CHAPTER  I

The MU-puzzle

Formal Systems

ONE OF THE most central notions in this hook is that of a formal system. The type of formal system I use was invented by the American logician Emil Post in the 1920's, and is often called a "Post production system". This Chapter introduces you to a formal system and moreover, it is my hope that you will want to explore this formal system at least a little; so to provoke your curiosity, I have posed a little puzzle.
"Can you produce MU?" is the puzzle. To begin with, you will be supplied with a string (which means a string of letters).* Not to keep you in suspense, that string will be MI. Then you will be told some rules, with which you can change one string into another. If one of those rules is applicable at some point, and you want to use it, you may, but-there is nothing that will dictate which rule you should use, in case there are several applicable rules. That is left up to you-and of course, that is where playing the game of any formal system can become something of an art. The major point, which almost doesn't need stating, is that you must not do anything which is outside the rules. We might call this restriction the "Requirement of Formality". In the present Chapter, it probably won't need to be stressed at all. Strange though it may sound, though, I predict that when you play around with some of the formal systems of Chapters to come, you will find vourself violating the Requirement of Formality over and over again, unless you have worked with formal systems before.
The first thing to say about our formal system-the MIU-system-is that it utilizes only three letters of the alphabet: M, I, U. That means that the only strings of the MIU-system are strings which are composed of those three letters. Below are some strings of the MIU-system:

MU
UIM
MUUMUU
UIIUMIUUIMUIIUMIUUIMUIIU

*	In this book, we shall employ the following conventions when we refer to strings. When the string is in the same typeface as the text, then it will he enclosed in single or douhle quotes. Punctuation which belongs to the sentence and not to the string under discussion will go outside of the quotes, as logic dictates. For example, the first letter of this sentence is 'F', while the first letter of 'this sentence"is 't'. Wlten the string is in Quadrata Roman, however, quotes will usually he left off, unless clarity demands them, for example, the first letter of Quadrata as. Q.

But although all of these are legitimate strings, they are not strings which are in your possession". In fact, the only string in your possession so far is MI. Only by using the rules, about to be introduced, can you enlarge your private collection. Here is the first rule:

RULE I:  If you possess a string whose last letter is I, you can add on a U at the end.

By the way, if up to this point you had not guessed it, a fact about the meaning of "string" is that the letters are in a fixed order. For example, Ml and IM are two different strings. A string of symbols is not just a "bag" of symbols, in which the order doesn't make any difference.
Here is the second rule:

RULE II:  Suppose you have Mx. Then you may add Mxx to your collection.

What I mean by this is shown below, in a few examples.

From MIU, you may get MIUIU.
From MUM, you may get MUMUM.
From MU, you may get MUU.

So the letter 'x' in the rule simply stands for any string; but once you have decided which string it stands for, you have to stick with your choice (until you use the rule again, at which point you may make a new choice). Notice the third example above. It shows how, once you possess MU, you can add other string to your collection;but you have to get MUfirst! Iwant to
add one last comment about the letter 'x': it is not part of the formal system in the same way as the three letters 'M', 'I', and 'U' are. It is useful for us, though, to have some way to talk in general about strings of the system, symbolically-and that is the function of the 'x': to stand for an arbitrary string. If you ever add a string containing an 'x' to your "collection", you have done something wrong, because strings of the MIU-system never contain "x" 's!
Here is the third rule:

Rule III:  If Ill occurs in one of the strings in your collection, you may make a new string with U in place of III.

Examples:

From UMIIIMU, you could make UMUMU.
From MIIII, you could make MIU (also MUI).
From IIMII, you can't get anywhere using this rule. (The three l's have to be consecutive.)
From MIll, make MU.

Don't, under any circumstances, think you can run this rule backwards, as in the following example:
	From MU, make MIII.	This is wrong.

Rules are one-way.
Here is the final rule:

RULE IV:  If UU occurs inside one of your strings, you can drop it.

From UUU, get U.
From MUUUIII, get MUIII.

There you have it. Now you may begin trying to tnake MU. Don't worry if you don't get it. Just try it out a bit-the main thing is for you to get the flavor of this MU-puzzle. Have fun.

Theorems, Axioms, Rules

The answer to the MU-puzzle appears later in the book. For now, what is important is not finding the answer, but looking for it. You probably have made some attempts to produce MU. In so doing, you have built up your own private collection of strings. Such strings, producible by the rules, are called theorems. The term "theorem" has, of course, a common usage in mathematics which is quite different from this one. It means some statement in ordinary language which has been proven to be true by a rigorous argument, such as Zeno's Theorem about the "unexistence" of motion, or Euclid's Theorem about the infinitude of primes. But in formal systems, theorems need not be thought of as statements-they are merely strings of symbols. And instead of being proven, theorems are merely produced, as if by machine, according to certain typographical rules. To emphasize this important distinction in meanings for the word "theorem", I will adopt the following convention in this book: when "theorem" is capitalized, its meaning will be the everyday one-a Theorem is a statement in ordinary language which somebody once proved to be true by some sort of logical argument. When uncapitalized, "theorem" will have its technical meaning:
a string producible in some formal system. In these terms, the MU-puzzle asks whether MU is a theorem of the MIU-system.

I gave you a theorem for free at the beginning, namely MI. Such a "free" theorem is called an axiom - the technical meaning again being quite different from the usual meaning. A formal system may have zero, one, several, or even infinitely many axioms. Examples of all these types will appear in the book.
Every formal system has symbol-shunting rules, such as the four rules of the MIU-system. These rules are called either rules of production or rules of inference. I will use both terms.
The last term which I wish to introduce at this point is derivation. Shown below is a derivation of the theorem MUIIU:
(1) 	MI		axiom
(2) 	MII		from (1) by rule II
(3)	MIIII		from (2) by rule II 
(4)	MIIIIU		from (3) by rule I	
(5)	MUIU		from (4) by rule III 
(6)	MUIUUIU 	from (5) by rule II
(7)	MUIIU		from (6) by rule IV

 

A derivation of a theorem is an explicit, line-by-line demonstration of how to produce that theorem according to the rules of the formal system. The concept of derivation is modeled on that of proof, but a derivation is an austere cousin of a proof. It would sound strange to say that you had proven MUIIU, but it does not sound so strange to say you have derived MUIIU.

Inside and Outside the System

Most people go about the MU-puzzle by deriving a number of theorems, quite at random, just to see what kind of thing turns up. Pretty soon, they begin to notice some properties of the theorems they have made; that is where human intelligence enters the picture. For instance, it was probably not obvious to you that all theorems would begin with M, until you had tried a few. Then, the pattern emerged, and not only could you see the pattern, but you could understand it by looking at the rules, which have the property that they make each new theorem inherit its first letter from an earlier theorem; ultimately, then, all theorems' first letters can be traced back to the first letter of the sole axiom MI-and that is a proof that theorems of the MIU-system must all begin with M.
There is something very significant about what has happened here. It shows one difference between people and machines. It would certainly be possible-in fact it would be very easy-to program a computer to generate theorem after theorem of the MIU-system; and we could include in the program a command to stop only upon generating U. You now know that a computer so programmned would never stop. And this does not amaze you. But what if you asked a friend to try to generate U? It would not surprise you if he came back after a while, complaining that he can't get rid of the initial M, and therefore it is a wild goose chase. Even if a person is not very bright, he still cannot help making some observations about what he is doing, and these observations give him good insight into the task-insight which the computer program, as we have described it, lacks.
Now let me be very explicit about what I meant by saying this shows a difference between people and machines. I meant that it is possible to program a machine to do a routine task in such a way that the machine will never notice even the most obvious facts about what it is doing; but it is inherent in human consciousness to notice some facts about the things one is doing. But you knew this all along. If you punch "1" into an adding machine, and then add 1 to it, and then add 1 again, and again, and again, and continue doing so for hours and hours, the machine will never learn to anticipate you, and do it itself, although any person would pick up the repetitive behavior very quickly. Or, to take a silly example, a car will never pick up the idea, no matter how much or how well it is driven, that it is supposed to avoid other cars and obstacles on the road; and it will never learn even the most frequently traveled routes of its owner.
[See Fibonacci Forgeries at members.fortunecity.com/templarser/forgeries.html]

The difference, then, is that it is possible for a machine to act unobservant; it is impossible for a human to act unobservant. Notice I am not saying that all machines are necessarily incapable of making sophisticated observations; just that some machines are. Nor am I saying that all people are always making sophisticated observations; people, in fact, are often very unobservant. But machines can be made to be totally unobservant; and people cannot. And in fact, most machines made so far are pretty close to being totally unobservant. Probably for this reason, the property of being unobservant seems to be the characteristic feature of machines, to most people. For example, if somebody says that some task is "mechanical", it does not mean that people are incapable of doing the task; it implies, though, that only a machine could do it over and over without ever complaining, or feeling bored.

Jumping out of the System

It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of the task which it is performing, and survey what it has done; it is always looking for, and often finding, patterns. Now I said that an intelligence can jump out of its task, but that does not mean that it always will. However, a little prompting will often suffice. For example, a human being who is reading a book may grow sleepy. Instead of continuing to read until the book is finished, he is just as likely to put the book aside and turn off the light. He has stepped "out of the system" and yet it seems the most natural thing in the world to us. Or, suppose person A is watching television when person B comes in the room, and shows evident displeasure with the situation. Person A may think he understands the problem, and try to remedy it by exiting the present system (that television program), and flipping the channel knob, looking for a better show. Person B may have a more radical concept of what it is to "exit the system"-namely to turn the television off! Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the vision to perceive a system which governs many peoples' lives, a system which had never before even been recognized as a system; then such people often devote their lives to convincing other people that the system really is there, and that it ought to be exited from!
How well have computers been taught to jump out of the system? I will cite one example which surprised some observers. In a computer chess tournament not long ago in Canada, one program-the weakest of all the competing ones-had the unusual feature of quitting long before the game was over. It was not a very good chess player, but it at least had the redeeming quality of being able to spot a hopeless position, and to resign then and there, instead of waiting for the other program to go through the boring ritual of checkmating. Although it lost every game it played, it did it in style. A lot of local chess experts were impressed. Thus, if you define "the system" as "making moves in a chess game", it is clear that this program had a sophisticated, preprogrammed ability to exit from the system. On the other hand, if you think of "the system" as being "whatever the computer had been programmed to do", then there is no doubt that the computer had no ability whatsoever to exit from that system.
It is very important when studying formal systems to distinguish working within the system from making statements or observations about the system. I assume that you began the MU-puzzle, as do most people, by working within the system; and that you then gradually started getting anxious, and this anxiety finally built up to the point where without any need for further consideration, you exited from the system, trying to take stock of what you had produced, and wondering why it was that you had not succeeded in producing MU. Perhaps you found a reason why you could not produce MU; that is thinking about the system. Perhaps you produced MIU somewhere along the way; that is working within the system. Now I do not want to make it sound as if the two modes are entirely incompatible; I am sure that every human being is capable to some extent of working inside a system and simultaneously thinking about what he is doing. Actually, in human affairs, it is often next to impossible to break things neatly up into "inside the system" and "outside the system"; life is composed of so many interlocking and interwoven and often inconsistent systems" that it may seem simplistic to think of things in those terms. But it is often important to formulate simple ideas very clearly so that one can use them as models in thinking about more complex ideas. And that is why I am showing you formal systems; and it is about time we went back to discussing the MIU-system.

M-Mode, I-Mode, U-Mode

The MU-puzzle was stated in such a way that it encouraged some amount of exploration within the MIU-system deriving theorems. But it was also stated in a way so as not to imply that staying inside the system would necessarily yield fruit. Therefore it encouraged some oscillation between the two modes of work. One way to separate these two modes would be to have two sheets of paper; on one sheet, you work "in your capacity as a machine", thus filling it with nothing but M's, I's, and U's; on the second sheet, you work "in your capacity as a thinking being", and are allowed to do whatever your intelligence suggests-which might involve using English, sketching ideas, working backwards, using shorthand (such as the letter 'x'), compressing several steps into one, modifying the rules of the system to see what that gives, or whatever else you might dream up. One thing you might do is notice that the numbers 3 and 2 play an important role, since I's are gotten rid of in three's, and U's in two's-and doubling of length (except for the M) is allowed by rule II. So the second sheet might
also have some figuring on it. We will occasionally refer back to these two modes of dealing with a formal system, and we will call them the Mechanical mode (M-mode) and the Intelligent mode (I-mode). To round out our modes, with one for each letter of the MIU-system, I will also mention a final mode-the Un-mode (U-mode), which is the Zen way of approaching things. More about this in a few Chapters.

Decision Procedures

An observation about this puzzle is that it involves rules of two opposing tendencies-the lengthening rules and the shortening rules. Two rules (I and II) allow you to increase the size of strings (but only in very rigid, prescribed ways, of course); and two others allow you to shrink strings somewhat (again in very rigid ways). There seems to be an endless variety to the order in which these different types of rules might be applied, and this gives hope that one way or another, MU could be produced. It might involve lengthening the string to some gigantic size, and then extracting piece after piece until only two symbols are left; or, worse yet, it might involve successive stages of lengthening and then shortening and then lengthening and then shortening, .and so on. But there is no guarantee of it. As a matter of fact, we already observed that U cannot be produced at all, and it will make no difference if you lengthen and shorten till kingdom come.
Still, the case of U and the case of MU seem quite different. It is by a very superficial feature of U that we recognize the impossibility of producing it: it doesn't begin with an M (whereas all theorems must). It is very convenient to have such a simple way to detect nontheorems. However, who says that that test will detect all nontheorems? There may be lots of strings which begin with M but are not producible. Maybe MU is one of them. That would mean that the "first-letter test" is of limited usefulness, able only to detect a portion of the nontheorems, but missing others. But there remains the possibility of some more elaborate test which discriminates perfectly between those strings which can be produced by the rules, and those which cannot. Here we have to face the question, "What do we mean by a test?" It may not be obvious why that question makes sense, or is important, in this context. But I will give an example of a "test" which somehow seems to violate the spirit of the word.
Imagine a genie who has all the time in the world, and who enjoys using it to produce theorems of the MIU-system, in a rather methodical way. Here, for instance, is a possible way the genie might go about it:

Step	1:  Apply every applicable rule to the axiom Ml. This yields two new theorems: MIU, MII.
Step	2:  Apply every applicable rule to the theorems produced in step 1. This yields three new theorems: MIIU, MIUIU, MIIII.
Step	3:  Apply every applicable rule to the theorems produced in step 2. This yields five new theorems: MIIIIU, MIIUIIU, MIUIUIUIU, MIIIIIIII, MUI.

This method produces every single theorem sooner or later, because the rules are applied in every conceivable order. (See Fig. 11.) All of the lengthening-shortening alternations which we mentioned above eventually get carried out. However, it is not clear how long to wait for a given string

See Mupic.gif

FIGURE 11. A systematically constructed "tree" of all the theorems of the MIU-systeni. The N th level down contains those theorems whose derivations contain exactly N steps. The encircled numbers tell which rule was employed. Is MU anywhere in this tree?

to appear on this list, since theorems are listed according to the shortness of their derivations. This is not a very useful order, if you are interested in a specific string (such as MU), and you don't even know if it has any derivation, much less how long that derivation might be.
Now we state the proposed "theoremhood-test":

Wait until the string in question is produced; when that happens, you know it is a theorem-and if it never happens, you know that it is not a theorem.

This seems ridiculous, because it presupposes that we don't mind waiting around literally an infinite length of time for our answer. This gets to the crux of the matter of what should count as a "test". Of prime importance is
a guarantee that we will get our answer in a finite length of time. If there is a test for theorenihood, a test which does always terminate in a finite amount of time, then that test is called a decision procedure for the given formal system.
When you have a decision procedure, then you have a very concrete characterization of the nature of all theorems in the system. Offhand, it might seem that the rules a~d axioms of the formal system provide no less complete a characterization of the theorems of the system than a decision procedure would. The tricky word here is "characterization". Certainly the rules of inference and the axioms of the MIU-system do characterize, implicitly, those strings that are theorems. Even more implicitly, they characterize those strings that are not theorems. But implicit characterization is not enough, for many purposes. If someone claims to have a characterization of all theorems, but it takes him infinitely long to deduce that some particular string is not a theorem, you would probably tend to say that there is something lacking in that characterization-it is not quite concrete enough. And that is why discovering that a decision procedure exists is a very important step. What the discovery means, in effect, is that you can perform a test for the theoremhood of a string, and that, even if the test is complicated, it is guaranteed to terminate. In principle, the test is just as easy, just as mechanical, just as finite, just as full of certitude, as checking whether the first letter of the string is M. A decision procedure is a "litmus test" for theorembood!
Incidentally, one requirement on formal systems is that the set of axioms must be characterized by a decision procedure-there must be a litmus test for axiomhood. This ensures that there is no problem in getting off the ground at the beginning, at least. That is the difference between the set of axioms and the set of theorems: the former always has a decision procedure, but the latter may not.
I am sure you will agree that when you looked at the MIU-system for the first time, you had to face this problem exactly. The lone axiom was  known, the rules of inference were simple, so the theorems had been  implicitly characterized-and yet it was still quite unclear what the consequences of that characterization were. In particular, it was still totally  unclear whether MU is, or is not, a theorem.

Douglas Hofstadter
Godel,Escher and Bach

I want to talk now about truth traps and muscle traps and then stop this Chautauqua for today.
Truth traps are concerned with data that are apprehended and are within the boxcars of the train. For the most part these data are properly handled by conventional dualistic logic and the scientific method talked about earlier, back just after Miles City. But there's one trap that isn't - the truth trap of yes-no logic.
Yes and no ... this or that ... one or zero. On the basis of this elementary two-term discrimination, all human knowledge is built up. The demonstration of this is the computer memory which stores all its knowledge in the form of binary information. It contains ones and zeros, that's all.
Because we're unaccustomed to it, we don't usually see that there's a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don't even have a term for it, so I'll have to use the Japanese mu.
Mu means 'no thing.' Like 'Quality' it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, 'No class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no.' It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. 'Unask the question' is what it says.
Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer. When the Zen monk joshu was asked whether a dog had a Buddha nature he said 'Mu,' meaning that if he answered either way he was answering incorrectly. The Buddha nature cannot be captured by yes and no questions.
That mu exists in the natural world investigated by science is evident. It's just that, as usual, we're trained not to see it by our heritage. For example, it's stated over and over again that computer circuits exhibit only two states, a voltage for 'one' and a voltage for 'zero.' That's silly!
Any computer-electronics technician knows otherwise. Try to find a voltage representing one or zero when the power is off! The circuits are in a mu state. They aren't at one, they aren't at zero, they're in an indeterminate state that has no meaning in terms of ones or zeros. Readings of the voltmeter will show, in many cases, 'floating ground' characteristics, in which the technician isn't reading characteristics of the computer circuits at all but characteristics of the voltmeter itself. What's happened is that the power-off condition is part of a context larger than the context in which the one-zero states are considered universal. The question of one or zero has been 'unasked.' And there are plenty of other computer conditions besides a power-off condition in which mu answers are found because of larger contexts than the one-zero universality.
The dualistic mind tends to think of mu occurrences in nature as a kind of contextual cheating, or irrelevance, but mu is found throughout all scientific investigation, and nature doesn't cheat, and nature's answers are never irrelevant. It's a great mistake, a kind of dishonesty, to sweep natures mu answers under the carpet. Recognition and valuation of these answers would do a lot to bring logical theory closer to experimental practice. Every laboratory scientist knows that very often his experimental results provide mu answers to the yes-no questions the experiments were designed for. In these cases he considers the experiment poorly designed, chides himself for stupidity and at best considers the 'wasted' experiment which has provided the mu answer to be a kind
'of wheel-spinning' which might help prevent mistakes in the design of future yes-no experiments.
This low evaluation of the experiment which provided the mu answer isn't justified. The mu answer is an important one. It's told the scientist that the context of his question is too small for nature's answer and that he must enlarge the context of the question. That is a very important answer! His understanding of nature is tremendously improved by It, which was the purpose of the experiment in the first place. A very strong case can be made for the statement that science grows by its mu answers more than by its yes or no answers. Yes or no confirms or denies a hypothesis. Mu says the answer is beyond the hypothesis. Mu is the 'phenomenon' that inspires scientific enquiry in the first place! There's nothing mysterious or esoteric about it. It's just that our culture has warped us to make a low value judgement of
It.
In motorcycle maintenance the mu answer given by the machine to many of the diagnostic questions put to it is a major cause of gumption loss. It shouldn't be! When your answer to a test is indeterminate it means one of two things: that your test procedures aren't doing what you think they are or that your understanding of the context of the question needs to be enlarged. Check your tests and restudy the question. Don't throw away those mu answers! They're every bit as vital as the yes or no answers. They're more vital. They're the ones you grow on!

... This motorcycle seems to be running a little hot ... but I suppose it's just the hot dry country we're going through
I'll leave the answer to that in a mu state . . . until it gets worse or better .
We stop for a long chocolate malted in the town of Mitchell, nestled in some dry hills that we can see out the plate-glass window. Some kids come in on a truck and stop and all pile off and come into the restaurant and sort of dominate it. They're reasonably well-behaved, just noisy and energetic, but you can see the lady who's running it is a little nervous about them.

WHY DON'T YOU come out of the shadows? What do you really look like? You're afraid of something aren't you? What is it you're afraid of~
Beyond the figure in the shadows is the glass door. Chris is behind it, motioning me to open it. He's older now, but his face still has a pleading expression. 'What do I do now?' he wants to know. 'What do I do next?' He's waiting for my instructions.
It's time to act.
I study the figure in the shadows. It's not as omnipotent as it once seemed. 'Who are you?' I ask.
No answer.
'By what right is that door closed?'
Still no answer. The figure is silent, but it is also cowering. It's afraid! Of me.
'There are worse things than hiding in the shadows. Is that ~ Is that why you don't speak?'
It seems to be quivering, retreating, as though sensing what I gm about to do.
I wait, and then move closer to it. Loathsome, dark, evil thing. Closer, looking not at it but at the glass door, so as
-not to warn it. I pause again, brace myself and then lunge!
My hands sink into something soft where its neck should be. It writhes, and I tighten the grip, as one holds a serpent. And now holding it tighter and tighter we'll get it into the ~light. Here it comes! NOW WE'LL SEE ITS FACE!
'Dad!'
'Dad!' I hear Chris's voice through the door?

Yes! The first time! 'Dad! Dad!'

'Dad! Dad!' Chris tugs on my shirt. 'Dad! Wake up! Dad!' He's crying, sobbing now. 'Stop, Dad! Wake up!' 'It's all right, Chris.'

'Dad! Wake up!'

'I'm awake.' I can just barely make out his face in the dawn light. We're in trees somewhere outside. There's a motorcycle here. I think we're in Oregon somewhere.

'I'm all right, it was just a nightmare.'

He continues to cry and I sit quietly with him for a while. 'It's all right,' I say, but he doesn't stop. He's badly frightened.

So am I.
'What were you dreaming about?'

'I was trying to see someone's face.'

'You shouted you were going to kill me.'

'No, not you.

'Who?'

'The person in the dream.'

'Who was it?'

'I'm not sure.

Chris's crying stops, but he continues to shake from the cold. 'Did you see the face?'

'Yes.'

'What did it look like?'

'It was my own face, Chris, that's when I shouted . . . It was just a bad dream.' I tell him he's shivering and should get back into the sleeping bag.

He does this. 'It's so cold,' he says.

'Yes.' By the dawn light I can see the vapor from our breaths. Then he crawls under the cover of the sleeping bag and I can see only my own.

I don't sleep.

The dreamer isn't me at all.

It's Phaedrus.

He's waking up.

A mind divided against itself... me .~. . I'm the evil figure in the shadows. I'm the loathsome one...
ft always knew he would come back.. :~It's a matter now of preparing for it .
The ~sky under the trees looks so grey and so hopeless. Poor Chris.

STUCK

....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.
It all sounds so far out and esoteric when it's put like that it comes as a shock to discover that it is one of the most homespun, down-to-earth views of reality you can have. HHarry 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.' That may not be an exact quote, but it's close.
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, but that argument is not to the point. The point is that the President and everyone else, from the wildest radical to the wildest reactionary, agree that the government should change in response to Quality, even if It doesn't. Phaedrus's concept of changing Quality as reality, a reality so omnipotent that whole governments must change to keep up with it, is something that in a wordless way we have always unanimously believed in all along.
And what Harry Truman said, really, was nothing different from the practical, pragmatic attitude of any laboratory scientist or any engineer or any mechanic when he's not thinking 'objectively' in the course of his daily work.
I keep talking wild theory, but it keeps somehow coming out stuff everybody knows, folklore. This Quality, this feeling for the work, is something known in every shop.
Now finally let's get back to that screw.
Let's consider a re-evaluation of the situation in which we assume that the stuckness now occurring, the zero of consciousness, isn't the worst of all possible situations, but the best possible situation you could be in. 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 re-evaluation of the screw comes a willingness to expand your knowledge of it.

"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands"-Robert Pirsig."Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" p301

Firstly I'd like to quote from Pirsig where he speaks of the death of his son....he so plainly characterises what I view as what people call "spirit" or "ghost" as a "larger pattern"...says that immaterial ectoplasm is not what is meant....the way he views this is much the same as the way I do...and there is no God...not afterlife...but it is NOTa merely physical explanation....but engenders some of the ideas from frontier sciences...and shows a metaphysical explanation for those things which people characterise as "spirit"...(p421)

"I tend to become taken with philosophic question,	going over them and over them and over them again in loops that go round and round and round until they either produce an answer or become so repetitively locked on they become psychiatrically dangerous, and now the question became obsessive: 'Where did he go?'
Where did Chris go? He had bought an airplane ticket that morning. He had a bank account, drawers full of clothes, and shelves full of books. He was a real, live person, occupying time and space on this planet, and now suddenly where was he gone to? Did he go up the stack at the crematorium? Was he in the little box of bones they handed back? Was he strumming a harp of gold on some overhead cloud? None of these answers made any sense.
It had to be asked: What was it I was so attached to? Is it just something in the imagination? When you have done time in a mental hospital, that is never a trivial question. If he wasn't just imaginary, then where did he go? Do real things just disappear like that? If they do, then the conservation laws of physics are in trouble. But if we stay with the laws of physics, then the Chris that disappeared was unreal. Round and round and round. He used to run off like that just to make me mad. Sooner or later he would always appear, but where would lie appear now? After all, really, where did he go?
The loops eventually stopped at the realization that before it could be asked 'Where did he go?' it must be asked 'What is the "he" that is gone?' There is an old cultural habit of thinking of people as primarily something material, as flesh and blood. As long as this idea held, there was no solution. The oxides of Chris's flesh and blood did, of course, go up the stack at the crematorium. But they weren't Chris.
What had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an object but a pattern, and that although the pattern included the flesh and blood of Chris, that was not all there was to it. The pattern was larger than Chris and myself, and related us in ways that neither of us understood completely and neither of us was in complete control of.
Now Chris's body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. But the larger pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the center of it, and that was what caused all the heartache. The pattern was looking for something to attach to and couldn't find anything. That's probably why grieving people feel such attachment to cemetery headstones and any material property or representation of the deceased. The pattern is trying to hang on to its own existence by finding some new material thing to center itself upon.
Some time later it became clearer that these thoughts were something very close to statements found in many 'primitive' cultures. If you take that part of the pattern that is not the flesh and bones of Chris and call it the 'spirit' of Chris or the 'ghost' of Chris, then you can say without further translation that the spirit or ghost of Chris is looking for a new body to enter. When we hear accounts' of 'primitives' talking this way, we dismiss them as superstition because we interpret ghost or spirit as some sort of material ectoplasm, when in fact they may not mean any such thing at all.

In any event, it was not many months later that my wife conceived, unexpectedly. After careful discussion, we decided it was not something that should continue. I'm in my fifties. I didn't want to go through any more child-raising experiences. I'd seen enough. So we came to our conclusion and made the necessary medical appointment.
Then something very strange happened. I'll never forget it. As we went over the whole decision in detail one last time, there was a kind of dissociation, as though my wife started to recede while we sat there talking. We were looking at each other, talking normally, but it was like those photographs of a rocket just after launching where you see two stages start to separate from each other in space. You think you're together and then suddenly you see that you're not together anymore.
I said, 'Wait. Stop. Something's wrong.' What it was, was unknown, but it was intense and I didn't want it to continue. It was a really frightening thing, which has since become clearer. It was the larger pattern of Chris, making itself known at last. We reversed our decision, and now realize what a catastrophe it would have been for us if we hadn't.
So I guess you could say, in this primitive way of looking at things, that Chris got his airplane ticket after all. This time he's a little girl named Nell and our life is back in perspective again. The hole in the pattern is being mended. A thousand memories of Chris will always be at hand, of course, but not a destructive clinging to some material entity that can never be here again. We're in Sweden now, the home of my mother's ancestors, and I'm working on a second book which is a sequel to this one.
Nell teaches aspects of parenthood never understood before. If she cries or makes a mess or decides to be contrary (and these are relatively rare), it doesn't bother. There is always Chris's silence to compare it to. What is seen now so much more clearly is that although the names keep changing and the bodies keep changing, the larger pattern that holds us all together goes on and on. In terms of this larger pattern the lines at the end of this book still stand. We have won it. Things are better now. You can sort of tell these things."

Lastly,Pirsig speaks of the "sheep" notion...in this case..he is the shepherd and his students are the sheep..but whilst reading this I was cognisant of the idea of "The Lamb" and the kind of "sheperding notions to which you allude....(p393)...note that Pheadrus (the wolf) is both at once a student of Aristotle and an alter ego for Pirsig himself....prior to his breakdown. This is with reference to how one convinces someone by "reason" (see also "A two part invention" in Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel Escher Bach")...reference this also with the questions asked by Dewey of "John".
As I write this I am watching "Stonehenge"...which is apt...because it's part of the history of how man invented God.

He can't feel sorry,just disgusted.When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
A girl rescues the Chairman by asking easy questions. He receives the questions with gratitude, answers each at great length and slowly recovers himself.
Then the question is asked him, 'What is dialectic?'
He thinks about it, and then, by God, turns to Phaedrus and asks if he would care to answer.
'You mean my personal opinion?' Phaedrus asks.
'No. . . let us say, Aristotle's opinion.'
No subtleties now. He is just going to get Phaedrus on his own territory and let him have it.
'As best I know...' Phaedrus says, and pauses.
'Yes?' The Chairman is all smiles. Everything is all set.
'As best I know, Aristotle's opinion is that dialectic comes before everything else.'
The Chairman's expression goes from unction to shock to rage in one-half second flat. It does! his face shouts, but he never says it. The trapper trapped again. He can't kill Phaedrus on a statement taken from his own article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Rhetoric, 2; Dialectic, 0.
'And from the dialectic come the forms,' Phaedrus continues, 'and from . . .' But the Chairman cuts it off. He sees it cannot go his way and dismisses it.
He shouldn't have cut it off, Phaedrus thinks to himself. Were he a real Truth-seeker and not a propagandist for a particular point of view he would not. He might learn something. Once it's stated that 'the dialectic comes before anything else,' this statement itself becomes a dialectical entity, subject to dialectical question.
Phaedrus would have asked, What evidence do we have that the dialectical question-and-answer method of arriving at truth comes before anything else? We have none whatsoever. And when the statement is isolated and itself subject to scrutiny it becomes patently ridiculous. Here is this dialectic, like Newton's law of gravity, just sitting by itself in the middle of nowhere, giving birth to the universe, hey? It's asinine.
Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and the myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know.
The class ends, the Chairman stands by the door answering questions, and Phaedrus almost goes up to say something but does not. A lifetime of blows tends to make a person unenthusiastic about any unnecessary interchange that might lead to more. Nothing friendly has been said or even hinted at and much hostility has been shown.
Phaedrus the wolf. It fits. Walking back to his apartment with light steps he sees it fits more and more. He wouldn't be happy if they were overjoyed with the thesis. Hostility is really his element. It really is. Phaedrus the wolf, yes, down from the mountains to prey upon the poor innocent citizens of this intellectual community. It fits all right.
The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat. Phaedrus sees that he has thrown away a chance to integrate himself into the organization by submitting to whatever Aristotelian thing he is supposed to submit to. But that kind of opportunity seems hardly worth the bowing and scraping and intellectual prostration necessary to maintain it. It is a low-quality form of life.
For Quality is better seen up at the timberline than here obscured by smoky windows and oceans of words, and he sees that what he is talking about can never really be accepted here because to see it one has to be free from social authority and this is an institution of social authority. Quality for sheep is what the shepherd says. And if you take a sheep and put it up at the timberline at night when the wind is roaring, that sheep will be panicked half to death and will call and call until the shepherd comes, or comes the wolf.
He makes one last attempt somehow to be nice at the next session of the class but the Chairman isn't having any. Phaedrus asks him to explain a point, saying he hasn't been able to understand it. He has, but thinks it would be nice to defer a little.
The answer is 'Maybe you got tired!' delivered as scathingly as possible; but it doesn't scathe. The Chairman is simply condemning in Phaedrus that which he most fears in himself. As the class goes on Phaedrus sits staring out the window feeling sorry for this old shepherd and his classroom sheep and dogs and sorry for himself that he will never be one of them. Then, when the bell rings, he leaves forever.
The classes at Navy Pier by contrast are going like wildfire, the students now listening intently to this strange, bearded figure from the mountains who is telling them there was such a thing as Quality in this universe and they know what it is. They don't know what to make of it, are unsure, some of them afraid of him. They can see he is somehow dangerous, but all are fascinated and want to hear more.
But Phaedrus is no shepherd either and the strain of behaving like one is killing him. A strange thing that has always occurred in classes occurs again, when the unruly and wild students in the back rows have always empathized with him and been his favorites, while the more sheepish and obedient students in the front rows have always been terrorized by him and are because of this objects of his contempt, even though in the end the sheep have passed and his unruly friends in the back rows have not. And Phaedrus sees, though he does not want to admit it to himself even now, he sees intuitively nevertheless that his days as a shepherd are coming to an end too. And he wonders more and more what is going to happen next.
He has always feared the silence in the classroom, the sort that has destroyed the Chairman. It is not his nature to talk and talk and talk for hours on end and it exhausts him to do this, and now, having nothing left to turn upon, he turns upon this fear.
He comes to the classroom, the bell rings, and Phaedrus sits there and does not talk. For the entire hour he is silent. Some of the students challenge him a little to wake up, but then are silent. Others are going straight out of their minds with internal panic.

Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance