[1] The ideas began with what seemed to be a minor difference of opinion between John and me on
[2] a matter of small importance: how much one should maintain one's own motorcycle. It seems natural
[3] and normal to me to make use of the small tool kits and instruction booklets supplied with each
[4] machine, and keep it tuned and adjusted myself. John demurs. He prefers to let a competent mechanic
[5] take care of these things so that they are done right. Neither viewpoint is unusual, and this minor
[6] difference would never have become magnified if we didn't spend so much time riding together and
[7] sitting in country roadhouses drinking beer and talking about whatever comes to mind. What comes to
[8] mind, usually, is whatever we've been thinking about in the half hour or forty-five minutes since we last
[9] talked to each other. When it's roads or weather or people or old memories or what's in the newpapers,
[10] the conversation just naturally builds pleasantly. But whenever the performance of the machines has been
[11] on my mind and gets into the conversation, the building stops. The conversation no longer moves
[12] forward. There is a silence and a break in the continuity. It is as though two old friends, a Catholic and
[13] Protestant, were sitting drinking beer, enjoying life, and the subject of birth control somehow came up.
[14] Big freeze-out.
[15] (…)
[16] When you're talking birth control, what blocks it and freezes it out is that it's not a matter of more
[17] or fewer babies being argued. That's just on the surface. What's underneath is a conflict of faith, of faith
[18] in empirical social planning versus faith in the authority of God as revealed by the teachings of the
[19] Catholic Church. You can prove the practicality of planned parenthood till you get tired of listening to
[20] yourself and it's going to go nowhere because your antagonist isn't buying the assumption that
[21] anything socially practical is good per se. Goodness for him has other sources which he values as
[22] much as or more than social practicality.
(Excerpt from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, By Robert M. Pirsig. New York: Harpertorch, 1974)
A expressão “birth control” (l. 16) tem como expressão sinônima
