[MD] The Greeks?

[Mary]

Hi Matt,

On Behalf Of Matt Kundert
> Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 9:26 PM
> 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.  
[Mary Replies] 
I would, then, be genuinely curious to hear your conceptions of camps 4, 5
and 6 for a number of reasons, not least of which would be to enhance my
understanding of others.

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.)  
[Mary Replies] 
I remember them, but haven't bothered to review the archives from those
days.  Didn't Struan say "fuck" a lot?

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?
> 
[Mary Replies] 
So, I'm reading along in your post, and begin to feel a vague sense of
unease.  This as yet has no name, other than a silent alarm that you somehow
seem to believe me to be a spiritual person, when in fact I've spent my life
being decidedly non-spiritual.  where would you get such an idea?  Should I
reread my own posts?  Is spirituality leaking out through a crack that is
obvious to everyone else but not to me?  How embarrassing!  Mary, the
hard-headed pragmatist.  Perhaps this is my mistake?  Does "know thyself"
apply here?  

Anyway, that's far from what you asked.  To answer your question, no, I do
not object to reading other philosophers, but I do find the focus some have
had here on holding Pirsig's work against James a red-herring.  If the goal
is (and as a goal this is legitimately debatable) to inspire the average
pragmatic, hard-headed Westerner to consider even for a moment that there
might be some meaning to life other than the next trip to the shopping mall,
then I don't think James is the ticket.  One must first convince them that
their perceived pragmatism is not pragmatism at all.  If you don't know that
you have a problem, then even the best solution will be of no value.

> To say that my interest in Pirsig is "merely academic" kind
> of misses the point of people who like to read.  

[Mary Replies] 
I too like to read, and imagine that nearly everyone here does, so ok.

> 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?
> 
[Mary Replies] 
Apparently, I inadvertently struck some kind of chord about academicia.  No
harm intended.  I have great admiration for the quest of University and find
it a very odd place to be indeed cast as the opponent of academicians.  The
irony does not escape me.  I only meant to caution that it is possible to
dissect a subject to the point of irrelevance.  

> 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.)  

[Mary Replies] 
An interesting digression lies here.  How well could you say a biographer
has done his job if the adherents of his subject find no recognition in it?

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.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
I like what Pirsig had to say about this while discussing "The MoQ & Art",
where he prefers to see his comments as the beginning point of discussion
rather than the end.

> 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.


[Mary Replies] 
I agree with your observation, though I think you can forgive a lot of the
argument here as being more 'biographical', as you explain the difference,
than catechistic.  There's a desire to 'get it right".

> 
> 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.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
I would only say with all goodwill intended that goodwill was always
intended.  There is no condescension implicit.  To say "depending on where
you are in your journey" does not for a moment imply that I believe myself
to be farther along than you.  What would that even mean?  Who said the
journey was a single road with only one "right" direction?  There are
alternate routes.

Very best,
Mary