[MD] The Greeks?

[John Carl]

Thanks Mary, for dragging this whole most excellent diatribe out of Matt.  I
loved it all.  Some very tasty nuggets in there Matt.  Good on you.

"The event of philosophy is the event of reshaping ourselves, not in some
cosmetic sense, but in the sense that after we are done we
are not who we were when we started."

I disagree tho that you get called an elitist philosophologist every couple
days.  Maybe in your memories...

Appreciatively,

John

PS:  Glen Bradford?  I think I went to school with that guy...



On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 7:26 PM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
> Hi Mary,
>
> Mary said:
> people here tend to fall into one of three camps.  There are
> those who feel the philosophy fulfills a need in their lives or
> answers an important question, another group views it as
> an academic philosophy to be evaluated against its
> predecessors, while  a third rejects it yet finds value in taking
> the time to ridicule or oppose.  No matter which group you
> are in, you will find yourself offended by the point of view of
> the other two.
> ...
> And so you have revealed yourself to lie within the second
> camp, Pirsig as academically interesting.
>
> Matt:
> I'm not so sure I quite agree that your tripartite camp
> demarcation catches all the interesting differences.  For
> example, I'm not offended by people in Camp-1, though I
> am generally annoyed by people in Camp-3.  And Camp-3,
> while perhaps catching the point of view of They Who
> Shall Not Be Named (Struan Hellier and Glenn Bradford), it
> doesn't seem to really catch, say, Ham Priday, who also
> isn't really offended, but more just wants somebody to
> talk to, and look, here's a stable, persisting group of
> people.  (Though, even here, that doesn't do justice to
> either Struan or Glenn, whose strident tone in their later
> years came about, not because they were offended by
> Pirsig, I take it, but by the pious tones of some of his
> defenders.)  And why should being in Camp-1 preclude you
> from evaluation against other philosophers?  Why should
> thinking that Pirsig's philosophy is great and helps you
> with spiritual questions (however one defines "spirit")
> preclude you from reading other philosophers, or taking an
> interest in the history of philosophy?
>
> To say that my interest in Pirsig is "merely academic" kind
> of misses the point of people who like to read.  The mind
> for such people is like a Homeric battlefield, with forces
> constantly arrayed against each other, fighting for victory.
> And reading and thinking about philosophy keeps the field
> dynamic, with occasionally new armies appearing out of
> nowhere, and you don't know until later whether they fight
> for Good or Evil (well, I guess it's more like a Miltonic
> battlefield).  And sometimes people change sides, or
> double-cross their comrades occasionally.  Pirsig's mind was
> like this, and it's how he thought of philosophy in the
> philosophology chapter (Ch. 26).  Pirsig wasn't against
> reading, he was against leaving them in a museum, instead
> of animating them for battle.
>
> I may have a curious relationship to Pirsig because--what
> is easiest to say--I'm an academic.  But to sniff, "Oh, he's
> a philosophologist," doesn't do justice to the spiritual quest
> people who like to read are on.  I read and compare
> because I want the better.  And I'm impatient.  I don't look
> down my nose at people who like Pirsig, and just want to
> use him for themselves.  Because in both cases, the person
> in a monogamist relationship with Pirsig and the whorish,
> polygamist (like myself) are out for themselves--they are
> on their own spiritual journey, and who am I to tell them to
> sow their wild oats?
>
> I think the better distinction to get started splitting people
> up into groups is between philosophy and biography,
> between asking "What's the better thing to think?" and
> "What would X think?"  A purely academic relationship to
> Pirsig would be if one were writing a history of 20th Century
> X (philosophy, literature, popular culture, American
> Buddhism, etc.), and had to take his books into account.
> That would be pure biography.  Pure biography is open to
> anyone--you don't have to be a true believer to do it.  (For
> example, I know a lot more about Christianity and what
> they are supposed to believe than some of my Christian
> friends--that neither invalidates my knowledge, nor does it
> say anything about their faith.)  Pure philosophy would be
> something like being on a battlefield without anybody to
> fight (this image is an extension of my argument that you
> can't evacuate history from philosophy as "philosophology"
> seems to suppose, part of my argument in the MoQ.org
> essay "Philosophologology").
>
> The tricky question is for those of us who have a battle
> commander--or, let's say, a wizened advisor.  When you
> ask for advice, you do need to carry out the instructions
> correctly--so you need to be able to do biography.  And in
> this sense, you can be corrected by the non-believing,
> infidel pure biographers.  But, when you are on your own
> spiritual quest, rather than fighting someone else's, you will
> sometimes find yourself in disagreement with your spiritual
> advisor.  Having a wizened advisor that you find yourself in
> almost complete agreement with might be like having a
> book of proverbs, but probably is more like sharpening your
> mind against a trusted whetstone.  To figure out what you
> think, you always go back to the whetstone to sharpen
> your thoughts, but you always try to remember that the
> stone is not you.
>
> Am I a believer?  That's complicated, but probably no more
> complicated than assessing whether individual Christians are
> authentic or not--unless you're in the Catholic church,
> there's no real authoritative body to throw you out if you
> self-identify, in whatever weird way you think.  I have no
> trouble calling myself a Pirsigian.  Perhaps it's just habit, but
> I don't think so.  I have a "spirit before the letter" approach
> to his corpus, have no problem distinguishing between
> getting Pirsig right and getting what I think right, have no
> problem ignoring parts I don't like, and get tired of orthodox
> readers who want to throw me out of their church, just
> because I ocassionlly like to pray in front of the cross.
>
> Yet, on the other hand, I do seem to have that annoying
> tendency to throw Pirsig under the bus every time things
> get hot--"hey, what do you make of the levels?"  "Eh, I
> don't go in for that kind of thing...."  I seem like a
> convenient Pirsigian, which appears to the disciples like a
> Historian of Religion who only goes to church on Christmas
> and Easter (analogous to ZMM and Lila, and _man_ do I
> think Christmas way cooler).  Yet, because the Master
> preached tolerance and goodwill, and that faith in him was
> really faith in yourself (i.e. philosophy is something you do,
> a spiritual quest of which everyone must necessarily have
> their own), I can't help but think that my path is as
> legitimate as anyone else's, and that--biographically
> speaking--I'm right in thinking that the Master is on my
> side on this score.
>
> Mary said:
> I liken this [the three camps] to religion, where the most
> maddening thing you can say to a religious person is that
> Jesus was nothing more than a wise man with valuable
> insights to make.
>
> Matt:
> The religious metaphor is always at hand for these kinds of
> things, though there is something wrong with it, as "disciple"
> seems to cast doubt on how "free-thinking" the Pirsigian is.
> I have no wish to cast that kind of doubt generally (only on
> a case-by-case basis), but I think I gained whatever
> notoriety I somewhat egomaniacally assign myself in my
> original coming out party in July 2002, "Confessions of a
> Fallen Priest."  Not a good rhetorical strategy, I came think
> later.  I think this description of angst, in my "Open Letter to
> New Participants of the MD" in the Essay Forum, captures
> without religious metaphors what's going on around here
> pretty well:
> ----------
> I can, however, offer two explanations to explain this
> phenomenon [of sometimes virulent antagonism] that swing
> free of both the competitive nature of inquiry and the
> possibility of participants simply being assholes. The first
> only holds for some participants. Pirsig’s writings try and
> place their finger on a “spiritual crisis” in our society. Pirsig’s
> proposed solution is almost entirely individualistic (meaning
> centered on each person taking care of themselves) and
> almost entirely philosophical (meaning we have to change, in
> a large, general, broad-scale way, many prevailing attitudes).
> People who find themselves here, then, are by and large
> taken by Pirsig’s diagnosis and wish to search for the solution
> and for ways of disseminating it. This is a large task and
> clearly of the utmost, dire importance (at least for those who
> think this way). Because of the importance and because of
> the fact that we, apparently, are the only ones who take
> Pirsig seriously, reaching consensus on Pirsig’s philosophy
> and then moving on to dissemination is intensely important,
> and time is being wasted. In other words, the antagonism is
> marked by impatience.
>
> As I said before, that explanation holds for only some. But
> because everyone was attracted to Pirsig (and, what’s
> more, then this site) for some reason, everyone probably
> falls on a continuum between “What spiritual crisis?” and
> “The world is about to end!!!” with most people somewhere
> in the middle. The second explanation is much more basic
> than our peculiar affinity with and love for Pirsig, though it
> is tied to the notion of a “spiritual crisis.” People do
> philosophy for various reasons, but people who are drawn
> here typically do it because they are interested in the way
> our beliefs hang together and how this affects our lives and
> the world at large. Philosophy is used as a way of
> excavating our own most deeply held beliefs and then
> asking, “Should this really be all that deep?” In other words,
> we do philosophy Socratically, taking the Delphic Oracle’s
> “The unexamined life is not worth living” as our modus
> operandi. This means, though, that people here are at their
> most exposed and naked. When the smoke gets thick, it
> means that the propositions and theses being kicked around
> aren’t simply hypotheses with which we are going to
> gradually eliminate until there is a winner. That is exactly
> what’s going to happen (given the ideal of inquiry), but it is
> an excruciatingly arduous and torturous affair when these
> theses are deeply held and deeply believed. Saying that the
> ideas we kick around are simply “truth candidates” doesn’t
> quite grasp the event that is taking place. These ideas are
> us (this also being a basic position of Pirsig’s). The event of
> philosophy is the event of reshaping ourselves, not in some
> cosmetic sense, but in the sense that after we are done we
> are not who we were when we started.
> ----------
>
> Mary said:
> The crux of my question goes right to the heart of the
> differences between the three groups I've described.
> Depending on where you are in your journey, you either will
> or will not find value in seeing the nature of SOM as an
> insidious destroyer of equanimity.  If you find personal
> meaning in the MoQ, the purpose of the Intellectual Level
> looms large for this reason.  It is perhaps the central concept
> you have attachment for.  You think that everyone should
> feel the enormity of Pirsig's insights that you see, and are
> offended that they do not.  But this is a mistake.  To rail
> against others who have not is unfair.  Would I be
> understanding of that which I had not experienced?  If not,
> why should I expect that of others?  The MoQ can be
> understood on many levels, and any of them are better
> than none.
>
> Matt:
> Heh, ya' know, I appreciate the attempt at tolerance and
> goodwill at the end, but funny how the implicit path of the
> journey leads to a specific interpretation of Pirsig's
> philosophy.  As in, one can only be part of Camp-1 if one
> agrees with you that the intellectual level is the "central
> concept."  Whereas, if I'm not mistaken, Marsha has
> recently emphasized how Quality is numero uno, and Joe
> Mauer put in a bid for Lila to be replaced with the words
> "Dynamic Quality."
>
> What kind of goodwill is it if I say, "No, it's okay, Mary, I
> understand why you don't agree with me--you just aren't
> as far down the path as I am."  Maybe I'm more sensitive
> to this because I get called a philosophological elitist
> every couple days on the MD, but I try to avoid as much
> as possible the appearance of condescension in the
> shaping of Pirsigian philosophical individualism.
>
> Matt
>
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