Appreciation of Function vs. Essence (bad Quality)

       In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, care is a function of Quality, so the more someone gets into the details, the essence of something in attempts to understand and work with it, the more Quality they are living/working with. Pirsig discusses the surface appreciation that people have for most things, an appreciation of their function versus their essence. This is termed exploitation without care, basically consumerism with deliberate, disrespectful ignorance. This is bad Quality, or perhaps just a lack of Quality.
        The book began with the author's exploration of some people's fear of technology, their resistance to knowing anything about it even as they relied on it very heavily. Towards the end of the book, he answers his question, leading into the conclusion of his exploration. Pirig states that technology is corrupted, tainted by the lack of care and Quality of work of the people creating it. The people making it follow rigid scientific structures and appreciate function over essence, working with little true care and creating products that are then consumed and perceived in the same way by the consumers. The appreciation of function versus essence leads to a "stylized" world because things created in this careless way are inherently ugly, and must therefore be "stylized." Modern American culture is  thoroughly "stylized."
         Reading these passages made me consider my own life and the material things that play a large part in it. My computer, my beads, books, pens, notebooks. I came to the conclusion that I truly respect, care for, and display good Quality in using very very few things, and see the value in most solely in how they serve me. Even my precious computer, the machine at which I've spent a solid half of my conscious life, is something I realized I appreciate in a surface manner, for if I truly respected it, I would maintain it way better and know way more about it. Just some thoughts, thanks for reading.

Phaedrus: Who is he?

         In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the narrator begins with somewhat arcane references to Phaedrus, an Athenian philosopher in the time of Socrates. At first, I wondered if he meant to present and explore his own ideas in light of those of Phaedrus', but I came to see that most of the book details an extended parallel between the two men. The clues came slowly. Initially, the narrator (and "author," according to the book) wrote in terms of what Phaedrus might think of this and that, never dispelling the illusion that he was talking about Phaedrus, the philosopher of ancient history. Suddenly, the narration begins to make statements about what Phaedrus does/did think of the ideas of individuals way past his own time period (such as Kant.) At that point, I had to reconsider the Phaedrus that was being discussed, and it was easier to do that when the narrator gave background information on his life.
        The narrator was living a normal life, going to work and stagnating intellectually. One day after work, he went to a party and got very very drunk. The next morning, instead of waking up on his friend's couch as he had somewhat embarrassingly expected, he woke up in a mental hospital with broad-reaching amnesia about his past life. Weeks had passed since he had lost consciousness at that party. He experienced some sort of dissociative fugue, and after he lost his memory, he sort of began life anew. The narrator chooses to describe his past life as that of Phaedrus, and his ideas and decisions as belonging to the same. In essence, his exploration of Phaedrus in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an exploration of himself as the man he was and is now and his pursuit of the "ghost of reason" throughout his life. A critical appraisal of the book that is written on the front cover calls it "the fabulous journey of a man in search for himself." That is a very apt description, and Phaedrus constitutes the embodiment of the narrator's search for himself and ultimate truth, as well as a means by which he searches.