Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Reply Give Award Share
Beloved Federals,
Greetings. I hope this message finds you well in these confusing times. Our honorable President * Joseph Biden recently referred to electric current attempts to expose ballot fraud as, "the greatest crisis to hit our country since the Civil War." According to my sources, several weeks ago, in offices effectually the federal government, linguistic communication began to be used such equally has never been used in history. Language such as, "When we come back from Labor Day we are going to start going subsequently Conservative groups" (not "extremists" or "White Nationalists", but "Conservative groups"). Word also reaches me of discontent and "almost civil state of war weather" in some nooks and crannies of your esteemed offices. I write with the hope of pouring oil on troubled waters.
My political leanings are known. Similar Milton Friedman, I define myself as a pocket-sized "50" libertarian modest "r" republican (and have no love for the Republicans). Given this, information technology might be assumed by some that I am antagonistic towards federal employees. Yes, there are individuals at certain commissions with whom I have had friction, but my mentor Full general Jack Vessey in one case told me, "Federal employees don't go in every day wanting to do a bad job. It's their leadership." You folks would be shocked to know how I have over the years generally spoken of you so highly as a grade, telling people how pleased and surprised I had been with the quality of people who take become federal employees whom I have met (even those many across deposition tables). I sometimes sense an insecurity in lifelong federal employees, as though they wonder how they would fare in the individual market. Exist assured (and the public should know) that the popular conception is misguided, and that in federal employment i by and large encounters a higher octane of individual than 1 comes across in corporate America, and with a significantly rarer incidence of duds. "About ane in twenty are duds," is how I have described information technology, "versus about ane in 5 one meets in corporate America." Truly: Respect.
Thus my post-obit words practice not come up from a place of animosity. 55% (and peradventure over 60%) of citizens will now tell a pollster that they believe fraud was "significant" or "very significant" in President * Biden's victory. In a different and more softly worded poll, 60% agree that ballot fraud played a part in Biden's victory and 90% agreed that the government take to practice more to tighten upwardly on election integrity for November 2022 (and I think this really means that 90% know in their hearts that Biden won because of election fraud but only sixty% will say that to a pollster). Given this state of affairs, there must be some among you who harbor doubts. Such people volition be having sleepless nights, should they be reflective about their duties.
I would like to share (and arguably, overquote) a story from a classic of my early boyhood, Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. In the context of a father-son motorbike trip this volume wove together numerous lectures on topics various. Describing the efforts of a professor he calls "Phaedrus" (actually Pirsig's proper name for himself earlier the onset of crippling mental affliction), he refers to a time when his academy had been threatened with loss of accreditation, and a educatee had asked if the constabulary could not be posted to foreclose it. Phaedrus gave the class a lecture on the real nature of the Academy, or what he called, "The Church building of Reason".
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The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no fabric dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that neat heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to u.s.a. through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It'due south a land of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, merely fifty-fifty that title is not part of the existent University. The existent Academy is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.
In addition to this state of listen, "reason," there's a legal entity which is unfortunately chosen by the aforementioned name but which is quite another affair. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the country with a specific address. It owns belongings, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures in the procedure.
But this 2nd university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new cognition or evaluate ideas. It is not the existent University at all. Information technology is just a church building building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to be.
Defoliation continually occurs in people who fail to see this difference, he said, and retrieve that control of the church buildings implies command of the church. They come across professors as employees of the second university who should carelessness reason when told to and accept orders with no backtalk, the same way employees practise in other corporations.
They meet the second academy, but neglect to see the showtime.
After these explanations he returned to the analogy of the religious church. The citizens who build such a church and pay for it probably have in listen that they're doing this for the customs. A good sermon tin put the parishioners in a right frame of mind for the coming week. Sunday schoolhouse will help the children grow up right. The government minister who delivers the sermon and directs the Sunday school understands these goals and unremarkably goes along with them, merely he also knows that his primary goals are not to serve the community. His primary goal is always to serve God. Normally there's no conflict only occasionally ane creeps in when trustees oppose the government minister's sermons and threaten reduction of funds. That happens.
A true minister, in such situations, must act equally though he'd never heard the threats. His principal goal isn't to serve the members of the community, simply always god.
The primary goal of the Church of Reason, Phaedrus said, is always Socrates' old goal of truth, in its ever-changing forms, as information technology's revealed by the process of rationality. Everything else is subordinate to that. Normally this goal is in no conflict with the location goal of improving denizens, simply on occasion some disharmonize arises, as in the case of Socrates himself. It arises when trustees and legislators who've contributed big amounts of time and money to the location accept points of view in opposition to the professors' lectures of public statements. They can so lean on the administration past threatening to cut off funds if the professors don't say what they want to hear. That happens besides.
Truthful churchmen in such situations must act every bit though they had never heard these threats. Their master goal never is to serve the community ahead of everything else. Their primary goal is to serve, through reason, the goal of truth.
– Pirsig, Zen & The Fine art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1999, p. 150-151
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To federal employees who read this, I respectfully ask, What god do you lot serve?
I humble and respectfully suggest that I know y'all have all kinds of private beliefs, as all citizens are entitled to have. We all accept paradigms within which we live and seek to find significant in life. Some of united states are Catholics some Jews, some are economists some bowlers, some are athletes some are gamers, some are environmental activists some are social justice advocates, simply no thing ane's personal commitment to such centers of meaning in life, at that place is 1 and only one god a federal employee qua federal employee may serve.
Encounter god:
That is to say, the U.s. Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Why is that? Because the citizens of this land (or our ancestors) made a bargain with you (or your forerunners), and in that location is naught in life worse than a welcher, correct? The deal is the bargain. And the nature of that deal is spelled out with great clarity about the beginning of the commencement of those documents:
"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that amongst these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,…"
So we agreed that we the people beginning with rights and do and then "self-evidently" (which is to say, we don't accept to prove that point to anyone, including you). Some of us may buy the story that a Creator made u.s. and invested u.s. with such rights or that we acquit them because we are made in the epitome of that Creator. Some may locate them in imagining what people in a "country of nature" engaging in Lockean reasoning about non-interference in each other's lives must look like for civil order to flourish. The question may be debated in 1's private censor, but one's private respond is irrelevant at this moment. Because whatsoever your theory every bit to the origin of those rights, the deal was that we the people (and united states nosotros created) traded in some of those rights (no matter their origin) then equally to empower a federal government to do certain things we could not practice as individuals or as states.
In these confusing times, it may assistance to review what those things are. A good listing of them can be found in Commodity I Section 8. And a list of things the federal authorities can never practice is found in the Bill of Rights.
So in sum: that'south the paradigm within which our political discourse occurs. It is within that paradigm, for example, that nosotros the people surrendered the virtually cardinal correct of all, the right of cocky-defense (known to philosophers as "self-assistance justice"). As John Locke noted, the right to defend oneself is something even an animal has. And then much more, so, a rational being such every bit a person. Yet we surrender that right in all but the most urgent, dire cases, and agree to live nether a dominion of law wherein all matters will be adjudicated. That concession made by Nosotros the People is the most bones one we make: we have taken that virtually primal right of all animals and surrendered it to you, the government, in render for your delivery to abide by a paradigm established by a Declaration that says we have rights and that to protect them we traded in some of those rights so every bit to empower yous in government; a Constitution defining the architecture of that government government and the processes by which information technology generates and enforces well-formed rules; and a Beak of Rights listing the things that this federal authorities can never practise.
That's it. That's the bargain. That's our bargain. It is the deal y'all took when we hired you and you swore us an oath. It is on the basis that you swore such an oath that we trusted you lot with the awesome powers of government, including trusting yous enough to surrender our right to self-help justice.
There are other paradigms some may have, I know. Amid them are paradigms that a proper life is spent abiding by the teachings of this or that religious figure, promoting art or literature, or pursuing goals as the environment, or maximizing some form of Ten-justice (due east.one thousand., "social justice" or "economic justice" etc.) Those may be worthy goals and I wish you the greatest of success in choosing your ain ends and maximizing them with your lives. Simply I wish respectfully to remind you again: a deal is a bargain, zilch is worse than a welcher, and the deal that we the people made with you the government is spelled out in those three documents. Information technology is on your acceptance of those terms that we surrendered our rights and created your powers. You are gratis to pursue all your other ends in life as well in your own time and I sincerely wish you the greatest of blessings in your such pursuits, but when y'all became an officer of the federal government, that is the deal you made us.
To the military class I transport my special greetings and respect. I have no doubts that the enlisted members of the services volition always think their constitutional duties, simply most some officers I have my doubts. Yet they have been trained in situational ethics, presumably for a moment such as we are reaching. Evidence is bubbling (and beginning to gush) to the surface about the criminal activities that accompanied last November's election. The recent news from Arizona is just scratching the surface. You lot are going to be tested, considering no i can accept over this country through civil forces alone: police and sheriffs aren't willing and the 2nd Amendment would stop them even if they were. A dictator may rule this country only if that dictator is able to get the military machine to do things which the military is forbidden to practise and which no modern military wants to do. You are not Noriega's goons, you are not the People'south Liberation Army driving tanks over dissidents in Tiananmen: you lot are the United states of america Military, and you don't "start going later" your own population. Those who are preparing to order your involvement in political matters, whether they tell you to employ bullets or other tools of national security, are violating our bargain. I am no expert on the Compatible Code of War machine Justice, simply I'm pretty certain that the rule is if someone gives yous an unconstitutional lodge such as that YOU SHOULD Observe A WAY TO PEACABLY RESIST THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL ORDER TO FIRE UPON AMERICANS OR OTHERWISE WEAPONISE THE NATIONAL SECURITY Land AGAINST POLITICAL OPPONENTS XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (but consult your ain attorneys and conscience on that ane).*,**
In closing, to our great and many esteemed federal colleagues, I respectfully recommend that in moments of defoliation, please think about the story above. Remember the minister, who had to remember for whom he really worked (not "to whom he reported" merely for whom he worked). Retrieve the story of the Church building of Reason and the office of a professor therein. Then inquire yourself, what god do you serve?
No matter your private beliefs, you answered that question by oath the day you took the task.
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_*_ Information technology occurs to me that in these stressful times I should curtail my customary comedic panache. Obviously, under no circumstances should people on any side of this debate go trigger-happy in whatsoever way, including against their superiors in government. There is a point I have been making in speeches once again and once again: America is going to become a chance to show that is is indeed the infrequent country considering we are going to defeat this, and nosotros are going to practise so without firing a shot. And mayhap, without anyone even having to go to jail (yes there'due south an arroyo). Then nether no circumstances should any federal employees hang their chain-of-command from lampposts. They should refuse to perform Unconstitutional orders. And if orders ever come up to burn down on American citizens, I am confident they would disobey such orders.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX… consult your UCMJ.
** As a belt-and-suspenders measure, I would like to echo what I accept been saying repeatedly in interviews and talks: America is the exceptional country, and we are going to show it past not only getting through this, but by doing so peacably. Given that, it does not help for me to use comedic panache, not fifty-fifty once, about government officials such as I have in the past nearly Wall Street bankers. I removed the over-the-line quote, and remind myself of my duty going frontwards to find a peacable mode forward. I feel I have washed so continuously since I foresaw this mess on November iv, merely I will say it once again here: there are peaceful ways forward. It is time I devote some other essay to the subject.
Source: https://www.deepcapture.com/2021/07/zen-and-the-art-of-being-a-federal/