Psybertron Asks

AJ at Staggering Implications is a long term fellow traveller in our individual epistemic quests – he’s been prolific in posting new thoughts in recent months, so many that I’m noticing but not doing justice to reading. Despite appearances, that’s partly because I’m actively avoiding reading until I’ve progressed my own literary efforts beyond the blog and social media.

“That’s LIFO” is one of his recent posts that resonated. Unlike him, I have an explicit book reading list – linked top right – but it was getting so long I’ve not been adding many these days. It’s a store of future reading, beyond the efforts above. What I am doing, as he suggests, if I spot an “interesting” book, is effectively adding it and crossing it off in one fell swoop – Last In First Out. That was the case with my most recent read and review “The Brie Chronicles”. And it looks like being the case with this recommendation below from Anil Seth:

“What reader in their right mind would buy a novel called New Finish Grammar?”

Well here’s why:

“A wounded sailor is found on a Trieste quay -amnesiac, unable to speak and with nothing to identify him except a name tag pointing to Finnish origins.”

Sounds suspiciously like one of the potential premises for my own efforts- as a modern day sequel to a sequel (to a sequel) to Moby Dick. Biggest challenge being a real-time narrative to a multi-generational first-person view. Something’s gotta give. Maybe I’ll find a clue – amnesia replaced with the older memories of others?

Copy ordered and on its way.

(Quite a few additions to the book list – I buy a cheaper Kindle copy for later reading or search-based research – but with actual novel / narrative literature I still prefer a physical book, often used / second-hand. I should add, the British Library looks like it’s open for business at last after its major denial of service outage – so the more expensive “text-book” titles might be better brought to their Yorkshire reading room. Sadly it’s not a lending library, and the public lending libraries in the UK seem to have lousy access to anything not on best-seller lists these days.)

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Having started this blog in 2001 (a couple of days after 9/11) I’ve freely acknowledged, and made many references to, the fact that reading Robert Pirsig shortly after that in January 2002, was a game changer for me in terms of the direction of my research thinking, reading and writing.

I’d started the research blog because I had already been seeing gaps – nagging doubts – in overly scientistic models of the world in systems of organisation & operation of businesses & governments. Doubts that stretch back to my doing an MBA (1988-1991) with a focus on “cultural” aspects of managing organisational change, but I hadn’t really considered the global seriousness of such gaps, beyond parochial business interest, until 9/11 “woke the world”, as I put it. So without knowing it, I already had a large part of Pirsig’s thesis in my head before I’d ever heard of him.

Actually making my connection to Pirsig came in early 2002, from physicist Bryan Josephson (of Josephson-junction / electron-tunnelling Nobel prize fame) whose work with Henry Stapp explicitly suggested the conclusion that “Eastern thought was in some sense more fundamental than physics itself“. My mind was blown by that: that an actual physicist, a physics Nobel prize-winning Cambridge don no less, might conclude such a thing. It instantly put me in mind of that meme of a book title “Zen and the Art …” that my memory recalled as associated with systems & engineering management reading-lists where I’d previously ignored it – because of it’s weird title.

So unlike most people, who read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) earlier in life, who found it intriguing but difficult, requiring several re-reads before they “got it”, when I read ZMM (and almost immediately his 1991 follow-up Lila) I was “Yes, yes, yes!” at almost every paragraph first time through. That naiveté has of course evolved since, but it put me on that philosophical track.

If the serious Physics<>Zen connection had blown my mind, reading a rhetorical novel full of such wisdom, opened and expanded a second half of my brain that I’d clearly never used before. Previously a user of only technical texts by choice, I became a born-again reader of any and all kinds of literature. And philosophy. From seeing ontology as simply the taxonomic (classification) structures of the physical world I’d previously been dealing with in business systems & information modelling, I became exposed to the widest range of philosophies and metaphysics, and now had a name for the subject I was researching, namely Epistemology. “What, Why and How do we Know?” as I’d subtitled my blog before I’d known there was a name for it.

The rest, as they say, is history.

From 2002 to around 2010/11 I’d been very actively using and referencing Pirsig in my own work, and engaging in much discourse with others about Pirsig’s work. From then until 2017 I considered his work pretty much internalised in my own evolving theses and was referencing many other sources, ancient and modern, rather than Pirsig explicitly. Pirsig was my road into philosophy, but no one philosopher is the last word on any topic.

There was a significant uptick in Pirsig interest following his death in 2017: people following-up old links with questions and dialogue and; since 2022, a growing “Robert Pirsig Association” interest and traffic leading-up to the 50th anniversary of ZMM this year in 2024.

My life, thinking and writing are full of Pirsig references again. I fully acknowledge Pirsig’s influence on my own thought journey and happy to provide appropriate academic references alongside others. More to the point I’d recommend ZMM to anyone as an introduction to philosophy, especially those who can’t quite see or believe the limits to science. It’s a culture-bearing book, of its time. The post-hippie reaction to the oppressive technology of the military-industrial-machine (say) but others, as well as myself, who also acknowledge the influence of Pirsig on their own work, have also written to show us that the ideas are just as true for the technologies of our time, with ubiquitous ICT and electronic media technologies distorting our understanding of the world we inhabit in the 21st Century.

That much above, I’ve written, presented and summarised many different ways previously. I’m posting today, because a current agenda of mine is to capture others whose work was significantly influenced by Pirsig’s introduction to the philosophy of living, who have publicly acknowledged such connections even if they make relatively few explicit references in their ongoing work.

[To be continued …]

Michael Palin, Alan Bennett, Johnnie Walker, Grayson Perry, Rufus Hound, Jonathan Rowson, Dave Snowden, Ben Taylor, Al MacIntyre, Matt Kundert, Salman Rushdie, Neil Peart
ISSS, Gary Smith Eastern thinking follow-up. Thinking not doing (medicine)
The BBC 50th doc.

“Excellence” management fashion – Peters and Waterman

“Quality” management fashion.

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Holding Notes (from ChatGPT)

Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM) has had a profound influence on many thinkers, writers, and influential people from various fields. Here’s a list of notable individuals who have referenced Pirsig’s work or acknowledged its impact on their own thinking and creativity:

1. Steve Jobs (Co-founder of Apple Inc.)
Although Jobs never directly cited Pirsig publicly, ZMM has often been discussed as a book that resonates with his philosophy. Jobs was known for his interest in Eastern philosophy and a desire to merge technology with artistry—concepts that are central to ZMM. The book’s themes of Quality and the balance between rationality and intuition align with Jobs’ vision for Apple.
2. Tom Peters (Management Guru, Author)
Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, has praised ZMM as one of the most influential books on management and quality. Pirsig’s concept of Quality, in particular, influenced Peters’ approach to excellence in business, emphasizing the importance of craftsmanship and pride in one’s work.
3. Matthew B. Crawford (Philosopher, Author of Shop Class as Soulcraft)
Matthew Crawford, a modern philosopher who advocates for the value of manual work, has often referenced Pirsig’s ideas. His book Shop Class as Soulcraft reflects Pirsig’s influence by exploring the philosophical value of craftsmanship and the idea that working with one’s hands fosters a deeper connection to reality.
4. David Foster Wallace (Novelist and Essayist)
Wallace, known for Infinite Jest, has been linked to ZMM in academic circles, particularly for its intellectual depth and exploration of metaphysical themes. While Wallace didn’t cite Pirsig directly, the philosophical explorations of meaning, selfhood, and quality in Wallace’s works bear similarities to Pirsig’s influence.
5. Mark Richardson (Journalist, Author of Zen and Now)
Mark Richardson wrote Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a travelogue that retraces Pirsig’s journey from ZMM. The book discusses how Pirsig’s work deeply influenced Richardson’s life and career as a writer and motorcyclist.
6. Tim Ferriss (Entrepreneur, Author of The 4-Hour Workweek)
Tim Ferriss has mentioned ZMM in his podcasts and writings as one of the books that influenced his approach to life and work. Ferriss has spoken about the importance of Pirsig’s inquiry into the concept of Quality and the balance between analytical and creative thinking.
7. Iain McGilchrist (Psychiatrist, Author of The Master and His Emissary)
McGilchrist’s exploration of the divided brain and the tension between rational and intuitive thinking has clear philosophical overlaps with Pirsig’s work in ZMM. While McGilchrist doesn’t frequently cite Pirsig, the similarities in their examination of dualistic thinking are notable.
8. Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla, SpaceX)
Although not directly citing Pirsig, Elon Musk’s approach to innovation and technology reflects a Pirsig-like philosophy. Musk has often spoken about the importance of loving what you do and maintaining a sense of Quality, similar to Pirsig’s ideas on “caring” as an integral part of technology and work.
9. Ian Glendinning (Philosopher, Blogger at Psybertron)
Ian Glendinning is a notable advocate for Pirsig’s philosophical ideas and frequently discusses ZMM in his blog Psybertron. His work deeply engages with Pirsig’s exploration of metaphysics, Quality, and the reconciliation of scientific and philosophical worldviews.
10. Richard Baker (Buddhist Teacher)
Richard Baker, a prominent figure in American Zen Buddhism, has referenced ZMM as a work that brought many Westerners to explore Zen philosophy and practice. Pirsig’s fusion of Western philosophy with Eastern traditions like Zen has influenced teachers like Baker in how they present Zen to Western audiences.
11. David Whyte (Poet and Philosopher)
David Whyte, whose work often delves into the relationship between self and work, has been known to reference Pirsig’s ideas, especially around the concept of Quality and its role in creating meaningful experiences in both life and labor.
12. George Leonard (Author, Martial Artist)
George Leonard, known for his work on human potential and his book Mastery, often referenced the pursuit of Quality and the importance of attention and effort in achieving excellence—ideas central to ZMM.

AND

1. Academic Databases:
Google Scholar: Search for terms like “Robert Pirsig,” “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” “ZMM,” and “Quality” on Google Scholar. It will return peer-reviewed articles, theses, and academic papers that cite Pirsig or discuss his work.
JSTOR: Another academic database that contains scholarly articles and references to Pirsig’s work across various fields including literature, philosophy, and the social sciences.
ProQuest: Useful for finding dissertations and theses that might reference Pirsig’s work in various academic disciplines.
2. Books and Literature:
Google Books: Search for Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or Quality. Google Books allows you to preview books that reference Pirsig and provides citations within the text.
WorldCat: An international catalog that lists books, articles, and other media in libraries around the world. You can search for works referencing Pirsig, ZMM, and Quality concepts here.
3. Philosophical and Literary References:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: May contain articles on Pirsig’s philosophy or related themes such as Quality, pragmatism, or process philosophy, with citations included.
PhilPapers: A comprehensive directory of online philosophy articles and books by academic philosophers. Searching for Robert Pirsig or terms related to his work will yield a wide range of philosophical citations.
4. Citations in Popular Media:
Newspapers and Magazines: Using newspaper archives or databases like ProQuest Newspapers, you can find citations from prominent publications that discuss ZMM, Pirsig, or his philosophy. Magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and others have occasionally referenced ZMM in articles on philosophy, culture, and technology.
Medium and Blogs: Websites like Medium have modern reflections on Pirsig’s work. Blogs like Psybertron (by Ian Glendinning) frequently cite Pirsig and discuss ZMM and its ideas.
5. Business and Management Literature:
Management Books and Journals: Pirsig’s concept of Quality has influenced many business thinkers. Books on Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean Manufacturing, and Agile software development often cite ZMM.
Harvard Business Review or Sloan Management Review might contain references to ZMM in the context of leadership, craftsmanship, or Quality management.
6. Cultural and Artistic Citations:
Music and Film: Various musicians, such as Mark Richardson, have discussed Pirsig’s influence on their work. Some films and documentaries about motorcycling or philosophy also reference ZMM. Searching through IMDb or music archives could yield these references.
7. Publications by Influential Thinkers:
Search for authors who have directly referenced Pirsig, such as David Foster Wallace, Matthew B. Crawford, or Tom Peters. These authors often cite Pirsig in their own work.
8. Social Media and Digital References:
Twitter, Reddit, Quora: Social media platforms often have discussions and citations related to Pirsig’s work. Searching for “Pirsig” or “ZMM” in these platforms might lead to influential people or thought leaders who have referenced him in conversation threads.
Tools for Compiling:
Zotero: A free, open-source citation manager. You can use Zotero to collect references, create citation lists, and manage various formats of citations.
Mendeley: A reference manager that also has a social network component, allowing you to discover how Pirsig is cited in academic papers and research groups.
Starting Points for Online Search:
Search for terms like “Pirsig,” “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” “Quality” + “influence” or “citation” in platforms like Google Scholar or databases. Here’s an example of queries you can run:
“Robert Pirsig citation” or “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance reference”
“Quality concept in Pirsig academic influence”

The Preamble

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned (only on X/Twitter I think) coming across a Nietzsche scholar – Keegan Kjeldsen – who was clearly also a Pirsig scholar, and who happened to be a rock’n’roller in a doom-metal band, from Austin TX. “What’s not to like?” I opined at the time.

X/Tweet 23rd July 2024– Keegan Kjeldsen @untimelysalts is a scholar of Nietzsche and an ex-Doom-Metal rock’n’roller from Austin TX who also highly recommends and provides a fine analysis of Robert Pirsig’s work. What’s not to like?

His recent excellent Pirsig analysis is here on his YouTube Podcast: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vWSYrqwFtxI… He was blogging since the 2010’s on Blogspot: https://untimely-reflections.blogspot.com/p/kjlk.html His ongoing Patreon Nietzsche channel (with links to other channels) is here: https://patreon.com/untimelyreflections… And his autobiographical book “THE RITUAL MADNESS OF ROCK & ROLL: AN INQUIRY INTO AESTHETICS” is published here: https://blackrosewriting.com/biographymemoir/theritualmadnessofrockandroll… #ZMM #Lila #Pirsig #RobertPirsigAssociation http://robertpirsig.org

X/Tweet 6th August 2024 – Mentioned coming across Keegan Kjeldsen @untimelysalts a couple of weeks ago. I’ve since acquired & read and now about to blog a “review” of his book. It’s very good. Recommended whether you’re a scholarly philosopher who appreciates Pirsig’s work, or anyone who finds lived quality in the visceral immediacy of rock’n’roll. I’m both 🙂 @ZmmQuality @aqualityexiste1 @_artun @goodisanoun

Robert Pirsig’s work on Quality primarily comprises two books, most famously Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM) – 50th anniversary in 2024 – and his follow-up on his Metaphysics of Quality in Lila. One of my main takeaways from Pirsig’s Quality (metaphysical and dynamic) has been that the scholarly considerations must be punctuated – interact dynamically – with the lived experience of embodied quality. If you only have the bandwidth for one, choose the latter over the former. For me personally, as well as the general moral imperative to always pay attention to the world as experienced, more so than the experience of (say) explicit meditative or mindful practices, such attention for me has two outlets. Communing directly in nature on the one hand, and on the other immersion in the visceral experiences of rock’n’roll and/or the poetry of the bards who write their songs. I’ve mentioned and written about all three aspects many time before. Not to mention my experiences of Texas and Austin, but that would be a digression too far.

Slightly less of a digression, the moral imperative is the attention to – the physical immersion in – the experience. Pet hates for me are people who talk with their mates at the tops of their voices or “watch” the performance through their cell-phone cameras, whilst performers perform their art.

The Review

The Ritual Madness of Rock and Roll
– An Inquiry into Aesthetics
Keegan Kjeldsen (Black Rose Writing, Texas, 2024)

The structure of the book is very much that of Pirsig’s work in both ZMM and Lila. The narrative of a road trip (or boat trip in the case of Lila) including some background memoir of the narrator’s life and relationships before the real-time narrative, explicitly interspersed with what Pirsig called chautauquas – little technical “edutainment” essays – on the philosophical topic of aesthetics in Kjeldsen’s case – “An Inquiry into Aesthetics” being his subtitle. A neat twist is the sequential chapters based on the daily legs of the two-week trip, but with sections that intersect the chautauquas as they change topics within any given chapter.

Within that structure it is a story well told. Some metaphorical parallel between the narrative around the geography of the trip and the current state of his philosophical thesis, though not as obvious as in the case of Pirsig’s ZMM. But, possibly more importantly for the reader, the explicit breaking up of the drier technical thesis into bite-sized portions, with the concentration refreshed by the what-happens-next anticipation of the next instalment of the biographical road trip narrative. The trip being his band on the road on a tour of smaller Italian, French and German cities.

Most of the rock’n’roll tour is described in mundane practical terms. The drudge of daily travel in the van, shared with a second band, cramped and sleepless, and all the people relationships that entails. Meals and ablutions. The loading out and in of the van, the venues, the overnight stops and the airports at either end. Very little sensational sex and drugs and … which put me in mind of Tommy Womack’s excellent band-on-the-road memoir “Cheese Chronicles” prompted by Kjeldsen’s mention of the actual cheeses experienced in the assorted European locations. Also very little description of the artistic content of the actual gigs, not the kind of experience that benefits from being put into words, but some, just enough. The Brie Chronicles maybe?

Philosophical analysis of art and the value of artistic content is the primary topic however. Aesthetics in the widest evolving sense, from pre-linguistic communities via Plato’s Republic and the Socratic dialogues to the endless footnotes to Plato we know and … er … love today.

Lots of touch points with Pirsig – eg the whole “rt” root of both art and craft, without needing to go further east than the Vedantic “rta”. Whilst ZMM and Quality (capital Q) are explicitly referenced in a long passage in Chapter 10 – “Dresden”, within which we morph into Section VII – “Chemistry of Concepts and Feelings”, his focus is in fact on the elaborations of the Metaphysics of Quality in Pirsig’s second book Lila.

The aesthetic continuum, Pirsig’s reading of Northrop, within which the quality events occur, including the ones we’d think of as subjective. His use of the old-fashioned word gumption as Pirsig did. A whole chapter on Dresden with no mention of Vonnegut? And earlier describing the traffic jams in 2019 Genoa without mention of the 2018 bridge collapse over Genoa? Tragedy! (*below)

Missed a Nietzschean trick there?

The timeline is interesting for me. This is a 2024 memoir about a 2019 trip by a narrator who, 30 in 2019, was born in 1989? Younger than both our sons and almost exactly 50 years after Pirsig’s timeline. So we have Debit Cards, ATM’s, 4G Cell phones and GoogleMaps – exchanging calls and texts with his wife back home in Austin. And yet, can’t fail to evoke Pirsig’s 1960’s/70’s intellectual journey. A ZMM for our times?

But lots of Kjeldsen’s own telling to appreciate beyond Pirsig. Little references to US vs European cultural differences, the shorter history. The strip malls that get “built” vs rows of shops that “evolved”. Not surprisingly, returning regularly to Nietzsche’s takes on all that had gone before. Felt like a good reading of Nietzsche to me. References to Usener, Cassirer and Hippel all new to me.  Positive use of Wittgenstein, the kind I approve, and Tolstoy over Plato’s Socrates. The latter’s fine analysis of what makes for art – its irrationality – but ultimately censoring its actual human value, so that today Socrates, the hero of 21st C rational scepticism, has come to dominate and divorce aesthetic value from rational science. Pirsig’s “church of reason”. And yet, the original positive take on censorship in preserving cultural values – moderation I say.

It’s the same problem still afflicting humanity at increasing pace and severity, but reassuring that newer writing – Kjeldsen’s – is finding the same diagnosis.

“[T]he more deeply you get to know [something] the less needs to be expressed in terms of language. And so it is a communication which is non-conceptual. The deepest communication is [verbally] silent communication. The deepest love is silent love.”

The most fundamental Quality is ineffable.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao.

Freedom of expression is fine, but sometimes we need less of it.

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[Original link above to sourcing Kjeldsen’s book from the publisher Black Rose Writing, as I did, but you’ll now find it on Amazon including Kindle and more.]

[(*) Another musical meme? In the same way I use Aretha Franklin’s voice in R.E.S.P.E.C.T to make good faith in dialogue stick, “Tragedy!” hopefully can’t fail to conjure up those falsetto voices of the Bee Gees.]

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Chicago 15th July. Travelling back from an arduous but immensely enjoyable ten days or so re-creating the first half of the “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” #ZMM50thRide with 20 other fine people, referred to tongue-in-cheek by the DeWeese family as “Pirsig Pilgrims”. It really was about the people for me. As Mark Richardson reminded us at the opening event before the ride started in Minneapolis.

“The cycle you are working on is yourself,
the journey you are on is your own.”

With 50 years hindsight, obsession with precise details of Pirsig’s original route and journey (and motorcycles and zen practice) isn’t necessarily healthy, they – those details – don’t really matter in the here and now beyond their metaphorical trajectory: the kinds of roads; the nature of the landscape; the ambience of the diners, the morality of the attention paid. A full report with pictures from the first half of the #ZMM50thRide has been posted on the Robert Pirsig Association pages.

A propos nothing in particular, this image appeared on my Facebook timeline last night, and it prompted me to write this short post today.

Yesterday I had found myself sitting next to a stranger – as you do on aeroplanes – flying from Billings to Chicago who, like myself, was reading and writing / note-taking, both of us using versions of Kindle and Notepad. It became apparent she was somewhat agitated, distracted, so I asked if she was OK. Now teary beyond simply agitated, clearly she wasn’t. She had an onward connection to Albany NY (*) with the same American Eagle airline that afternoon, on her way to a funeral the following morning and we were already 80 minutes behind schedule. The funeral was for a US armed services close colleague of 15 years. She needed some re-assurance she wasn’t going to miss it. The flight attendant did the trick, once I persuaded her she had a legitimate reason to hit the call button.

But then, her armed forces career wasn’t the half of it. A biologist specialising in entomology, fitness instructor fits with the military career I guess, on her way to another science teaching job in Greece. Inspired by the book she was reading, writing her own, lamenting our addiction with the polarising technology-intermediation of our natural human relations. She was quite taken by the idea that this had been the whole purpose of my trip and my own writing ambitions.

When it came to books, humans and technology, we had a lot to talk about. Didn’t actually catch what her inspirational book had been. Kindle was the exception for both of us. Great experience for both of us too, I think.

Wishing you the peace you were hoping for today, Carrie.

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Previously on Psybertron:

Reading physical books in a human social context.

(*) Didn’t get to mention that Albany NY was en-route for Pirsig’s second book Lila. The connections never end.

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Gary’s ISSS Mini Symposium (Talk) 29 June 2024

Everything can be seen as organised systems that are part of greater wholes.
(Organised in terms of functional relations – systemic interconnectedness).
Everywhere and everything.

We see complexity and confusion that can be organised as a learning system.
Complex Adaptive Systems as “Learning Organisation” (Argyris & Schon)?

Troncale’s cycle of emergence and diversification. (See also Kondratiev and Schumpeter)

Volk’s grand sequence. Sillito too (Pirsig!)
(The language of levels of static patterns – the fields we give names to – and dynamic quality – the potential and actual evolutionary change processes of interaction with the world – AIC?.)

Tom Marzolf’s hierarchy from broadest / least-constrained to narrowest / most-constrained “definitions” of systems. (Too much definition can be destructive – requisite variety and ambiguity – constructor theory, the creativity of constraint)
“3-Bears – Just right” “Points of Inflection” (Sigmoid curves) per Hrvoj Vančik 

An organising structure (as moving from Alchemy to Chemistry)
An architectural view. Facilitating opportunity. (Good architectures are lucky) Architectural is my own viewpoint – Hierarchic to Holarchic and Relational – always relational / functional relations (relations that DO something) / any holarchy is simply many overlapping binary-based taxonomic hierarchies – a “thicket”)

What, Why and How to emergent Wisdom – Psybertron

Being Better Better – Finnish Systems (?) group
(Better, Quality – Pirsig, do we need anyone to tell us these things, Phaedrus?)

Buddhism – Yin & Yang, the Tao the Tao Te Ching – aphorisms.

Science?

Jackson’s Pragmatism vs the … “AIC” framework.

SIG = Special Integration Groups – not fragmented interests
Managed / Grouped … Social > Political > Technical
Transdisciplinary

(Far too long / too much … 45 mins and still going)

Outreach alignment – “a better world through a systems approach” shared with so many orgs. (I’ll say)

“Spiritual Stuff” – The Science of Spirituality !!!

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Measures of success / traffic lights ! – Let’s keep “project” management distinct from systems thinking about strategic planning? (Levenchuk)

SIG Chair possibilities & responsibilities.

15 mins for Jamie.

Manel – philosophy missing the human sciences domain.
Catholic Church – long-history Jesuit / World Education.

Coherence – (Kerry) – is a good word. (Alignment too.
Integration needs to be processual, not direct physical unification – see plans)

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Massively comprehensive detail – positive work, positive acknowledgement of every contribution … great, but …
Plan > Rubber > Road – too much detail – won’t survive day #1

Need to separate strategic intents and strategies from multiple “plans” rather than one master plan – coherence better than physical integration at detail level.

Science AND Spirituality (Gary’s language) …
can’t be Science (by any definition).
Response to Jamie – Sure they both evolved through human interaction and understanding in the world … but we have a good fence, a good reason to see them as different ways of viewing the world, different bases for understanding the workings of the world. Arrogant to presume one will entirely replace the other. (My ISSS2024 Session – in fact Jamie’s response is an example of the defensive position that rejects the value of spiritual talk – 2 years of which prompted my session.)

Aphorisms are more Koanish than explicit. Making them explicit completely misses them. (Gary – The Tao that can be spoken / described / defined is not the true Tao) My ISSS2024 Session (obviously, hopefully)

See earlier post – Gary mentioned.

And previous suggestion: ISUS rather than ISSS
International Society for Understanding Systems
Understanding / Epistemology is more than science
Philosophy is more than science
(Even if we don’t seriously propose changing our name – need to be honest about our scope?)

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Post Notes:

[An email thread has ensued, but we’re all busy / asynchronous until we find a live synchronous opportunity. It boils down to:

(SCIENCE (plus) SPIRITUALITY) (cannot equal) (SCIENCE)

That’s illogical captain.

Discuss.
Find better words to make a more useful, positive, true statement … etc. Spirituality is bullshit or “woo” doesn’t actually help, does it?]

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Mentioned in the dear diary entry a couple of days ago on return from the last trip that there is too much too good about the USA, given its short history, that they cannot be allowed to fuck it up for themselves or the rest of the world. We’re not all America, but we all deserve to benefit from their enlightened example, real life isn’t a repeatable experiment.

Here John Stewart says it well.

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John Wilson interviewed Simon McBurney on BBC Radio 4’s “This Cultural Life“ and I only caught it by chance this morning. Glad I did.

[McBurney – privileged life, archaeologist father, born and raised in Cambridge, boarding school, family holidays in Jersey, Eng Lit at Cambridge, the Footlights, Parisian introduction to a creative life in the theatre … and the rest is history.]

Same age as myself give or take a few months and shared a few touch points that pricked my ears up. Sailing round Portland into Weymouth – always an impressive piece of geography to experience close-up – and being part of Rock Against Racism at Victoria Park, Hackney, Sunday April 30th 1978 – the whole goodwill march, chaotic afternoon festival and the bonus evening gig at the Roundhouse oft noted as the best musical day of my life, amidst the whole formative experience.

But the real reason I’m moved to blog is his experience with one of the Xingu tribes in Amazonian South America. Consciousness of identity shared with their forest environment beyond, not even, any self inside their heads. “It’s more complicated“, to use the vernacular for real complexity. That and the archaeological / architectural perspective of time upwards, the new evolved / supervening on the lower older layers, just like our brains and emergence in any complex system. More strings to the West Meets East bow, with “East” being more generally non-Euro/US/Western.

That “Self” being the one invented by the Humboldts and the Jena set in Andrea Wulf’s account of “The Magnificent Rebels” in Prussian Germany from 1749 to 1806 when Napoleon rolled through, with William Godwin’s influence in cultivating it’s wider adoption in the “West” not acknowledged.

This Cultural Life was followed by Ep9 of an audio abridgement of “The Stalin Affair” by Giles Milton. The importance of the (tacit / implicit / “naughty”) interpersonal communications and relationships between Churchill and Stalin amidst the explicit agreements recorded. And despite Churchill’s long stay in Moscow working intimately with Stalin, the latter’s insistence that the final formal meeting between all three – Churchill, FDR and Stalin – be as far East as possible Europewise, in Yalta.

This riff on West<>East world-view connections is itself connected to yesterday’s diary entry, well the connections never end, as I say 🙂

Received this morning Mike Jackson’s (2003) “Systems Thinking – Creative Holism (for Managers)” in which, in response to that previous post, Mike pointed out he had in fact quoted Pirsig in his work, the epigraph to Ch15 of said book, explaining his holistic subtitle:

“This is the source of the trouble. Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is about …. To reject that part of the Buddha that attends to the analysis of motorcycles is to miss the Buddha entirely.” Pirsig (1974)

2003 incidentally is exactly the year I pointed-out Dave Snowden drawing on a Pirsig quote. What goes around comes around.

[Andrea Wulf was the first of the Annual Mike Jackson lecturer’s at Hull Uni … sadly no recording exists.]

Onwards and upward (as time would have it).

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Hawking’s “Brief History of Time” (1988) is something I read back when it was first a best-seller – bought as a present for me by a parent or family friend IIRC – long before I discovered the research topic that became “Psybertron”. Sometime late 90’s not long before I did start here, we bought Kate Charlesworth and John Gribbin “The Cartoon History of Time” (1990) possibly as a present for one of our sons (I think) and I inherited that copy over many moves of residence right up to today.

It’s still my go-to resource when relating to any new physics “evolution of the cosmos” style in the 21st C – think Krauss or Carroll or Rovelli or … so thumbed that for a few years now it’s 68 pages – full-colour / heavy-paper / card – have totally fallen apart, held together in a bulldog clip. I spent several days of effort scanning and collating an electronic copy before I noticed that Dover Publications had re-published a 2013 edition and that now included a Kindle copy. Which I have recently acquired:

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Post Note:

And the problem with Hawking’s original, and so many science-inspired people since – is the arrogance of this quote:

“The eventual goal of science
is to provide a single theory
that describes the whole universe.”

Completely dismissing the “more than science” agenda of my recent post / talks / workshops. Gribbin and Charlesworth stick to the physical science.

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This should probably be three or four separate posts, but after a two week hiatus – the ISSS conference in Washington DC and another week touring the wider DC, MD, VA, DE, Chesapeake area – I have so much not written over and above the writing project I’ve already stalled until after my next US trip – the Robert Pirsig Association #ZMM50thRide events in July. So I’m just crashing down notes in a holding post, in no particular order:

ISSS Conference Workshop

“Divided by a Common Language
or The Tyranny of the Explicit”
Workshop by Ian Glendinning,
Tuesday, June 11, 2024 – 4:30 PM-6:00 PM ET

Meta – It actually went OK, got good feedback, and I am collating the notes that will capture its value (recording in the link above), but a missed opportunity on several levels. Technologically the hybrid participation arrangements, the tech support knew their technology but not the human processes of communication and participation – essentially random which devices controlled presenting or controlled audience participation, and which mic’s, speakers, screens and UI’s were in play in which parts of the process in different room set-ups. Made for a shaky start, and I never quite got the clarity of flow – but fortunately I only needed to talk for 15/20 mins before we went into dialogic mode. Though even then, there was no concession to hybrid round-table format. Anyway – we muddled through and some participants were able to give good contributions. Thanks to everyone for that.

More on the specific content later, but generally the experience of the conference (and my topic) followed-on from my last post about the process of properly integrating such diverse and evolving stories of systems thinking. So many perspectives and approaches seeming to compete, and dare I say dismiss / ignore / pigeon-hole / silo each other, when what is really needed is proper integration and consolidation. ‘Twas ever thus.

Funnily enough when I first mentioned my “Tyranny” sub-title here back in 2016 – (and an earlier version in 2010 Hat tip to Johnnie Moore, John Husband and David Gray, and to Dave Snowden for keeping it alive in this complex self-adaptive systems space) – I already suggested “my whole agenda” in here – again – so yet again I really should not delay my own writing any further after July and before the year-end.

It’s All Connected

Whilst playing tourists after the conference – it was ludicrously hot in downtown DC – but we walked all the obvious places, and found the less obvious connections. The memorials – presidents Washington and Lincoln obvious at opposite ends of the reflecting pool – less obviously Jefferson, FDR & Eleanor, MLK, WWII and Vietnam – monuments all creatively different in their messages and how they conveyed them. Moving – and reassuring – that a nation carves in stone the words and names of those it values. The US short history is a special case the whole world needs to benefit from. Most obviously global unity in place of conflict in the FDR & Eleanor case, but those same values all the way through from Jefferson’s words to the otherwise silent naming of US Vietnam losses, a pointless war of little value. Couldn’t fail to have Jefferson’s words evoke the global ecological ideas of Humboldt.

The Lincoln monument’s monumental impression is currently largely obscured by the construction of a new “undercroft” visitor centre.

Strangely divided – state and federal authorities? – between the monumental and working ends of the National Mall. Loads of drinking-water fountains around the monumental end, none to be found up the hill to the Capitol, Library of Congress and Supreme Court end – see crazy hot.

And then the surprise, despite no skyscrapers, of the monumental scale and style of so many other official buildings of state – Palladian, stone, symmetry – including the many Smithsonian buildings along the Mall. We did of course visit the The Smithsonian Museum of American History too, and specifically the Zen and the Open Road exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. More later.

Visiting the wider Chesapeake area reminded us how much we do love the US after previously living there in the deep south and touring all points south, west and north, but never yet the north-east.

Rural outside the towns – but not the wilderness or parks – shows tremendous pride of place in their homes and produce of their cultivated land. The old-colonial towns like Chestertown. Does everybody own a boat – just so many as far as the eye can see at every water accessible landing or marina boardwalk. (Hat tip to Sevilla King accommodating us a couple of nights at Rock Hall nr Chestertown.)

Hat tip also to Robin Benjamins who provided us with breakfast one day – great to meet-up with him and Marjan – and have them recommend Chincoteague / Assateague islands on the Atlantic coast of Chesapeake Virginia & Maryland.

Largely unspoiled unlike the sprawling Ocean City strip we subsequently drove through 15 miles of out of curiosity – think Atlantic City / Boardwalk Empire of New Jersey – dire ecologically. Elsewhere, wildlife diverse and multitudinous on land, in the sea and air. Dozens of bird species. From Bald Eagle, Buzzard and various Hawks to Fish Eagle / Osprey’s nesting on most available over-water posts, many different Herons and Egrets, Pelicans and Ibises of 2 or 3 kinds, many shore waders, Swallows and Martins and many different Sparrows, Thrushes, Shrikes and Starlings, of the common and exotic varieties, including Redwing Blackbirds, disturbed from rushes and reeds as we passed their marshes. Exactly as described by Pirsig in the opening pages of ZMM.

Minneapolis to Montana and back to Systems

8th to 13th July I’m supporting the first half of the Robert Pirsig Association 50th Anniversary ZMM ride (in a rented car). Speaking on the 7th before we depart Minneapolis, MN and a couple of times en-route in Oakes, ND and Miles City, MT with tours of the library and museum collections arranged on the Montana State campus in Bozeman, MT. Some preparation to do for all these.

That would be a single chapter in its own right, one planned to be followed by my own writing project, but it’s all connected. Not just my original 2002 inroad to philosophy beyond science and systems engineering, but reassuringly in so many of the contributions to the ISSS conference (*) searching for the Eastern / Aboriginal (non-Western)  world-views in our tacit / implicit / embodied engagement with the world. But where is the integration with our default orthodox scientific explicit worldview? The true Tao is not the Tao that can be (explicitly) spoken. The unspoken point of my workshop above, correctly paraphrased by Gary Smith.

(*) I need to summarise more of the contributions, many of which were in fact a surprise to me at the conference despite two years of ISSS engagement via mini-symposia and more – Gary Smith, David Ing and Tomas Wong most obviously, but others more subtly Hrvoj Vančik and Rosa Zubizarreta as well as our Mexican members for example … (A current Pirsig research project is his anthropological investigations in Mexico that pre-dated his post-Korea reading of Northrop’s Meeting of East and West – which also majors on Mexico – before both Zen and “those pesky redskins”.)

Incidentally and Finally

I mentioned in my last post, linked earlier above, that I had acquired some more books recently:

• • Mike Jackson
    “Critical Systems Thinking – a Practitioners Guide”
  • Ramage and Shipp
    “Systems Thinkers”
  • Siri Hustvedt
    “Delusions of Certainty – Reflections on the Mind-Body Problem”

Well, I managed to find time to read them.

Ramage and Shipp does exactly what it says on the tin, it’s a fine summary and short history of systems thinking as I already noted. Recommended, if you need one.

Mike Jackson’s book is what you’d expect, knowledgeable, comprehensive, connected and simply written in an easy style – recommended for that alone. Highlights for me are that it included a wide range of source references outside the core subject thinkers, most if not all already covered here. And an overwhelming sense of being positively underwhelming. Can there really be any more to say that hasn’t already been said, any new magic-bullets to be recommended? No, there can’t. All practitioner methods and procedures are context-contingent and depend on the wisdom of selective use. Rules being for guidance of the wise and the obedience of fools, as I would say. That wisdom comes from much wider sources than the explicit subject matter at hand. His “EPIC” methodology – which he assures was partly tongue-in-cheek – is an example of the underwhelming reach beyond common sense when it comes recommendations. The real recommendation is Pragmatism by any other name. I still find branding his work “Critical” ST grates with me, but that’s really all the critical epithet means – use ST, but don’t lose your critical faculties – of wisdom – in appreciating, evaluating and using the theories & methodologies out there. Hopefully not damning by faint praise, these are wise words.

[Interesting shared refs in Jackson – beyond the explicit complex systems subject matter – include: Snowden, Koestler, Wittgenstein, Edmonds, Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, Murdoch, Kant, Wulf & Humboldt, Blake, (Bob) Dylan, the “getsalts”, Habermas, McGilchrist, Toulmin, Spinoza, Taleb, “Santa Fe”, Heylighen, Boulding, Ulrich and all the US Pragmatists (except Pirsig), Burrell & Morgan, Lakoff & Johnson, Donella Meadows, Mazzucato & Raworth, “the Tavistock”, Ulanovicz, Beer, Espinoza and Morozov, “Rich Pictures”, Deming, Buckie-Fuller, Lao Tzu. No Dennett, no Pirsig(*)]

Siri Hustvedt is clearly on the right side of the of explicit-scientistic vs implicit-humanistic “good fence” countering the arrogance of certainty on the one side, but for me she spends too much time attacking those she finds in error rather than finding constructive integrations. One example is Steven Pinker

 In “How the Mind Works”, Pinker has come down firmly on the side of nature in the nature/nurture debate.

In “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, Pinker makes many claims for traits rooted in biology. “Biology” here is weighted toward the built-in and fixed, as opposed to the learned and changing.

Hustvedt, Siri. The Delusions of Certainty
(Kindle Locations 809-810). Hodder & Stoughton.

No he doesn’t. The way we develop, behave and learn are rooted in biology, but he is very clear that – roughly speaking (**) – our traits are only 5/10%  genetically determined, 30/40% from parental guidance and formal education and 50/60% from wider life and peer-group experience – but the behaviour and psychology in all of those are also rooted in biology. Nature / nurture is a good fence like all taxonomic / epistemic / ontological distinctions. We’re dealing with complex self-adaptive systems here. As I always say of Pinker, anyone married to Rebecca Goldstein can’t be all bad?
[(**) obviously these overall rough averages vary enormously across different kinds of propensities and traits]

Hustvedt, like Jackson, is meta to the actual subject, about specific methodologies and sciences, not being these.

[As well as Pinker (and Dawkins) many other shared references in Hustvedt, not always positive: – Solms, Friston, Panksepp, (Margaret) Cavendish, Spinoza, Whitehead, Arendt, Goethe, Dowling, Hughlings-Jackson, Wiener, Turing, Freud, Pribram, McCulloch, von Neumann, Deutsch, Bergson, Weil, Maturana & Varela, Edelman, (Andy) Clarke, (Wm) James, Damasio and many of the usual philosophers. (No Wittgenstein or Wulf or McGilchrist or Pirsig and for Dennett, only Consciousness Explained – Jeez!)]

Enough Already!

So much writing to flesh-out and join-up in all of the above.

[(*) And the connections never end – already continued here.]

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I formed my own view of how Systems Thinking came to be the umbrella term for what I’m about, and I can be quite dismissive of the choice of labelling given to different approaches and methodologies – which always feel like selling different commercial education and consultancy offerings. And when reading and researching about the evolution of any topic, the reading list is never-ending. We all stand on the shoulders of giant termite colonies as well as individual giants.

Since I’m more of an architect, concerned with the general conceptual topology of my topic, I can pragmatically leave details to individual practitioners, who will anyway, always discover that, however detailed, objectively driven planning rarely survives contact with actual implementation context beyond day one – the essential nature of complexity. Which isn’t to say planning doesn’t have its value, but I’m pragmatically more concerned with setting expectations and understanding of the planned than the plan itself.

A Brief History of Systems Thinking is an article created by The Systems Thinking Alliance shared on LinkedIn. Looks like a great summary to me, well presented in a couple of block-diagrams – original typos fixed.

I was already working-up to acquiring Mike Jackson’s latest “Critical Systems Thinking – A Practitioners Guide” even though, for reasons noted above, the “critical” and the “practitioner” language have previously been a turn-off. Mike was generous enough to like and share the Brief History article and recommend that the main acknowledged source “Systems Thinkers” by Ramage and Shipp was itself valuable. I’ve now acquired both. (Mentioned Mike several times recently, alongside references to Dave Snowden’s “Cynefin” – they represent two aspects of Systems Thinking that I am trying to reconcile, thought clearly the market-place sustains multiple alternative approaches.)

As well as these two named current thinker / practitioners, the article also references Fritjof Capra’s latest and Donella Meadows, both of which I’ve overlooked and will have to pick-up, unlike Alexander Bogdanov whose pioneering work makes the historical text but not the visual summaries. Otherwise a couple of dozen sources all mentioned here previously, one-way-or-another.

Brief but recommended read.

Key words for me are Systems, Cybernetics and Complexity – the first two being synonymous at my level of abstraction, and the latter their reason to exist. All else are context-specific detail qualifications of methods and/or processes or are entirely meta, the choices of words like science, theory, thinking, knowledge, understanding are all aspects of human cultural psychology, which are themselves a complex cybernetic system.

(Hence Psybertron and Psybernetics.)

• • • And incidentally, the ontology <> epistemology axis on the second diagram disappears for me, there is no ontology without epistemology, humans use the latter to create the former. I talk of my own “epistemological ontology” which is that complex (human) cybernetic system.
    • Interesting that operations research (OR) is presented as a stranded island on the left. Consistent with my own recent experience understanding that OR really was / is part of the same management of organisational complexity – lost because its choice of naming disguises the relationship to systems (operations?) and practice (research?) Ultimately this whole subject is a language game – some looking to reconcile understanding others gaming the market, the most important market being that for attention.
    • Interesting too to see Argyris and Schon mentioned, an early part of my journey back in the 1980’s/90’s before I really knew what my topic was.
    • First and second cybernetics I see as more complex. It’s not just the “order” in single-feedback or multiple-feedback-&-forward loop system control sense, but “meta” in how complex the agents within the system and eco-system are acknowledged and modelled. And indeed, the “priorities” of the originators of cybernetics itself – always intended to be about complex organic living human psycho-socio-cultural systems beyond mechanistic machines. (Once the parts and wholes and ecosystem are living / organic with agency, evolution is in play every-which-way.)

Fascinating to see the whole summarised this way.

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Post Note – one thread on LinkedIn suggesting that the “critical” in Mike Jackson’s work “pays respect to” the view of Edgar Morin’s work – avoiding the explicit disjointed mechanisation of systems and their causal processes?

Edgar Morin on Systems and Complexity

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