R.M. Pirsig: "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"

This book is not your usual leisure book. Although it rarely goes more than few meters away from the road or motorcycle, it is hardly a travelogue, or a mechanic's reference book. In fact, we are dealing here with autobiographical work. And a strong one. I found it online as a pdf and put it at Pirsig: "Zen and..."

I read this book for the first time as a teenager, and it had a profound influence on me. And it still has. Sure, I re-read it many times, and every time I had something to learn. This time again.

At first, one can take the message of the book to be one for free will, personal freedom and tune it with "The Wall" music of Pink Floyd all too easily. Spirit of the 1960-ies. Not too bad, for a teenager, if one takes as a motto:

"And what is good, Phædrus,
And what is not good...
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"

But as years go, one starts being more interested in what Phaedrus really found, why he went insane. I myself maybe grasped it when I was younger, and then lost it, enjoying too much the "usual" spirit of the book, as I saw it. Or becoming too arrogant to in my thinking that I understood it all. Never be an arrogant reader, it is like if you would be an arrogant side in a discussion. In this reading I recovered understanding of it, and feel a bit uneasy about it, as it shutters the firm columns of our high towers of Science. Phaedrus had, indeed, all reasons to go insane.

In short, what Phaedrus found was that we live in a Myth of dialectic, dualistic world, which is a lie, lie, lie. We are blinded by a (wrong) limiting choice of philosophical path taken in ancient Greece. Not that it was bad or avoidable, but nevertheless, it destroyed our ability to even THINK in agreement with the true world around us.

It is a bit like what was described in the previous book i reviewed here, "1984", where the aim of Newspeak was to prevent even thinking against Party. Simply, they cut the language so to make it impossible. What Phaedrus found is that we structured our philosophy, science, thinking and society in general in such a way that we stay alienated from true underlying picture of the world!

For more, go and fathom the book yourself, I am not a philosopher and I definitely do not feel as a guide for this one. But it does give me a profound shock to understand what Phaedrus found... Kind of a door to something what we'll probably see for the next time only when we meet Aliens.

"1984" today

I wrote before about my recent re-reading of the anti-utopian novels "We" by Zamyatin and "Brave New World" by Huxley. Logically, "1984" also got the attention it deserves: for the first time I read it in original language.

I started reading it with similar question as for the other two: what it can teach us today, is there anything where we fell under some of the prophesied spells?

I remember always having the feeling that Orwell is not so naive to merely describe Stalinism. That he meant more, was an observation of myself as a teenager, when reading "1984" for the first time, about the titular year 1984, when I myself was still deep immersed into a Yugoslavian story. I read other Orwell's books before "1984", so I knew he is not to be taken lightly, that he is a highly responsible writer. However, I see now that I understood his take on Inglsoc in a rather shallow way. This reading, and probably 30 intervening years (!) took me deeper. He really was not at all speaking about Stalinism. Nor the hypothetical Socialist Republic of Great Britain. The society he describes is much more applicable to today's world than we could imagine back in 1984.

When I am writing this, we have news of Mr. Snowden denouncing his own government, we have a character like Mr. Assange immersed in his own thriller. Somehow both cases have to do with obvious involvement of governments in not the best practices. Not that we would not know about it, but we prefer to live an illusion of a politically correct government, not the one actively pursuing control over all aspects of life of its subjects.

Now the perturbation of "un-free" Socialist State of X got vaporized in the working of History, and we can turn to the more important features of Orwell's work.

Naturally, what was missing in the picture with my first reading(s) of "1984", compared to today, was omnipresence of Internet. Now we have Google well groomed into Big Brother, with other online services as Skype, Yahoo, MSN, Facebook, more or less openly prostituting to any government, or, for that matter, group of influence. Phishing for information or direct spying are as common as spies in the border cities along the Iron Curtain were in the Cold War era. Camera of your own laptop could be switched on/off almost at anyone's will, as also the microphone of your headset. And yet, nobody seems to be frightened-we learned to live our benign lives with that fact. Nobody is even disturbed by the very idea. Big Brother? Who cares! We do not have anything to hide, Government(s) spying, advertisements companies prying...welcome!

Is it exactly so? What is then the relevance of Orwell's book for us today?

Privacy is not political matter today, at least for most of us. People like Gen. Petraeus could complain to the Water Works Dpt. of the Universe Services that their email was bugged, but then, it is to their own stupidity they'd think it would not be, or that the bug would not be used! Really interesting would be to have a statistics how many light-weight politicians were blackmailed on the base of their very private emails, on a global scale, but I am certain this information is harder to extract than e.g. how many Roman Catholics men were molested as boys by their priests. Nobody will come out with SUCH information, condemning himself. Or a State, for that matter, (s)he could finish...vaporized. Unperson. We, the ordinary ones, obviously do not have anything to hide, or, at least, not enough interesting that we'd care. We even love Big Brother (see the popularity of Facebook).

Except of the Big Brother screen entering our home freely without even frightening us (today it even follows us everywhere, in our smartphone, and we voluntarily give our privacy away-mind you, I am just confessing to google electronic media what was my reading recently, and even more, I am sharing worldwide what were my most intimate thoughts about it!), is there any other aspect of life from "1984" which we embraced readily or less readily?

One thing was strikingly obvious: mass media became exactly as described for Proles: "[in the Ministry of Truth] There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers, containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means..."

Is this not what you felt when ceasing to read your favorite newspaper after years of doing so, because meaningful content has been increasingly hitchhiked by idiotic following of celebrities' life or some similar garbage of today? Did you notice that your favorite newspaper webpage contains more and more of "whose breast popped out of a gala dress" or "who is divorcing whom", or "what is X. Kardashian ...ing tonight", or some other "picantery" of the currently most (un)important movie stars, than any meaningful news?

Sports content of the newspaper, being a proletarian fun previously (except maybe of a cricket column for Prince This of That and his siblings), became almost intellectual treat when compared to the rest of the "news". Not extracting the current war agenda of this or that idiotic USA president or gibbering of equally idiotic Iranian or X-an Prime Minister or President.

Those two features, unlimited powers of observation and fathomless stupidity of the Media, are two most strikingly corresponding to Orwell's prophecy, at the global scale.

Are there some other, minor correspondences between the book and the today reality, which did not yet become so global?

"Minute of hate" is taken in as a media-hypes, be it directed against moslem, gay, pedophiles or anyone/anything at hand, if there is a current lack of the atrocities of war. Until it became too expensive, USA and USSR were maintaining enough wars around the globe to fulfill such role for their population, but currently even they had to shrink the choice, with USA itself becoming a 3-rd world country, and Russia never fully reaching the importance of USSR. In People's Republic of China, Party has to be more careful not to succumb to Romanian danger of calling a rally and sinking below it. North Korea looks as if its leaders would use "1984" as a textbook.

The same is the case with religion, sexuality-it became a plastic to be mold by anyone at power-it pairs well with media as described above. Occurrence of sects or new popes or new religious leaders or, at the equal footing, some more or less sexually transmitted diseases is always at hand-as throughout the history, they are never missing from the picture.

Friendship, love... it is interesting to see that the development is not necessarily towards more freedom, based on the sheer power of numbers. In India or Arabian countries, ossified, outdated patriarchal systems are ruling the day more than ever, and it is not easy to foresee their transformation. In those places, power of the media turns handy to the government, and it could be some of those countries which will follow (or is already following) the steps of North Korea not in the direct political sense, but by a moral policing, being a ruling power in disguise.

There are many facets of "1984" which could be reached in disguise in today world. At the end, we all have a big chance to finish loving some version of the Big Brother, with his all-encompassing eyes and all-embracing powers.

Julian Alps, Jalovec. Mountain and me.

The most memorable part of travels that I took this summer in Europe is a 16-hour walk in Julian Alps in Slovenia, from the Tamar Valley to the Soca Valley over the top of Jalovec. In this picture, which I made ten years ago from the top of another mountain, Mangrt, Jalovec is visible in the foreground on the right. At that time I thought I will soon conquer Jalovec, because at Triglav, the highest mountain there, which is leftmost at the picture, I have already been before. That "soon" lasted for nine years. Too long. Here is now the image of some ten days ago which shows Mangrt, along with the peak of Jalovec: Here is the Triglav from Jalovec, now there is nothing left between: Indestructible backpack, 21 years old and still serving, (this I call a good purchase), on top of Jalovec-it has been on all these tops and at many more places. Jalovec I have not visited because the description of the hike is "long and strenuous". Justified. The path that I have chosen, from Planica to Tamar Mountain House and accross the Kot's saddle, and then accross the top of Jalovec to the house on Soca river source took me 16 hours. According to the Slovenian guidebook, it should take about 14 hours of walking, but the part went to breakfast in the house in the valley of Tamar. Lady who works there, despite the early morning, prepared eggs for me and gave me an additional bottle of water, which was much needed for a hike. I started from Kranjska Gora to Rateče-Planica 5:47 AM, too early for any kind of shop, and I arrived there the previous day from Germany after 9PM, too late to shop. A mentioned lady left a smile in the valley (at so early an hour I could hardly elicited a smile, too), but not her kindness, a big thanks to her. The sun was just rising up behind the mountains: Some photos from Tamar, two possible uses of local variety of traditional hay drying storage: Here is the oldest and largest ski-jumping place in the world, Planica, preparing for an event in 2017: The Home in Tamar Valley: Interesting walls: Here Jalovec briefly showed above the Tamar Valley, most of the time it was in the morning clouds and fog: Top viewed from a hike to Kot's saddle: This ice almost costed me a peak of Jalovec, and maybe much more: What you do not see in that picture is the throat under glacier, something like in the image below, which is from one of the following glaciers, at the actual one I did not think about taking pictures but about staying alive): Lowest part of the rubble below ice was only ten meters, but just above the throat. When I tried to walk there, it was sliding down and I realized that the only way was the one which someone tried before me: over the glacier. But the previous person had ski poles, I had only 14 kg backpack (definitely too heavy) and summer Salomon shoes, which have not yet seen a real ice. And I had a perfectly classic fear of heights. This resulted in a one-hour search for other possible paths, the decision to go across sand and giving it up, even the decision to go back, but I finally went over the glacier. Luckily it was not a too long one, and fortunately did not have too much ice, but real snow, so summer shoes could cope with it. When I crossed it, I almost threw breakfast out from the stomach, so terrified I was! I do not remember that it would ever happen to me (maybe once on Triglav, at the overhanging part of the trail when I was hiking from the western side, but it was to a much lesser extent), but here the feeling of weakness in the legs kept for some time. Did I soften with age, or that was really so dangerous a place? Judge for yourself. Choice of the downward hike that has been described as the easiest in the guide-book was a very good one, although the edge of the ridge was quite steep. I did not dare to even raise the camera up, but I did it from the hip. View to the left: and to the right: Those few hundred meters of the ridge is in an easy thing for "of experienced mountaineer", piece of cake, but I felt pretty much like "retired mountaineer". I will not even try to imagine what crossing it looks like in the wind or a storm, then one could make it only creeping over it. Just below the ridge, above a glacier, flowery meadows. Colors like those are only possible in such a place. This is a steep ridge, down which I did mostly free climbing. It is also quite hard, but one feels safe, clinging to the rock. Mountain goats laugh at clumsy man, I came across a herd which fled from me: Another ice, this time much longer, I had to go in zigzag: There I made a mistake and I did not piled some snow into the bottle. There was a long, two and a half hour brisk walk from the glacier through the woods to the Trenta valley, which will remain in my memory as awful, as I ran out of water. Be sure to take at least 3 liters of water, or take snow from the glacier. At House at the spring of Soca river, to which I have come only at night, nice ladies working there have welcomed me with a simple dinner and a beer, and I slept tight until morning. They were so impressed that I came from Planica over Jalovec that they recognized me a status of honorary mountaineer although I had no membership card (long ago passed times when I had a valid identity card of anything in Europe) and charged me only a membership rate for overnight. They would not even charge for dinner, only beer. My thanks goes to them for such a treatment, indeed, it's nice to see that a genuine effort is still respected. By the way, it was a beautiful summer Sunday and I have met only one couple of hikers around 2PM, all other times it was like in a story, mountains and me. In honor of Soca river, in the morning I valked 12 kilometers to the Soca village. Not a problem, even after such a day as I had the day before, since the scenery is beautiful: Always when here, I make a point of visiting the Russian cemetery from the WWI, where they buried the Russian prisoners killed in an avalanche during the construction of the mountain road to Vrsic Pass. It is one of the most memorable examples of absurdity of war that I know, to start from distant Russia and finish being killed by avalanche in this beautiful valley ... On the way to House Zlatorog (which seems to be not working as a mountain hut any more?), a small haystack, so typical for the Alps: Down the Soca river, approaching Gorica, fine towns: Finally, home sweet home. I think a look at my own island from the sea, when one arrives from Velebit mountain, explains why I am so attached to the stone, whether in the Alps or at the seaside: