The purpose of life

Today, I pondered the following paragraph for a very long period of time.

"I told Chris the other night that Phaedrus spent his entire life pursuing a ghost. That was true. The ghost he pursued was the ghost that underlies all of technology, all of modern science, all of Western thought. It was the ghost of rationality itself. I told Chris that he found the ghost and that when he found it he trashed it good. I think in a figurative sense that is true. The things I hope to bring to light as we go along are some of the things he uncovered. Now the times are such that other may at last find them of value. No one then would see the ghost that Phaedrus pursued, but I think now that more and more people see it, or get glimpse of it in bad moments, a ghost which called itself rationality, but whose appearance is that of incoherence and meaninglessness, which causes the most normal of everyday acts to seem slightly mad because of their irrelevance to anything else. This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only mad men ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says." from ZAMM p81

Subject-Object dualism

Back to some paragraphs in ZAMM I read in toilet. It examines subject-object relationship.

I think the basic fault that underlies the problem of stuckness is traditional rationality's insistence upon "objectivity," a doctrine that there is a divided reality of subject and object. For true science to take place these must be rigidly separate from each other. "You are the mechanic. There is the motorcycle. You are forever apart from one another. You do this to it. You do that to it. These will be the results."

These eternally dualistic subject-object way of approaching the motorcycle sounds right to us because we are used to it. But it is not right. It has always been an artificial interpretation superimposed on reality. It has never been reality itself. When this duality is completely accepted , a certain non-individual relationship between the mechanic and motorcycle, a craftsman-life feeling for the work, is destroyed. When traditional rationality divides the world into subjects and objects it shuts out Quality, and when are you really stuck, it is Quality, not any subjects or objects, that tells you where you ought to go.

Develop a feeling about the work you are working on. Inject emotions upon it if you could. Love it or hate it. Gradually and slowly, a bud of Quality grows out from the work you work on. Lot of examples, PERL is one.

Dullness and Quality

I am now re-reading Robert Pirsig's ZAMM without any specific order whenever I am in toilet. Here are some paragraphs I read this morning. ( Very strange, I read best when I am in toilet. This is a habit since my youth. )

"Or if he take whatever dull jobs he is stuck with--and they are all, sooner or later, dull--and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he is likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his Quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others too because Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he did not think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going."

Indeed, from my personal experience, Quality usually grows out from Dullness. Dullness frees up our minds, hence our brains could think of Quality when they are free from forms. That is why meditation is done in such a way. I particularly like the phrase ".. and they are all, sooner or later..", which is very true in this world. The question is that when it becomes dull, what can you do about it? The way you handle it determines your Quality.