[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[Mary]

Hello Dave,

Interesting post.  I haven't read ZMM in a while, but agree on a gut level
with your observations.  BTW, if you have a digital copy of ZMM could you
send it to me?  I have a digital copy of Lila and can respond in kind,
assuming no one else already has.

Thanks,
Mary

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of David Thomas
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 11:35 AM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: [MD] Intellect's Symposium

Hi All,
 
Bang, Bang, Bang! 
 
It appears that the bulk of these discussions focusing on the social and
intellectual patterns have devolved into either banging on Pirsig, or on one
another, or both. 
 
Is there a middle way? Naw, bang¹n fun! It¹s the intellect¹s modus operandi.
 
In ZaMM ³intellect² is mentioned twice. First in the shim episode early on
when we read: "My own opinion is that the intellect of modern man isn¹t that
superior.²
Then a little later when he became disillusioned with Kant , moved to
oriental philosophy and then dropped out of Beneres in disgust and says:
³He had had the feeling of escape from a prison of intellect, and now this
was just more of the prison again.²
 
³Intellectual² and its close cousins are used 37 times, the bulk of these
being critical of it. Summing up, he uses near 25% of this allotment on just
one page.
 
(Pg 137 of digital copy:)
 "He felt that intellectuals usually have the greatest trouble seeing this
Quality, precisely because they are so swift and absolute about snapping
everything into intellectual form. The ones who have the easiest time seeing
this Quality are small children, uneducated people and culturally "deprived"
people. These have the least predisposition toward intellectuality from
cultural sources and have the least formal training to instill it further
into them. That, he felt, is why squareness is such a uniquely intellectual
disease. He felt he¹d been accidentally immunized from it, or at least to
some extent broken from the habit by his failure from school. After that he
felt no compulsive identification with intellectuality and could examine
anti-intellectual doctrines with sympathy.
Squares, he said, because of their prejudices toward intellectuality usually
regard Quality, the pre-intellectual reality, as unimportant, a mere
uneventful transition period between objective reality and subjective
perception of it. Because they have preconceived ideas of its unimportance
they don¹t seek to find out if it¹s in any way different from their
intellectual conception of it.²
 
Ok, time for a little Pirsig bang¹n.
 
My first thought upon this reading of ³squareness..immunizedŠbroken the
habit?² was, ³Pure bullshit!²
 
If this timeline:
 <http://www.psybertron.org/timeline.html>
is fairly accurate of his ³just drifting² period of 13 years (from 1946
(age17) to 1959 (age 30) ) over half of it, some portion of nearly 8 years,
was spent in some form of ³formal [intellectual] training² leading to a BA
in philosophy and a MA in journalism. This is followed by 3 more years of
frantic intellectual spinnings while teaching in Bozeman, then Chicago,
while pursuing a higher degree in philosophy.  IMHO it is not a stretch to
view ZaMM as a Zen parable recounting the real dangers of an intellect run
amok. 
 
But he knows it! After the last instance of ³intellectual² in ZaMM he says,
³The organization of the reason itself defeats the quality. Everything he
has been doing has been a fool¹s mission to begin with.²
 
Does he abandon the ³fools mission?² No. Jump shift from the undefined
Quality-Romantic/Classic split of ZaMM, add another 15 years of grinding
intellect to Lila. Low and behold what do we find positioned near the top of
the heap, just a dynamic blink away from pure Quality? The intellectual
level!  
 
Was there any doubt that many attracted to ZaMM¹s MoQ-1 would feel betrayed?
I think to some degree much of conflict we see here is between those who are
more romantically biased vs those who are more classically biased.

In ZaMM after elevating quality to the basis of all reality his split into
Classic and Romantic elevated the ³Arts² that were formerly orphaned in
relatively minor ³subjective² philosophic branches onto equal footing with
the Classic (intellectual/scientific) branch. As we move on to the MoQ-2 of
Lila we are hard pressed to figure out where the Romantic and the ³Arts²
went.  The "code of art" comment is just not very enlightening. If we were
to use the MoQ-1 of ZaMM as a guide to classify Pirsig¹s two books, I think
most of us would place ZaMM in the romantic sphere while Lila would be in
the classic.
 [END BANG]
 
But, of course my take on the story of the intellect/intellectual is just
getting started. 
(to be continued)
 
Dave
 
PS: I heard that a digital copy of Lila is floating around if someone could
send it to me privately I sure would be appreciative.





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