[MD] Metaphysics

[John Carl]

Steve,

He talks about metaphysics
> as a degenerate activity that takes one out of the mystical reality.
> So there is this tension: on the one hand he says one cannot escape
> metaphysics and on the other that metaphysics is an escape from
> reality, but we also cannot escape from reality if reality is Quality.
> All this makes me think that there is a sense of irony about Pirsig's
> use of the term metaphysics that Bo is taking the wrong bits
> literally.
>
> What do you think?
>
>


I think you make some damn interesting points there, but I don't know if
Pirsig really says metaphysics is unavoidable, I think it's more like he
says its irresistable, to certain types of minds.

Just like alcohol and bar ladies are not fundamentally and universally
inevitable, but if you're bent that way you're bound to indulge yourself or
what is life for anyway?

Now in my humble judgement, I think Bo's problem is of two-fold complexity.
First, he's got that kind of mind.  Remember DeWeese and the jiggling light
switch?  Remember the artistically bound and glued table that "just sort of
builds?  Remember the great and lasting friendship between these two minds,
Phaedrus and DeWeese;  minds that were so different they could barely
comprehend each other, and yet felt drawn toward each other anyway?

That's a  classic understanding interacting with a  romantic.

Bo relates more strongly to ZAMM, because that's closer to his personal
battles and problems in his actual life.  He can relate to the
classic/romantic conflict and it's resolution his resolution.

The second discrepancy comes from being a non-American, and the main
conflict in  Lila that is explicated is between Victorian and Indian values,
I think Bo has a harder time with because that's foreign to his upbringing.

Here's a quote from one of my other favorite authors, Ed Abbey,  to
illustrate what attracts me as an American:

"Eternal recurrence, announced Nietzcshe.  Time for the mountain men to
return.  The American West has not given us, so far, sufficient men to match
our mountains.  Or not since the death of Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Dull
Knife, Red Cloud, Chief Joseph, Little Wolf, Red Shirt, Gall, Geronimo,
Cochise, Tenaya (to name but a few), and their comrades.  With their defeat
died a bold, brave, heroic way of life, one as fine as anything recorded
history has to show us.  Speaking for myself, I'd sooner have been a
liver-eating, savage horseman riding with Red Cloud than a slave-owning
sophist sipping tempered win in Periclean Athens.  For example"

Me too Ed.

Me and Ed and Bob get that.  I'm not sure Bo does and I'm not sure there's
any way of explaining something that is "in the blood".  Genetically and
Environmental programming together make for a pretty set pattern.

John