’re {+really stuck it’s Quality , not any subjects or objects, that tells you where you ought to go .
By returning our attention to Quality it is hoped that we can get technological work out of the noncaring subject-object dualism and back into craftsmanlike self-involved reality again, which will reveal to us the facts we need when we are stuck .
***************

b) During The Mountain Climb With Chris, The ZMM Narrator’s Reports Phaedrus Long Struggle To Work Out The Real Nature Of Quality.
… But then, below the definition on the blackboard, he wrote, "But even though Quality cannot be defined, you know what Quality is !" and the storm started all over again.
"Oh, no, we don’t!"
"Oh, yes, you do."
"Oh, no, we don’t!"
"Oh, yes, you do!" he said and he had some material ready to demonstrate it to them.
He had selected two examples of student composition. The first was a rambling, disconnected thing with interesting ideas that never built into anything. The second was a magnificent piece by a student who was mystified himself about why it had come out so well. Phædrus read both, then asked for a show of hands on who thought the first was best. Two hands went up. He asked how many liked the second better. Twenty-eight hands went up.
"Whatever it is," he said, "that caused the overwhelming majority to raise their hands for the second one is what I mean by Quality. So you know what it is."
There was a long reflective silence after this, and he just let it last.
This was just intellectually outrageous, and he knew it. He wasn’t teaching anymore, he was indoctrinating. He had erected an imaginary entity, defined it as incapable of definition, told the students over their own protests that they knew what it was, and demonstrated this by a technique that was as confusing logically as the term itself. He was able to get away with this because logical refutation required more talent than any of the students had. In subsequent days he continually invited their refutations, but none came. He improvised further.
To reinforce the idea that they already knew what Quality was he developed a routine in which he read four student papers in class and had everyone rank them in estimated order of Quality on a slip of paper. He did the same himself. He collected the slips, tallied them on the blackboard and averaged the rankings for an overall class opinion. Then he would reveal his own rankings, and this would almost always be close to, if not identical with the class average. Where there were differences it was usually because two papers were close in quality.
At first the classes were excited by this exercise, but as time went on they became bored. What he meant by Quality was obvious. They obviously knew what it was too, and so they lost interest in listening. Their question now was "All right, {+we know what Quality is. How do we get it ?"
Now, at last, the standard rhetoric texts came into their own. The principles expounded in them were no longer rules to rebel against, not ultimates in themselves, but just techniques, gimmicks, for producing what really counted and stood independently of the techniques—Quality. What had started out as a heresy from traditional rhetoric turned into a beautiful introduction to it.
He singled out aspects of Quality such as unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on ; kept each of these as poorly defined as Quality itself, but demonstrated them by the same class reading techniques . He showed how the aspect of Quality called unity, the hanging-togetherness of a story, could be improved with a technique called an outline. The authority of an argument could be jacked up with a technique called footnotes, which gives authoritative reference. Outlines and footnotes are standard things taught in all freshman composition classes, but now as devices for improving Quality they had a purpose. And if a student turned in a bunch of dumb references or a sloppy outline that showed he was just fulfilling an assignment by rote, he could be told that while his paper may have fulfilled the letter of the assignment it obviously didn’t {+fulfill the goal of Quality, and was therefore worthless .
Now, in answer to that eternal student question, How do I do this? that had frustrated him to the point of resignation, he could reply, {+"It doesn’t make a bit of difference how you do it! Just so it’s good." The reluctant student might ask in class, {+"But how do we know what’s good?" but almost before the question was out of his mouth he would realize the answer had already been supplied . Some other student would usually tell him, "You just see it." If he said, "No, I don’t," he’d be told, "Yes, you do. He proved it ." The student was finally and completely trapped into making quality judgments for himself. And it was just exactly this and nothing else that taught him to write.
Up to now Phædrus had been compelled by the academic system to say what he wanted, even though he knew that this forced students to conform to artificial forms that destroyed their own creativity . Students who went along with his rules were then condemned for their inability to be creative or produce a piece of work that reflected their own personal standards of what is good .
Now that was over with. By reversing a basic rule that all things which are to be taught must first be defined, he had found a way out of all this. He was pointing to no principle, no rule of good writing, no theory—but he was pointing to something, nevertheless, that was very real , whose reality they couldn’t deny. The vacuum that had been created by the withholding of grades was suddenly {+filled with the positive goal of Quality, and the whole thing fit together . Students, astonished, came by his office and said, "I used to just hate English. Now I spend more time on it than anything else." Not just one or two. Many. The whole Quality concept was beautiful. It worked. It was that mysterious, individual, internal goal of each creative person, on the blackboard at last .
I turn to see how Chris is doing. His face looks tired.
***************
b) During The COTINUED Mountain Climb With Chris, The ZMM Narrator’s Struggle To Work Out The Real Nature Of Quality.
… Now that was over with. By reversing a basic rule that all things which are to be taught must first be defined, he had found a way out of all this. He was pointing to no principle, no rule of good writing, no theory —but he was pointing to something, nevertheless , that was very real, whose reality they couldn’t deny . The vacuum that had been created by the withholding of grades was suddenly filled with the positive goal of Quality, and the whole thing fit together. Students, astonished, came by his office and said, "I used to just hate English. Now I spend more time on it than anything else." Not just one or two. Many. The whole Quality concept was beautiful. It worked. It was that {+mysterious, individual, internal goal of each creative person, on the blackboard at last .
I turn to see how Chris is doing. His face looks tired.

I don’t know how much thought passed before he arrived at this, but eventually he saw that Quality couldn’t be independently related with either the subject or the object but could be found only in the relationship of the two with each other. It is the point at which subject and object meet .
That sounded warm.
Quality is not a thing. It is an event .
Warmer.
It is the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object .
And because without objects there can be no subject—because the objects create the subject’s awareness of himself—Quality is the event at which awareness of both subjects and objects is made possible .
Hot.
Now he knew it was coming.
This means Quality is not just the result of a collision between subject and object. The very existence of subject and object themselves is deduced from the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the Quality !
Now he had that whole damned evil dilemma by the throat. The dilemma all the time had this unseen vile presumption in it, for which there was no logical justification. that Quality was the effect of subjects and objects. It was not! He brought out his knife.
"The sun of quality," he wrote, "does not revolve around the subjects and objects of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is not subordinate to them in any way. It has created them. They are subordinate to it!
And at that point, when he wrote that, he knew he had reached some kind of culmination of thought he had been unconsciously striving for over a long period of time .
"Blue sky!" shouts Chris.

d) The ZMM Narrator’s Long Chapters On Gumptionalogy. Here He Offers Extensive Advice On Problem Solving For The Benefit Of The Reader, In Their Own Life’s Problems.
… This eternally dualistic subject-object way of approaching the motorcycle sounds right to us because we’re used to it. But it’s not right.
It’s always been an artificial interpretation superimposed on reality. It’s never been reality itself . When this duality is completely accepted a certain nondivided relationship between the mechanic and motorcycle, {+a craftsmanlike feeling for the work , is destroyed. When traditional rationality divides the world into subjects and objects it shuts out Quality, and when you’re {+really stuck it’s Quality, not any subjects or objects, that {+tells you where you ought to go .
By returning our attention to Quality it is hoped that we can get technological work out of the noncaring subject-object dualism and back into craftsmanlike self-involved reality again, which will {+ reveal to us the facts we {+need when we are stuck.
In my mind now is an image of a huge, long railroad train, one of those 120-boxcar jobs that cross the prairies all the time with lumber and vegetables going east and with automobiles and other manufactured goods going west. I want to call this railroad train "knowledge" and subdivide in into two parts: Classic Knowledge and Romantic Knowledge.
In terms of the analogy, Classic Knowledge, the knowledge taught by the Church of Reason, is the engine and all the boxcars. All of them and everything that’s in them . If you subdivide the train into parts you will find no Romantic Knowledge anywhere . And unless you’re careful it’s easy to make the presumption that’s all the train there is . This isn’t because Romantic Knowledge is nonexistent or even unimportant. It’s just that so far the definition of the train is static and purposeless. This was what I was {+trying to get at back in South Dakota when I talked about two whole dimensions of existence. It’s two whole ways of looking at the train.
Romantic Quality, in terms of this analogy, isn’t any "part" of the train. It’s the leading edge of the engine, a two-dimensional surface of no real significance unless you understand that the train isn’t a static entity at all . A train really isn’t a train if it can’t go anywhere . In the process of examining the train and subdividing it into parts we’ve inadvertently stopped it, so that it really isn’t a train we {+are examining. That’s why we get stuck.
The real train of knowledge isn’t a static entity that can be stopped and subdivided. It’s always going somewhere. On a track called Quality . And that engine and all those 120 boxcars are never going anywhere except where the {+track of Quality takes them; and romantic Quality, the leading edge of the engine, takes them along that track .
] Romantic reality is the cutting edge of experience . It’s the leading edge of the train of knowledge that {+keeps the whole train on the track . Traditional knowledge is only the collective memory of where that leading edge has been. At the leading edge there are no subjects, no objects, only the track of Quality ahead , and if you have no formal way of evaluating, no way of acknowledging this Quality , then the entire train has no way of knowing where to go . You don’t have pure reason—you have pure confusion. {+The leading edge contains all the infinite possibilities of the future. It contains all the history of the past. Where else could they be contained?
The past cannot remember the past. The future can’t generate the future . The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is .
Value, the leading edge of reality, is no longer an irrelevant offshoot of structure . Value is the predecessor of structure. It’s the preintellectual awareness that gives rise to it . Our structured reality is preselected on the basis of value, and really to understand structured reality requires an understanding of the value source from which it’s derived .
One’s rational understanding of a motorcycle is therefore modified from minute to minute as one works on it and sees that a new and different rational understanding has more Quality [ie Better]. One doesn’t cling to old sticky ideas because one has an immediate rational basis for rejecting them . Reality isn’t static anymore. It’s not a set of ideas you have to either fight or resign yourself to. It’s made up, in part, of ideas that are expected to grow as you grow, and as we all grow , century after century. With Quality as a central undefined term, reality is, in its essential nature, not static but dynamic. And when you really understand dynamic reality you never get stuck . It has forms but the forms are capable of change.
To put it in more concrete terms: If you want to build a factory, or fix a motorcycle, or set a nation right without getting stuck, then classical, structured, dualistic subject-object knowledge, although necessary, isn’t enough . You have to have some feeling for the quality of the work. You have to have a {+sense of what’s good . That is what carries you forward. This sense isn’t just something you’re born with, although you are born with it. It’s also {+something you can develop . It’s not just "intuition," not just unexplainable "skill" or "talent." It’s the direct result of contact with basic reality, Quality, which dualistic reason has in the past tended to conceal .

The reality of the American government isn’t static, he said, it’s dynamic. If we don’t like it we’ll get something better. The American government isn’t going to get stuck on any set of fancy doctrinaire ideas.
The key word is "better"—Quality . Some may argue that the underlying form of the American government is stuck, is incapable of change in response to Quality,
***************

After all, it’s exactly this stuckness that Zen Buddhists go to so much trouble to induce ; through koans, deep breathing, sitting still and the like. Your mind is empty, you have a "hollow-flexible" attitude of "beginner’s mind ." You’re right at the front end of the train of knowledge, at the track of reality itself . Consider, for a change, that this is a moment to be not feared but cultivated. If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then you may be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas .
The solution to the problem often at first seems unimportant or undesirable, but the state of stuckness allows it, in time, to assume its true importance . It seemed small because your previous rigid evaluation which led to the stuckness made it small .
But now consider the fact that no matter how hard you try to hang on to it, this stuckness is bound to disappear. Your mind will naturally and freely move toward a solution . Unless you are a real master at staying stuck you can’t prevent this . The fear of stuckness is needless because the longer you stay stuck the more you {+see the Quality-reality that gets you unstuck every time . What’s really been getting you stuck is the running from the stuckness through the cars of your train of knowledge looking for a solution that is out in front of the train .
Stuckness shouldn’t be avoided. It’s the psychic predecessor of all real understanding . An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors. It’s this understanding of Quality as revealed by stuckness which so often makes self-taught mechanics so superior to institute-trained men who have learned how to handle everything except a new situation.
Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as unimportant. But now, as your Quality awareness becomes stronger, you realize that this one, individual, particular screw is neither cheap nor small nor unimportant. Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out. With this reevaluation of the screw comes a willingness to expand your I think he would ledge of it.
With the expansion of the knowledge, I would guess, would come a reevaluation of what the screw really is. If you concentrate on it, {+think about it, stay stuck on it for a long enough time , I would guess that in time you will come to see that the screw is less and less an object typical of a class and more an object unique in itself. Then with more concentration you will begin to {+see the screw as not even an object at all but as a collection of functions . Your stuckness is {+gradually eliminating patterns of traditional reason.
In the past when you separated subject and object from one another in a permanent way, your thinking about them got very rigid. You formed a class called "screw" that seemed to be inviolable and more real than the reality you are looking at . And you couldn’t think of how to get unstuck because you couldn’t think of anything new, because you couldn’t see anything new.
Now, in getting that screw out, you aren’t interested in what it is. What it is has ceased to be a category of thought and is a continuing direct experience. It’s not in the boxcars anymore, {+it’s out in front and capable of change. You are interested in what it does and why it’s doing it. You will ask functional questions . Associated with your questions will be a subliminal Quality discrimination identical to the Quality discrimination that led Poincaré to the Fuchsian equations.
What your actual solution is, is unimportant as long as it has Quality . Thoughts about the screw as combined rigidness and adhesiveness and about its special helical interlock might lead naturally to solutions of impaction and use of solvents. That is one kind of Quality track. Another track may be to go to the library and look through a catalog of mechanic’s tools, in which you might come across a screw extractor that would do the job. Or to call a friend who knows something about mechanical work. Or just to drill the screw out, or just burn it out with a torch. or you might just, as a result of your meditative attention to the screw, come up with some new way of extracting it that has never been thought of before and that beats all the rest and is patentable and makes you a millionaire five years from now. There’s no predicting what’s on that Quality track. The solutions all are simple—after you have arrived at them. But they’re simple only when you know already what they are .
Highway 13 follows another branch of our river but now it goes upstream past old sawmill towns and sleepy scenery.
***************

Peace of mind isn’t at all superficial to technical work. It’s the whole thing. That which produces it is good work and that which destroys it is bad work . The specs, the measuring instruments, the quality control, the final check-out, these are all means toward the end of satisfying the peace of mind of those responsible for the work. What really counts in the end is their peace of mind, nothing else . The reason for this is that peace of mind is a prerequisite for a perception of that Quality which is beyond romantic Quality and classic Quality and which unites the two, and which must accompany the work as it proceeds. The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness as the work proceeds, is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind so that goodness can shine through .
I say inner peace of mind. It has no direct relationship to external circumstances. It can occur to a monk in meditation, to a soldier in heavy combat or to a machinist taking off that last ten-thousandth of an inch. It involves unselfconsciousness, which produces a complete identification with one’s circumstances , and there are levels and levels of this identification and levels and levels of quietness quite as profound and difficult of attainment as the more familiar levels of activity. The mountains of achievement are Quality discovered in one direction only, and are relatively meaningless and often unobtainable unless taken together with the ocean trenches of self-awareness—so different from self-consciousness—which result from inner peace of mind.
This inner peace of mind occurs on three levels of understanding. Physical quietness seems the easiest to achieve, although there are levels and levels of this too, as attested by the ability of Hindu mystics to live buried alive for many days. Mental quietness, in which one has no wandering thoughts at all, seems more difficult, but can be achieved. But value quietness, in which one has no wandering desires at all but simply performs the acts of his life without desire, that seems the hardest.
I’ve sometimes thought this inner peace of mind, this quietness is similar to if not identical with the sort of calm you sometimes get when going fishing, which accounts for much of the popularity of this sport. Just to sit with the line in the water, not moving, not really thinking about anything, not really caring about anything either, seems to draw out the inner tensions and frustrations that have prevented you from solving problems you couldn’t solve before and introduced ugliness and clumsiness into your actions and thoughts .
You don’t have to go fishing, of course, to fix your motorcycle. A cup of coffee, a walk around the block, sometimes just putting off the job for five minutes of silence is enough. When you do you can almost feel yourself grow toward that inner peace of mind that reveals it all. That which turns its back on this inner calm and the Quality it reveals is bad maintenance. That which turns toward it is good. The forms of turning away and toward are infinite but the goal is always the same.
I think that when this concept of peace of mind is introduced and made central to the act of technical work, a fusion of classic and romantic quality can take place at a basic level within a practical working context . I’ve said you can actually see this fusion in skilled mechanics and machinists of a certain sort, and you can see it in the work they do. To say that they are not artists is to misunderstand the nature of art. They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they’re doing, but more than this— there’s a kind of inner peace of mind that isn’t contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there’s no leader and no follower. The material and the craftsman’s thoughts change together in a progression of smooth, even changes until his mind is at rest at the exact instant the material is right.
We’ve all had moments of that sort when we’re doing something we really want to do. It’s just that somehow we’ve gotten into an unfortunate separation of those moments from work. The mechanic I’m talking about doesn’t make this separation. One says of him that he is "interested" in what he’s doing, that he’s "involved" in his work. What produces this involvement is, at the cutting edge of consciousness, an absence of any sense of separateness of subject and object. "Being with it," "being a natural," "taking hold" —there are a lot of idiomatic expressions for what I mean by this absence of subject-object duality, because what I mean is so well understood as folklore, common sense, the everyday understanding of the shop. But in scientific parlance the words for this absence of subject-object duality are scarce because scientific minds have shut themselves off from consciousness of this kind of understanding in the assumption of the formal dualistic scientific outlook.
Zen Buddhists talk about "just sitting," a meditative practice in which the idea of a duality of self and object does not dominate one’s consciousness. What I’m talking about here in motorcycle maintenance is "just fixing," in which the idea of a duality of self and object doesn’t dominate one’s consciousness. When one isn’t dominated by feelings of separateness from what he’s working on, then one can be said to "care" about what he’s doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one’s doing. When one has this feeling then he also sees the inverse side of caring, Quality itself .
So, the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all. That was what it was about that wall in Korea. It was a material reflection of a spiritual reality .
I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts it at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. . The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. 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 that what I have to say has more lasting value .
A town called Riggins comes up and we see a lot of motels,
***************

This often shows up in premature diagnosis, when you’re sure you know what the trouble is, and then when it isn’t, you’re stuck. Then you’ve got to find some new clues, but before you can find them you’ve got to clear your head of old opinions. If you’re plagued with value rigidity you can fail to see the real answer even when it’s staring you right in the face because you can’t see the new answer’s importance .

The birth of a new fact is always a wonderful thing to experience. It’s dualistically called a "discovery" because of the presumption that it has an existence independent of anyone’s awareness of it. When it comes along, it always has, at first, a low value. Then, depending on the value-looseness of the observer and the potential quality of the fact, its value increases, either slowly or rapidly, or the value wanes and the fact disappears .
The overwhelming majority of facts, the sights and sounds that are around us every second and the relationships among them and everything in our memory—these have no Quality, in fact have a negative quality. If they were all present at once our consciousness would be so jammed with meaningless data we couldn’t think or act. So we preselect on the basis of Quality, or, to put it Phædrus’ way, the track of Quality preselects what data we’re going to be conscious of, and it makes this selection in such a way as to best harmonize what we are with what we are becoming .
What you have to do, if you get caught in this gumption trap of value rigidity, is slow down—you’re going to have to slow down anyway whether you want to or not—but slow down deliberately and go over ground that you’ve been over before to see if the things you thought were important were really important and to . . . well . . . just stare at the machine. There’s nothing wrong with that. Just live with it for a while. Watch it the way you watch a line when fishing and before long, as sure as you live, you’ll get a little nibble, a little fact asking in a timid, humble way if you’re interested in it. That’s the way the world keeps on happening. Be interested in it .
At first try to understand this new fact not so much in terms of your big problem as for its own sake. That problem may not be as big as you think it is. And that fact may not be as small as you think it is. It may not be the fact you want but at least you should be very sure of that before you send the fact away. Often before you send it away you will discover it has friends who are right next to it and are watching to see what your response is. Among the friends may be the exact fact you are looking for .
After a while you may find that the nibbles you get are more interesting than your original purpose of fixing the machine. When that happens you’ve reached a kind of point of arrival. Then you’re no longer strictly a motorcycle mechanic, you’re also a motorcycle scientist, and you’ve completely conquered the gumption trap of value rigidity .
The road has come up into the pines again,

FOOTNOTES:

1) Professor Hopfield’s Mammalian Brain was modeled after, and bears similarity to, his Solid State Physics Model (and Theory) for Spin Glass, called Isig Glass . More at the next link.

2) A Passage from Robert Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, applies here: “Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. (3) The cycle you’re working on is a cycle called “yourself. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon.”

3) Why does Pirsig say this in 2) above? The Hopfield Model says that: Pirsig’s Working Well and Caring produce “best” answers to problems (or other needed actions). You have to understand, that life on this earth, OF NECESSITY had to find and use the best actions, for survival!!! So evolution has provided us with this brain machinery, to automatically find, these best answers (which the brain IN-ESCAPABLE and ALWAYS automatically supplies): As you see, these are ALWAYS optimal solutions, which if you pay attention, you will see that such, in turn produces “peace of mind”!! (4) … “

4) Thus from 3) above, for every circumstance: It is highly recommended that we take on The ZMM Attitude of Working Well and Caring!! This will produce your Best Work, for whatever it is you are doing!! In other words: Here think Hopfield Model! AND Think the Zen Attitudes recommended throughout “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. (5)

5) Also the recommendations of Physical Chemist, Michael Polanyi are relevant here.: See his book “Meaning”, where he describes his ideas (and practices) he calls “Personal Knowledge”

Announcing My Book Writing Project. By Henry Gurr, ZMMQ Site Master.

… I am gathering evidence, from my own extensive research observations and additional literature search, in preparation to write a major book that both builds upon and extends the pioneering efforts of Princeton Physicist J. J. Hopfield. This book will cover why Hopfield’s work is important and how his Mathematical Model of the Mammalian Brain, provides the solid mathematical based secure foundation for what could be called a "A Strikingly Different New Science of How Our Mind Works".

… It is hoped that this book will clearly explain how Hopfield’s Model is a new basis for nearly completely explaining a wide panorama of human mental phenomena and human abilities arising from their Central Nervous System activity. I will include the observations and conclusions of noteworthy researchers as well as my own, which the reader can learn about, by study of the “For Further Reading”, found at the end of this WebPage.

Looking For A Knowledgeable Person To Help Me With The Task Of Writing (And Getting "Out To The Public") My Above Mentioned Book That Builds On The Pioneering Efforts Of Princeton Physicist J. J. Hopfield. Please Contact me if you believe you are qualified:

Persons who have good knowledge of the relevant literature, and good writing skills, may contact me if they are interested in working with this project as outlined below. Your involvement could range anywhere from reading and commenting on my written chapters to becoming an editor- assembler of the book.

The work would proceed as described in the above mentioned Pirsig Interview: Pirsig makes the point by quoting Robert Redford’s saying " ‘That's how I make my films!’ Well, I don't know what I'm going to do [either], I just have to see what has Quality. If it has Quality then I'll do it. If it doesn't have Quality, I won't do it. If I look at it a week later and I see it doesn't have Quality, I'll throw it out. If I suddenly, in the middle of the night say, think of something better, I'll put that in.”

This reminds me of Frank Lloyd Wright’s statement: “The Architect’s two best friends are the eraser and the sledge hammer.” Meaning, that if you see “better”, immediately use these “removers’, and with no regrets (or looking back): You erase / sledgehammer “the not so good”! And also meaning: Don’t fret over the loss of your valuable investment of extensive previous work, no matter how difficult it was to do it, or how long this took!!!!!

Please Contact me if you believe you are qualified to assist me with this book writing project:
My contact information is at the top of my Professor Henry Gurr Home Page.

If You Know of Good Books, Authors, Articles, or have other Suggestions/Observations, Etc, Please Feel Free Contact Me, With Any Idea That Would Make My Abovementioned Book Better!!
My contact information is at the top of my Professor Henry Gurr Home Page.

Sincerely Henry Gurr.
ZMMQ Site Master and Professor of Physics Emeritus, University of South Carolina Aiken.

FOR FURTHER READING =>

A) MY EIGHT WEBPAGES, WHERE YOU MAY LEARN MORE Of Henry Gurr’s THEORY =>
TITLEED => Based On Direct Observation: Explanation Of Best Available Theory Of How Our Mind Works, In the Creation of Sudden, Automatic, Spontaneous Mental Arrivals Into Conscious Mind, Accomplished By UN-Conscious Brain Processes:

IN MAIN MENU AT LEFT, The TOP EIGHT MENU Listed Pages =>

Page 1) Video Lecture: Henry Gurr’s Explains His => “Theory of How Our Mind Works”, In A 59 Minute Video: This Is A Re-Created Version Henry’s Presentation To Southern Society for Philosophy & Psychology, April 1 2022.
… This Video Many Times Demonstrates “Persons Minds At Work”. Also included are demonstrations of Automatic, Spontaneous Partial Fit, Going To Better & Better Partial Fit. See especially Partial Fit Applied to The Beautiful Lady Seen In The Very Sparse Line Drawing, of The Logo, of The Starbuck Coffee Company.
… Also Learn How => The Hopfield Neuron Network Model, Explains How Our Brain Can Automatically, Spontaneously Find, Best Or Near Best Solutions of "Life's Problems Coming At Us."

Page 2) Suggest You START YOUR STUDY HERE => HGurrCompactExplanation: A Unified Panorama View Into ''How Our Mind Works.

Then Suggest You CONTINUE NEXT Page Below =>

Page 3) Collected Properties & Characteristics All Mental Arrivals Such As Flash of Insight PLUS Picture Analogies. (Which Is The Page You Are Currently Reading.)
…From scattered places in Henry Gurr’s 8 WebPages (hereby listed) “How Our Mind Works” => Here collected into one WebPage, are the ALL of the Properties & Characteristics Of Every Mental Arrival: (These are such as “Flash Of Insight”), which come automatically, spontaneously, Into Our Conscious Mind, For Our Every Waking Moment, Second By Second:) ALSO on this WebPage are => Two Picture Analogies of Before & After A Mental Arrival are also shown.
…By reading this essential summary overview WebPage, you will prepare your mind for easier reading of Henry Gurr’s 8 WebPages (hereby listed) “How Our Mind Works”.
…This is because otherwise these various => Properties & Characteristics Of All Mental Arrivals , in their original scattered paces, are presented in a way, such that it is hard to see “The Big Picture”.

Page 4) HGurr FULL Expounding => A Unified Panorama View Into How Our Mind Works

Page 5) A Very Important IDEA => Even A Partial Fit Problem Solution Is Highly Useful, especially for how Our Problem Solving Brain so easily gives us a Best Understanding for 1) Camouflage, 2) Concept Confusion, and3) Figures of Speech, Such as Metaphor, Analogy, Allegory, Simile, Similar, Similarity, and 22 more.
NOTE: This above-mentioned “Page 5)” is the WebPage you are currently reading.

Page 6) How HGurr’s Explanation of => “How Our Mind Works”, Helps Illuminate What’s Happening In Procrastination, And Helps Avoid Procrastination’s Blockages.

Page 7) Hopfield Neuron Network Model => Illuminates How Brains Generate (Construct Create) Optimal Solutions To “Life’s Problems Coming At Us”, plus Links To Other H Gurr Writing On Mind.

Page 8) An Anatomy Of An Idea Come To Mind + Constructivist Epistemology + Mental Arrivals, Such As Flash of Insight.
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You may access any of these by clicking (Main Menu At Upper Left) on any of the TOP EIGHT Blue Links there.

A Good Place To Start Is Above 2), And Then Continue With Above 3).

Please let me know what you think.

Sincerely Henry

B) MY FOUR WEBPAGES, WHICH ARE EFFECTIVELY “BRAIN OWNER’S USERS MANUALS”, WHICH ARE APPLICATIONOS OF => “Henry S Gurr’s Theory Explanation Of How Our Mind Works”:
1) For Further Reading => My WebPage, Where You May Learn MORE About => How The Problem Solving Brain, Gives Us Analogy, Metaphor, & Other Similar Sympathetic-Poetic Associatives (SPA):
After this WebPage comes up, please scroll down to => “Relation of Poetry to Metaphor”.

2) For Further Reading => My WebPage, Where You May Learn More About => Many, Many Examples of The Flash of Insights, as well Other Automatic, Spontaneous, Sudden Mental Arrivals Here:
After this WebPage comes up, please scroll down to where you see => This WebPage (and It’s Included Links)

3)Cont: For Further Reading => My WebPage, Where You May Learn More About => The Actions Of The Many Cases Herein Named => Sympathetic Poetic Associatives (SPA). Further discussion of my “Sympathetic-Poetic Associatives” (a new term coined by me Henry Gurr) is here => AFTER This WebPage Comes Up, Please Scroll Down To D) We All Use Mental Abilities Such a Metaphor, Analogy, Simile …

4) For Further Reading => My WebPage, Where You May Learn More => On How To “See In action” (& Thus Learn More) About Our How The Problem Solving Brain, Gives Us Clear Thinking, On Demand!
After this WebPage comes up, you will need to explore around, to see how this discussion supports my Theory.

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