Robert M. Pirsig Quote

They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no mean guy who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.

Robert M. Pirsig

They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no mean guy who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.

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About Robert M. Pirsig

Robert Maynard Pirsig (; September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He is the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991), and he co-authored On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Selected and Unpublished Writings (2022) along with his wife and editor, Wendy Pirsig.