[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 8 Jun 2010 at 7:06, skutvik at online.no wrote:

[Steve]
> But Pirsig never says "the way we experience reality IS a
> metaphysics." 

[Bo]
Of course not, but the message is that ordering existence is 
humankind's hallmark, and the respective orderings were not regarded 
as such it  WAS existence. I know no way to convey this without 
invoking SOM, but this is the message of the said quote.      

{Platt]
I use the "glasses" metaphor as a way to convey this. 

"The culture in which we live hands us a set of intellectual glasses to 
interpret experience with, and the concept of the primacy of subjects and 
objects is built right into these glasses." (Lila, 8)

I wear glasses. I never take them off except to sleep.They are part and parcel 
of my existence. If I take them off my existence changes, becomes indistinct. 
But here's the thing; I rarely aware that I have them on, like I'm rarely aware 
that I divide experience into subjects and objects. In fact, before I read 
Lila, I was unaware of the S/O division and the metaphysical glasses that 
created my S/O existence. Then Pirsig said, "Try on these new glasses that 
divides experience into static and dynamic Quality." I did, and discovered a 
different existence, more luminous than the one before.

We depend for survival on a metaphysical premise, a first division, built into 
our glasses that orders experience and creates patterns of meaning. Depending 
on which glasses we choose, we understand more or less clearly.                 


Platt