Mass hypnosis

“And what that means,” I say before he can interrupt, “and what that means is that the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people’s heads! It’s a ghost! We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other people’s ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own.”

“Why does everybody believe in the law of gravity then?”

“Mass hypnosis. In a very orthodox form known as ‘education.’”

“You mean the teacher is hypnotizing the kids into believing the law of gravity?”

“Sure.”

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig

A Threat to our Government

Taken seriously, the Constitution would pose a serious threat to our form of government.
- How Tyranny Came to America by Joseph Sobran
(http://www.sobran.com/articles/tyranny.shtml)

Wisdom, Truth, & Authority

“I don’t think it would have got me quite so down if just once in a while – just once in a while – there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t its just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word ‘wisdom’ mentioned!”

- Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling.

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:, by Robert Persig

He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly – yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.

From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. “Don’t ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!” – “Who are you to think? It’s so, because I say so!” – “Don’t argue, obey!” – “Don’t try to understand, believe!” – “Don’t rebel, adjust!” – “Don’t stand out, belong!” – “Don’t struggle, compromise!” – “Who are you to know? Your parents know best!” – “Who are you to know? Society knows best!” “Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!” – “Who are you to object? All values are relative!”

-Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Any refusal to recognize reality...

Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.

-Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

An introduction of quotes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance written 9/2/04

These are quotes from the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, by Robert Persig.

I read this book in 1976 as a college freshman. At least that is what my memory tells me now in 2004. The copy of the book I have was actually printed in 1980 and I do not remember having more than one copy of the book. I know I first heard about (and saw) the book as a college freshman in 1976-1977. I know it was used as a text in a philosophy course I did not take, but that someone I knew did take the course – or maybe I just saw the book in the bookstore listed as required for the course and I flipped through it while I was killing time working in the bookstore, manning the “back desk.” Maybe I had just decided to read it in 1976 and actually got around to purchasing and reading it in 1980. Time plays tricks on your memory. At any rate…

My habit was then (as now) to mark a passage that I found particularly interesting or significant as I read it, so that later I could come back and more easily extract these “pearls”. If I re-read a book after an interval of years, I might choose different “pearls” because I am a different person during the second reading. These are the “pearls” of the first reading.

A “pearl” that I did not mark (because it was easy to find) and I have remembered all these years is the Author’s Note before the beginning of the text:

What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It’s not very factual on motorcycles, either.

This brings up the whole interesting concept of fiction vs. non-fiction and the relationship (or lack thereof) between facts and truth. I seem to remember someone famous being quoted as saying something along the lines of “Don’t bother me with the facts. I am dealing with a question of truth here.” I should try to look this up sometime…

Introduction

An important part of many posts will be quotes from books that I have read - not quotes from collections of quotes, or from Barlett's Familiar Quotations. For many years, my habit has been to mark a passage that I found particularly interesting or significant as I read it, so that later I could come back and more easily extract these “pearls”. This blog will essentially be a continuing extraction of various "pearls" from books that I have read or am currently reading, along with any other related thoughts or comments.