We took a ride up to Golden Gate State Park and continued on CO-119 on Saturday. It was a day with really clear skies the color of blue you only see at 8000 feet or more. The wind was blowing the snow off the peaks creating the only clouds in the sky. Tis a priviledge to live in Colorado.
Back in 2007, Rochelle and I started on the “Pass Bagger 50” award sponsored by the BMW Motorcycle Club of Colorado . To earn the award requires you to ride your motorcycle over 50 passes in the state of Colorado. We started working on this in 2007 and both of us completed in the fall of this year.
If you want to do this, Randy Bishop has a great site with helpful resources to help you plan you ridding
Here is link to Google Maps showing all the passes we have ridden over. Click on any of the markers to see the pictures we took at each pass.
And, you can look at all the pictures of the passes in the order we rode over them on Flicker as well.
David Brooks asked people over 70 to write “life reports” and send them to him. He has posted several on his blog. I find them fascinating.
The stories document our culture over much of the 20th century (at 70, the youngest were born in 1941) as much as they do the experience of living. Their values, challenges, triumphs and observations are rooted in what it is to be human which is a process of continually becoming, not a static goal achieved once and put on the shelf like a trophy.
Those in their 20′s and 30′s may think folks over 70 are near the end of their lives. But none of the writers seem focused on the end as much as they are on the living process of becoming who they are. Despite the bad behavior some confess to, none of them are static, unchanging, nor accepting of the ultimate end, their deaths. Instead, they are actively engaged in writing the next pages and chapters of their lives.
Their stories underscore what I hear in Dylan Thomas’s poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night“.
The other day, I saw an auction at Throttle Yard for the first real motorcycle I bought, a Bultaco Metralla. In this case, the bike was the newer 250cc 1971 model given to Kenny Roberts by Sr. Bull, so it was worth a bit more than that 1970 era $500 I paid for my 1966 model (I think it sold for at least $15,000).
This got me thinking about bikes I have owned. I don’t have any photos of my earlier bikes, but via the wizardry of “The GOOGLE” and image search, I found a picture of all my older bikes more or less as they looked when I first acquired them.
Here is a picture of his 1957 Sears Allstate 125cc scooter with sidecar that Sears OEMed from Vespa. This is a picture of what it must have looked like when he bought it in 1957 in El Paso, TX and rode it home to Las Cruces, NM. When Dad picked me up at kindergarten or grade school with the scooter, well, my stock certainly went up with my schoolmates. It was a major promotion in my status when he let me ride on the “buddy seat” behind him instead of sitting in the sidecar.
When my parents moved from Las Cruces to New Haven, CT, in 1962, Dad shipped the scooter and rode it in the summer for several years while he was in grad school at Yale. However, Connecticut winters were not kind to it as it wintered outside.
I got interested in it in the spring of my senior year in high school, 1970. It had rusted badly and Dad hadn’t ridden it in quite awhile. If I recall, it looked a bit more like this picture, which is not an actual picture of Dad’s scooter but sure reminded me of how bedraggled it looked when I dragged it out from behind the garage.
After detaching the sidecar (the bottom had rusted out), I proceeded to fiddle with it for a weekend or two until I got it running. It fired up in a thick cloud of blue smoke from the long dormant two stroke engine. Of course I had to ride it … just down the driveway since I didn’t have a license. Ok, you can bet how long that lasted before the inevitable, “Ahh, its a quiet neighborhood, I think I’ll ride it around the block. No one will care.” Net result, I ended up hooked on motorized two wheeled riding.
But, the week before I planned to take my motorcycle license riding test the intake port shattered. Dad figured that was the end of my riding and his worrying. I, of course, had 18 year old resourcefulness and wasn’t planning on giving up so easily.
Fond Memories:
1. Getting picked up at school by Dad.
2. My First ride around the block.
Adventures: Shattered intake port.
Time Owned: About 2 months
Miles Ridden: Less than 10
Lessons Learned:
1. Finding out that I can get a motorcycle running again if I just keep fiddling with it long enough.
2. Sears may list parts, they may let you order parts, but they don’t have to ever deliver them.
3. When you scratch the cylinder bore, new rings won’t fix it.
1957 Top 10 Rock Tunes
1. Jailhouse Rock – Elvis Presley
2. Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On – Jerry Lee Lewis
3. That’ll Be The Day – Crickets
4. Bye Bye Love – Everly Brothers
5. Great Balls Of Fire – Jerry Lee Lewis
6. School Day – Chuck Berry
7. Rock And Roll Music – Chuck Berry
8. Peggy Sue – Buddy Holly
9. Lucille – Little Richard
10. Rocking Pneumonia & the Boogie Woogie Flu – Huey “Piano” Smith & the Clowns
1970 Top 10 Rock Tunes
1. Layla – Derek and the Dominos
2. Bridge Over Troubled Water – Simon and Garfunkel
3. Let It Be – The Beatles
4. Your Song – Elton John
5. Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine – James Brown
6. Lola – The Kinks
7. Who’ll Stop the Rain – Creedence Clearwater Revival
8. Fire and Rain – James Taylor
9. Paranoid – Black Sabbath
10. All Right Now – Free
A friend in high school who had bought a 250 Honda had a neighbor who was selling his 1966 Bultaco because he wasn’t riding it much. It had about 1000 miles on it and looked like this when I first saw it … except it had a glow of Divine righteousness all around it if I recall correctly and I was smitten. 
I rode it around the guy’s yard because I didn’t have my motorcyle license yet, just the learner permit, and almost dropped it in a muddy spot but managed to keep it up right. I told him I’d be back in a week and pay for it. I believe it was $500 of my hard earned money, but I had just gotten a job at Subway Store #5 and was pulling down the princely sum of $60 a week. I had enough in my savings account to do the deal and I was going to college in New Haven so I could rationalize this as practical, cost-effective transportation. At least until winter …
The next week I took possession and rode it home with just my learner permit. Of course, I hadn’t told Mom and Dad I was buying a ”real motorcycle”, so the reception at the back door when I parked in the driveway was ”chilly” as if February had suddenly arrived in June. The next day I went to take the riding test. That consisted of riding in a straight line, shifting into second gear and stopping before a white stripe while not falling off. “Ok son, you’re good to go.”, said the State Trooper who conducted the riding test. Such was the licensing requirement in 1970.
On the way home, a guy in a car pulled up next to me and proceeded to deliberately try to run me off the road. It was many years later before anyone ever tried to deliberately hit me again. That early experience cemented the reality of risks you have to manage when riding a motorcycle. You’re mostly invisible, and sometimes you are the enemy. Ride accordingly.
Fond Memories:
1. Riding with my friends on the back roads.
2. Finding out that riding a MC in college is a chick magnet.
Adventures:
1. The first motorcycle accident and spending a week in the hospital recuperating.
2. After getting the bike repaired and repainted, having the crankshaft shear in up state New York. It took 9 months to find a replacement.
Time Owned: 2 years.
Estimated Miles: Maybe 2,000
Lessons Learned:
1. You are invisible or folks just don’t like you and figure they can hassle you since they are bigger than you are.
2. From my accident – You have to use the front brake not just the rear. Left turning cars can kill you. Helmets save lives.
3. Two-strokes can kick back when you start them, and that smarts.
4. Exotic bikes frequently don’t have parts available.
1971 Top Rock Tunes
1. Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin
2. Imagine – John Lennon
3. What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye
4. Let’s Stay Together – Al Green
5. Maggie May – Rod Stewart
6. American Pie – Don McLean
7. Won’t Get Fooled Again – The Who
8. Brown Sugar – The Rolling Stones
9. Just My Imagination – The Temptations
10. Family Affair – Sly and the Family Stone
I was going to college at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. My Dad was a professor so tuition was free and I was living at home. In October of my Freshman year I crashed into a left turning car in an intersection almost proving my father right who had said when I brought the Bultaco home, ”You will kill yourself on that motorcycle in 6 months”.
By the fall of my Sophomore year, I decided to strike out on my own. I planned to transfer to New Mexico State and I figured I could pay for college and live on the accident settlement of $5,000 for two years and finish my engineering degree.
Of course, as any fool knows, young men ride motorcycles when they go west. This was abundantly clear on TV and in the movies. I needed something up to the task of a 2100 mile trip, a bigger bike with a larger engine. I shopped around looking at the Harley 350 Sprint, Yamaha R-5 350, Honda CB 350 and Kawasaki S2 350. When I walked into the Kawasaki dealer and saw the S2, I entered my “Red Motorcycle” phase. This thing was definitely “Ready for Lift Off” even when parked and I thought it was clearly up to the task of cross country riding.
I think I paid $900 in 1972 dollars. I bought it and then told the folks I was planning to ride it from New Haven to Las Cruces in July. Riding a motorcycle would be great fun and inexpensive. They failed to see the logic.
This was a crotch rocket with a triple cylinder two stroke. But, it got about 25 mpg, had a 3.5 gallon tank and a frame made out of beer cans. I got used to cornering with a constant wobble. Due to my inexperience, I just assumed bigger bikes always wobbled a little in the corners.
For the trip I built a rear trunk out of plywood and mounted it on a luggage rack I bought. I got some army surplus canvas bags and made tank panniers that hung down on each side of the gas tank for my tools and 2-stroke oil. I put by sleeping bag on top of the tank so I could lean forward on it to rest my arms. Two duffel bags were bunged onto the passenger seat and I could just slip in between all that to sit. I also bought a leather jacket and pants from the Harley dealer and still own them to this day and yes, I can still wear them.
My college friend, Phil, was planning to head back home to LA so we put my footlocker of clothes and a few other worldly possessions in the back seat of his Karman Gia and on Monday, July 5 we headed west. I recall my mother waving and crying as I rolled down the driveway in anticipation of the adventure to come.
Unfortunately, Tropical Storm Agnes has gone through Pennsylvania that weekend, so the weather was cloudy and raining when we left New Haven. It soon got a lot worse and we had to stop outside Wilkes Barre, PA as I was frozen due to rain suit leaks and too short legs in the pants. As I tried to put the heavily laden bike on the center stand, it got away from me, rolled forward, fell over and broke most of the front brake lever off. As I stood there shivering in the pouring rain Phil helped me pick the bike up. I seriously thought about quitting and going back home. I didn’t. I learned a great deal about motorcycles, cross country riding and myself in that week.
Fond Memories:
1. Getting up at 2:00 am, sneaking down to the garage, wheeling the bike down the street, firing it up and going for a ride on hot June night.
2. Riding all winter in Las Cruces instead of only 6 months in Connecticut.
3. Riding home as the sun came up on a spring morning in New Mexico.
Adventures:
1. There is rain, and then there are Tropical Storms. “Frog Strangler” is a term that graphically defines the adventure of riding in the wake of a Tropical Storm.
2. Two stroke engines need air to keep cool, especially triple cylinder engines with oil injection controlled by the throttle. I was drafting behind a tractor trailer on the interstate on a cold Sunday morning riding from Tuscon to Las Cruces when the engine seized. As the rear end locked up the bike immediately started skidding at 65 mph. I grabbed the clutch to get the rear wheel rolling again and pulled off the side of the road. I changed my pants and put my heart back in my chest. A few minutes later, I got it running on two out of three cylinders with a nasty knocking sound but made it the remaining 200 miles home. The rings had momentarily seized and total cost to repair was $30 for new rings and $10 to re-hone. I was lucky.
Time Owned: 2 years.
Estimated Miles: 15,000
Lessons Learned:
1. When you buy rain gear, make sure the pants cover the boots when sitting. If not, plan to see water overflowing the top of your boots as you ride and your feet freeze.
2. Hypothermia happens pretty fast at 50 MPH if you get wet, even in 50 degree temps.
3. Tropical storms cause floods not just in the streams, but on the roads. And 18 wheelers going the other way means you ride through a wall of water, so keep your mouth shut.
4. Oil your chain every other gas stop. If it’s raining, make that every gas stop. I didn’t and had to replace both sprockets and chain in Las Cruces. You could cut your self on the sprocket teeth they were so worn away.
5. You can ride 2,000 miles with a broken front brake lever.
6. Gas stations close in small towns in Oklahoma on Sundays. Carrying a spare 1 gallon gas can when riding a bike with a 100 mile range is a good idea. I got to empty my 1 gallon emergency can twice that day.
1972 Top Rock Tunes
1. Superstition – Stevie Wonder
2. Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone – The Temptations
3. Smoke on the Water – Deep Purple
4. Lean on Me – Bill Withers
5. Heart of Gold – Neil Young
6. Walk on the Wild Side – Lou Reed
7. You Are the Sunshine of My Life – Stevie Wonder
8. If You Don’t Know Me by Now – Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes
9. I’ll Take You There – The Staple Singers
10. Tumbling Dice – The Rolling Stones
After my Junior year at New Mexico State, it became clear that the cost of college and living had exhausted my resources and I was fast approaching “flat broke”. Jobs in New Mexico didn’t pay much. So, I decided to return to Connecticut, get a full time job, take a couple night classes at the University of New Haven and somehow get my degree finished. The 350 had proved too small for that ride, so I traded up to something more capable. I found a used red 1972 Yamaha XS-2 650 at the local dealer. This was my first four stroke, my first twin and my second red motorcycle.
The gas tank was bigger, the mileage better and the frame didn’t bend as much when cornering. All great improvements over the S2. However, as fate is often fickle, it got trailered back to Connecticut as my then girl friend decided she wanted to go east with me and so we took her car, attached a trailer, loaded the bike and drove to New Haven in August.
Fate wasn’t finished. I met the head of the Mechanical Engineering department and told him my plans. He looked at my transcript and told me he wanted me to be able to finish on time, so I should come back the next day. When I did he showed me how to finish in one year but it required me to go to school days and work nights. So I took the deal and got a job on the grave yard shift at a wire mill. I rode the 650 to work and back and to school after I got off work. However, the sleep deprivation did me in by November. The head of the department once again stepped in and saved my bacon by offering me an internship so I could pay the bills and stop the night shift.
Just before finals, I went off the road and crashed the 650 on my way over to my brothers house after class. I was distracted by my book bag starting to come off the luggage rack missed a bend in the road and went over the handle bars landing on my left shoulder in a vacant lot. I was lucky there was a vacant lot where I went off the road. The bike survived and I ended up with a dislocated shoulder. It took more than 6 months to get full use of the shoulder again.
I wanted to go back to New Mexico after graduation and look for a job, but I couldn’t ride the 650. My brother decided to go with me and see about moving out there. So, we drove out in late May with the 650 front end in a tow hitch trailing behind on its rear tire. I ended up in Albuquerque and it took me until October to get a job interview in the oil and gas industry. The interview was in Farmington 180 miles away so I rode the bike to the interview. I hit fog in the mountains about half way there and once again learned how quickly hypothermia can get you. I did get the job despite shivering for the first 30 minutes of the interview as I drank copious quantities of hot coffee.
Fond Memories:
1. Exhaust note of a vertical twin motor when rolling off the throttle.
2. Finally being able to ride again after three months of physical therapy on my shoulder.
Adventures:
1. Working at the wire mill I dislocated my right thumb just before the end of my shift one day. I learned you can work the throttle using only your wrist, no fingers, which I had to do so I could ride home. Its amazing what you can do when you have no choice.
2. Turning around to grab a book bag, and then turning back to see I was running off the road straight at a brick wall. I missed the wall and the phone pole next to it, jumped the berm next to adjoinng vacant lot and ended up in heap.
3. Getting a job despite being unable to stop shaking from cold at the beginning of an interview.
4. Hitting an enormous pot hole in a corner in the dark and finding out the next day the impact had torn the seals out of a rear shock. So that’s why the bike wasn’t handling so well.
Time Owned: 2 years.
Estimated Miles: 6,000
Lessons Learned:
1. British twins vibrate a lot even when the Japanese make them.
2. Hypothermia happens pretty fast when you ride through fog at 40 degrees.
3. Keep your eyes on the road and don’t let distractions get the better of you.
4. Your mind works fast when things are going to S%$& if you don’t have the time to be scared.
5. When you hit a large pot hole in the middle of nowhere, stop the bike and look for damage.
6. When you stop the bike to look for damage in the dark, have a flashlight so you can actually see it.
1974 Top Rock Tunes
1. No Woman, No Cry – Bob Marley and the Wailers
2. Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
3. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
4. Rock Your Baby – George McCrae
5. Lady Marmalade – LaBelle
6. Autobahn – Kraftwerk
7. Help Me – Joni Mitchell
8. Waterloo – Abba
9. Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe – Barry White
10. Tell Me Something Good – Rufus
Well, now I had a job and was no longer broke for the first time in almost 3 years. But drilling holes in the ground was not my thing so I took an opportunity to transfer to Denver, CO to work with gas processing plants. Amoco, my employer, paid a flat stipend when you moved to cover “incidentals”. When I was told how much it was, I asked my boss if that was fair because I was single and really didn’t have any incidentals. He told me to shut up and take the money.
I had been looking at BMW iron for awhile and as soon as I got to Denver, I took my “incidentals” money and bought a brand new 1975 R75/6 paying about $2,100 cash from a wad of bills in my pocket. I always wanted to do that.
As I rode it home from the dealer, I realized what a difference a well designed frame and smooth suspension make not to mention how there was almost no vibration when compared to the XS-2. Wow !!! I sold the XS-2 and began my Bavarian motorcyle phase.
I still own this bike. It now has more than 104,000 miles on it and you can see the story of its recent restoration on one of my web pages.
Over the Christmas holiday in 1975, I rode it to Phoenix and back ending up being caught in a snow storm west of Santa Fe, NM. After picking it up twice from being blown over on icy roads, I gave up and went back to Albuquerque, flew home and then rode it back to Denver the next weekend when the high was about 10 degrees. I learned that even with a faring, down jacket and down pants, the wind chill at 60 MPH on a 10 degree day will suck the heat right out of you. I got to know many coffee shops on the way to Denver.
I met my future wife while riding this bike and we had our first date on a cold February night when she rode on the back with me out into the wheat fields east of Denver. Later that year I road raced it in MRA races held at various tracks in Colorado.
In 1976, I decided to go to graduate school. But before I did, I rode it from Los Alamos, NM to New Haven, CT and back again logging my first 1,000 mile day.
After we got married, my wife and I rode together as much as circumstance allowed as she had gotten her own BMW, an R75/5. For the last 35 years, both my wife and the bike have been “keepers”.
Today, it looks like this after the restoration.
Fond Memories:
1. Riding home from the dealer … SMOOTTHHHH.
2. Taking my wife for a ride on the back on our first date.
3. First 1,000 mile day in 22 hours.
4. Finishing the restoration and riding it the first time … SMOOTTHHH.
Adventures:
1. Scraping valve covers in the corners in the Rocky Mountains.
2. My first novice road race, crashing, getting back up and finishing second.
3. Feeling my left foot getting cold while racing and then finding out I had worn through my boot in the corners while I was hanging off.
4. Riding into a blizzard, giving up and then having to ride back out.
5. Loosing the rear brake when the rear drive seal went. Glad it wasn’t the front brake.
6. Riding in 10 degree weather from Albuquerque to Denver without my winter gloves by keeping my hands in my down jacket pockets and leaning to steer.
7. Riding in a sand storm really sucks. It takes a couple days to finally get clean and your pipes are no longer shiny.
8. In Houston, my neighbor was drunk one evening as he was driving home. About 50 yards from my house as I was headed to the store, he pulled into my lane, head on, forcing me to the curb to avoid a collision. He thought it was funny. I provided graphic verbal evidence to the contrary.
Time Owned: 35 years.
Estimated Miles: 104,000
Lessons Learned:
1. You have to lube the drive splines unless you want to spend an afternoon beside the road waiting for a tow.
2. If you rev to 8500 when the red line is 7200, that tap, tap, tap noise is a bent push rod.
3. Hypothermia can happen after awhile if you ride in 10 degree weather even with a down coat and jacket.
4. If you decide to ride into a snow storm, remember, you may have to turn around and ride back out of it as well.
5. Time really slows down when you race.
6. Old bikes from Bavaria never loose the ability to seduce you.
7. Rebuilding an old bike is time well spent.
1975 Top Rock Tunes
1. Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen
2. Bohmemian Rhapsody – Queen
3. Walk This Way – Aerosmith
4. Kashmir – Lead Zepplin
5. Tangled Up in Blue – Bob Dylan
6. Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
7. Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen
8. One of These Nights – Eagles
9. Low Rider – War
10. I’m Not in Love – 10cc
In the fall of 2004, I hit 100,000 miles on the R75/6 which was a goal of mine when I bought it. I put 22,000 miles on it the first year I owned it and I figured it wouldn’t be long before I met my goal. As the saying goes, life is what happens to you when you’ve made other plans.
The next acquisition was an R1150-RS in February 2005 that I named Cookie Monster. I found it with 106 miles on the clock in Sioux City, Iowa. The dealer, Dave Bak, took it for his own at the end of the season, but soon decided he would rather have a GS. I drove up and trailered it home to Denver. I’ve ridden 80,000 miles on Cookie so far and he is still running well. Below is a picture of Cookie on Dave’s showroom floor.
And a picture of Cookie showiing some of the modifications I’ve made.
I’ve completed several Iron Butt Association rides on Cookie Monster including two 1000 miles in 24 hour, a 1500 mile in 36 hours and a 2000 mile in 48 hour ride. Onward
I started a project in 2010 to rebuild my BMW R75/6 motorcycle with 103,000 original owner miles. I wanted to get back to tacit knowledge derived from doing it myself as most of my working day is spent in what has euphemistically come to be called “Knowledge” work.
Prior to that, I was reading articles on the hand/mind connection, the plastic brain, learning and the value of tinkering . Tinkering for kids comes in two varieties. you can tinker with stuff (inanimate objects) and you can engage in unsupervised play (animate objects), and both seem to be missing for today’s children. I’ve come to separate learning into two kinds: abstract, or “Knowledge” learning where the animate and inanimate objects (people, things, materials, etc.) are purposely left out, and “Experience” learning where the objects are kept in and you are confronted with the cussedness of inanimate objects and the irrationality of motives.
I ended up subscribing to a magazine, Make which has a number of do it yourself (DIY) projects. I stumbled across articles in The Denver Post about a tool lending library that operates like a public library, and an inventor’s workshop where you can pay a flat fee for access to a large variety of tools and shop space to work on projects. And just today, I came across a video from TED about Marcin Jakabowski, an ex PhD in physics who decided his formal education as a Knowledge worker was “useless” and became a farmer. From the hands on experience, he identified the 50 basic machines that support our civilization. Then he decided to build them in a DIY fashion publishing the blue prints, material list and cost estimates so others can do the same. An additional goal is to store all the information on a single DVD. Very interesting.
I see the beginning of a movement back toward experience-based tacit knowledge that comes from DIY thinking. In many cases, the people who are DIY evangelists were fully invested in the mythos of the knowledge worker as the highest and best use of humanity but in practice found it to be hollow.
This raises a question about living a good life and if abstract knowledge alone really provides it. I’ve had a growing sense that the lack of wisdom evident in many sectors of society may be correlated to the growing number of people who never tinkered with real things as part of their education. I use “education” in the broad sense so it is not unnaturally constrained by what happens to you in school. I see resumes in the tech sector from people who spend 1-2 years doing something and then move on. How can you really have experience, let alone wisdom, from that short a time doing anything that is meaningful? You hardly had time to fail spectacularly and figure out how to assimilate that experience, and its those kinds of experiences from which wisdom comes.
I have another perspective on knowledge workers vs. experience workers. I think there are two important contributors to the global problem of sustainability and throw-away culture (aka, things). I’m interested in how to change the throw-away “things” pattern underpinning the first world economy.
As a kid growing up in the 50′s, products were built to last a long time and ease of repair was an important part of industrial design. For those of a “certain age”, remember Sears and the spare parts available for just about everything they sold? They did that because DIY was alive and well in the 50′s due to the shared experience of the Great Depression by the majority of their customers.
I suspect that if we looked in detail at the difference in “carbon footprint” between a “design to throw-away” (DTT) and “design to repair” (DTR) economy, the DTR model would demonstrate a dramatic reduction. (I’d be interested in references to any research along these lines.) I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a DTT culture reinforces an education model that teaches a rubric where an abstract knowledge worker is superior to a pragmatic experience worker. In fact, I think nothing could be farther from the truth.
This could be a long post due to the depth of this topic. However, I’m going to keep this one short.
I suggest that our mind abstracts what our senses perceive to create context. The context is dynamic as our senses measure change both in our bodies and in the surrounding “non-body”, aka the “world”, and both are in flux.
When the mind abstracts, it chooses an abstraction model. We have a large number of them based on our experiences, and we can make more when needed which is often what is meant by the word “creativity”. I use the term abstraction in the sense that it is a filter obscuring some sense input and some thought processes while focusing on and amplifying others. This is common in our experience and easy to demonstrate. Look out the window. Make note of what you see. Now, look at the wall of one building or a single tree or flower and focus on the colors, lines, cracks, texture and shadows. This adjusts your abstraction model and allows information of this kind to be particularly noticed, but now you are not focused on the larger scale context. In your first look out the window you did not see these details as the abstraction filter at that time was tuned to the scale of the entire landscape in front of you. Scale, context, sensing, emotions and abstraction models are important parts of what the mind is doing. I think these processes are what we mean when we describe what conciousness means. I’ll not dwell on them in this post, but they are important, in constant flux, not static, and go unnoticed unless we take some effort to direct the mind’s attention to them.
There are a variety of optical illusions that demonstrate that once an abstraction filter is selected, we tend to keep using it unless we are confronted with a problem for which the filter is not useful. The one I always use to illustrate this is the picture that can be seen as a beautiful woman with elaborate hat, or an old women with large nose and white bonnet. If you see one image you can not see the other. In fact, the first time you see this image your mind will select one context and associate image. You will not see the other image until you are told there is another image and you should try and find it.
Optical illusions are a demonstration not only of how the mind processes sensory data, but at a deep level, of the way thinking is performed. We think with abstractions (filters) and without concicious effort, we do not immediately search for an alternative abstraction so long as the current one is “suitable”. Here, suitable means self-consistent and satisfying. We sense when the information we are thinking about, filtered by the abstractions we are currently using, don’t make “sense” of ourselves and the world in the current context. We emotionally feel what “don’t make sense” is as an uncomfortable feeling of inconsistency, or lack of wholeness, or completeness. I suggest that sensing inconsistency is part of what Pirsig draws attention to when he focuses on Quality and its role in his Metaphysics of Quality. High Quality contains consistency, while lack of consistency lowers Quality.
Okay, now for a practical application of abstraction filters. You may have been keeping up with the current political debate about the budget. President Obama published and reviewed his proposal for the 2012 budget (note, we currently don’t have a budget for 2011 and continue to operate on “funding resolutions”, but that’s another story). There is wide agreement on the necessity to reduce the deficit. This agreement is at the scale you saw when you first looked out the window. The arguments are over the details and methods of achieving deficit reduction. That shifts the scale of your thinking, so you should be open to shifting you abstraction filter.
To help you decide what is an appropriate abstraction filter for this scale of thinking, take a look at this diagram and direct your thinking to how you would create a consistent (higher Quality) path toward reducing the deficit.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119-budget/index.html
In closing, its important to understand how systemic and instinctual the use of abstraction filters is for our mind as it makes sense of us and the surrounding world. Once filters are selected we tend to continue using them, even when the context (scale) has shifted. If you are more aware of the mind’s tendancy to keep using a filter, you can more freely look for other abstraction filters (or even create new ones if we want to) that are better suited to the context so the consistency of your thinking (Quality) is improved.
PS: I just bumped into this article from O’reilly Radar and the accompanying video about the magazine business. I think this illustrates the role of abstraction filters (in this context, the abstraction of a profit model in the magazine business) and the need to change them when there is dramatic shift in “scale”.
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QRtWGnNPTc4
I noted last night on the News Hour on PBS, a report on the IBM Watson computer playing Jeopardy. And this morning, I happened across this note on “Trends to Watch, Formal Relationships Between Governments and Hackers“. I could summarize that article as, ”How the next world war will be fought and what the battlefield will be”.
If we combine these two articles, we get an interesting notion of a potential future. One where computing can analyze human conversation, and act, and where the power of networks to connect, are used to disrupt a nation in war time.
An unseen risk is the fact common components and software (think Intel chips and Linux for example) are becoming ubiquitous. Exploits to hack these components can have wide ranging application. Said differently, and in a biological way, if we develop a computing based species (as the Watson story hints at), it would be a good idea to have enough gentic diversity to prevent an infection in one species from overwhelming the entire “biosphere”. We have seen this in the PC market where infections of Intel+Microsoft Windows “species” don’t carry over to the Apple, or RIM species.
For some time, science fiction has provided stories of many futures where computing becomes sentient. Isaac Asimov in the I Robot series in 1950 explored this notion. Perhaps its time for a modern version of his three laws of robotics to be applied to computing in its broadest sense as we seem to be heading down a road where world-wide agreement on the “rules of war” in a cyberage, before we wage that war, might be a good idea.
I’ve been doing some reading along a particular vein of thought that is rooted in metaphysics and which I first encountered in Robert Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“. After a conversation with my friend Pete who just read the book, I quickly created a post, Everything is Connected, that tried to blend physics (cosmology) with Zen. I like the 1st part of the proof, the Big Bang, but not the second part, “YOU” are reality. So, I decided to reread Zen and the Art which I hadn’t done in a while.
I had commented in my post on Minds, Knowledge, Well Being and Education about the need for deeper theory about how the mind works, how we acquire knowledge and well being (IMHO, you need to strive for both) and how these are influenced by the formal education model in the United States. That lead to me to some observations about brain plasticity courtesy of Rachel who provided me a book on that subject.
As often happens when you focus your mind on something, serendipity occurs. I ran into an article in this month’s Scientific American, How Language Shapes Thought, about a study of how language affects the understanding (knowledge) of time and space. And then, of all places, I ran across an article, “Etiology of the Motorcycle Phenomenon”, by James Smith, February 2011 issue, pg 82, of the BMW Owners News, published by the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America, with references that led me to “Wholeness and the Implicate Order“, by David Bohm.
My, that was a lot of background wasn’t it? Sorry about that, but you need some context for what comes next.
So, here’s the train of logic that’s growing out of all this.
Knowledge defines your Reality (aka, worldview, mythos, truth, certainty, etc.)
Language defines your Knowledge.
Words define your Language.
Humanity has a LOT of languages around 7,000 or so, so on a cultural level, there could be about 7,000 classes of reality going on at the same time. All of them “real” by the way.
Pirsig tackles the question of what “reality” is (hint, it’s not a thing, more like a process, so it’s dynamic, not fixed), illustrates what insanity is (by personal experience) and along the way talks a lot about two fundamentally different ways to acquire knowledge, loosely defined as eastern and western. He talks about how at the beginning of the western way (at the time of the Greek civilization) there were two branches of how to become knowledgeable about reality, one of which was like the eastern way. He shows how one eliminated the other, and identifies Aristotle as the archetype of the winning side, now known as “western thought” or civilization. He hints at the roll of language in defining what is “knowable”, how it is known and ultimately, how it fixes reality into the mythos and logos. (loosely, culture and logic), ultimately leading us away from a workable understanding of reality in today’s western culture.
I’m reading Bohm’s book, which I haven’t finished yet, and he provides in the 1st 60 pgs or so a concise discussion of the problems in western society, the role language has played in creating them and proposes a new set of words to overcome the limitations of our existing language so our knowledge of reality is more complete. Pirsig and Bohm are amazingly complimentary in their writing and the confluence of the two is very thought provoking.
To sum it up, both agree that unbounded fragmentation is the root cause of much (all?) of the dysfunctional behavior of western societies (Pirsig identifying this dysfunction with a growing inability to recognize the role Quality plays). Both draw attention to why “flow” is important and how it gets overlooked — in part, due to language that doesn’t adequately convey its meaning and so, keeps its value and importance out the conversation.
Now, it’s the focus on ”flow” that got the article published in the BMW ON magazine as a metaphysical basis for the reason MC riders do what they do. One of the references cited lead me to Bohm’s books. It’s the pursuit of flow and corresponding reduction of fragmentation that motorcyclists seek. (That could explain my posts on 1,000, and 2,000 mile rides )
If you let that one soak in for a bit, you start drawing some conclusions about why we avidly pursue the things we do, what makes some of us hate our jobs (or life in general), and even why Egypt and Tunisia are engaged in the changes going on today. I think its “flow” that balances knowledge with well being. Humans need flow to achieve that balance, and both Pirsig and Bohm’s metaphysics are based on flow as the unifying principle of reality.
Just thought I’d share … I can hear you chewing, but am waiting for the sound of swallowing.
I’ve had a number of incidents in the last week, starting with my first ski trip of the season, which caused me to scratch my head in curiosity … after being annoyed.
As I am starting to get into the line to get on a chair lift, a young man on a snow board slides into me at the entrance to the line, unbuckles his boots, and proceeds to get in front of me. He looks right at me, and says not a word. So, I engage him in conversation. Nothing, absolutely no response, and he is still looking at me. So I continue to try and get his attention with “Yo, do you speak English?”. At that point he removes the ear buds from his ears and says “What?”. I apologize for having bumped into him in the lift line. He stands staring at me with his mouth open. Yes, he bumped into me, not I into him, and his reaction clearly shows he knew that he did.
I’m working on a project with a short deadline that includes about 10 other people in different departments. I get Emails that don’t even contain my name at the beginning. They just start with a demand to do something. It’s been my experience that time pressure leads to short fuses. So politeness is more, not less necessary. Is this a generational thing? If so, I’m glad I’m a member of “my generation” and not the ones addicted to rushing and using it as an excuse for rudeness.
I’ve been on far too many conference calls lately where no one wishes to plan anything, or be thoughtful about the consequences of their actions. Attempts to have a published agenda, keep on track to the topic or raise questions about complex issues are met with “Well, we don’t have time to boil the ocean.” The inevitable result is “scrap and rework” at the 12th hour when there is even less time to think through the implications of last minute, rash decisions, and the deadline often slips as well. How does this deliver value, profit or any sense of pride in one’s work?
Just thought I’d share. Are you as curious as I am, or am I the only one without a clue?
Really, is that true?
As background, I had lunch on Friday with a long time friend and fellow motorcycle lover, Pete Mathews. He had just finished reading one of my favorite books, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. I mentioned to him some time ago it was a great book and he should read it some time. As I worked on the build of my 1975 R7/6 into an “S” model, I also wrote about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Rebuilding, because I found myself living quite a number of the examples of “gumption traps”, which lower quality quickly, that Pirsig describes in his book.
Pete was … “captured” is the word … by the scope and premise of the book and the life of Mr. Pirsig. I mentioned that I had reread it about eight times since I bought the book in 1975. He asked, “Why?”, and I had to stop and think about that question. I said something to the affect that I reread it when things got too fragmented and confusing and I needed to revisit the cohesive beauty of Pirsig’s world view. The book was written in the early 1970′s at a time when the country was very fragmented, and in part, Pirsig wrote the book to illustrate a way to remove that fragmentation and the needless animosity and misunderstanding it fostered. I felt that Prisig wrote the book so he could focus on the question of what can unify technology and its adherents with the arts and their adherents. He came up with a simple ”grand unified theory”, which is quality and its pursuit.
As an aside, I suspect Pirsig believed that as the pursuit of quality unifies art and technology, it also unifies the individual and keeps him sane. He himself achieves a unification after he went insane, partly due to electroshock therapy and partly due to the his refusal to stop pursuing quality. For the rest of the story, you should read the book.
Now, I want to offer a demonstration, if not prove, that everything is, and always has been, connected. That’s part of what Pirsig wrote about, the connection of seemingly disparate things by discovering easily overlooked connections.
Let’s start at the beginning, The Big Bang, as science has pretty convincing shown, was the start of it all. You will find that the Big Bang is a point – literally – and as such, contains everything that is evident (and not so evident) in the universe. For the not so evident part, look into the subject of Dark Matter and Dark Energy (not related), both of which were “not evident” until recently. If the Big Bang contains everything, then at the moment of the Big Bang, there was only one thing, the point. Since then, and from that point, in both time and space, all the diversity of the universe evolved, including you.
Hmm … So Everything WAS connected at the FIRST moment of the Big Bang.
Now, let’s move from the Big Bang, where quantum physics and cosmology are unified, to living things: to be specific, YOU and only YOU. Let me ask a simple question, “What is reality”? That question and it’s answer, of course, is not something entirely within the realm of science, but bridges over into metaphysics, philosophy and religion. There are paradoxes and conundrums deep within that question, and Pirsig digs into them to a certain extent in his book.
One view, which I am growing to accept, is that reality can not be defined as something distinct from your existence. Without your existence, there is no reality. Said differently, YOU connect everything together based on how your brain creates patterns out of the simulus it constantly receives. The system that you call reality always consists of the world around you AND more specifically YOU, and YOUR brain’s mental patterns: its all inseparable.
Trying to separate YOU from the rest of reality introduces the conundrums and paradoxes I referred to a moment ago. Pirsig shows in his book that when you artificially separate things: for example separating YOU from what you are working on, such as a motorcycle; or separating art from technology; then you miss out on quality, which is what connects YOU with everything you do. And, should you create two realities, one for the world around you and another one for YOU, well, that way lies true mental insanity, at least it was the start of his insanity.
Hmm — so Everything IS connected, at this very moment, by YOU.
Now, I said that everything WAS connected at the Big Bang which contained all time, space and everything within it, including YOU. I also said that at this moment, everything IS connected by YOU, your brain and its patterns. The Big Bang started it all, YOU are a part of it all, and YOU are what defines the present moment. Therefore, everything is connected, and has been, for all space and time.
Ipso Facto, Everything is Connected.
What do you think?