[MD] Quantum Physics, Amerindians, Zen, the woods, beyond SOM

[Platt Holden]

> [Arlo]
> I take it we did go the route of dismissing ZMM entirely once again.
> 
> [Platt]
> No more than you dismiss Lila.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Misrepresentation, Platt. I quote and refer to the concepts of LILA
> frequently.

If you say so. You seem to favor ZMM however. 

> [Platt]
> This is Pirsig in his hippie days which he later apologized for because the
> hippie movement ended up at the moral level of biological patterns.
> 
> [Arlo]
> What source do you have where Pirsig apologizes for ZMM? In the recent
> interview he states quite clearly that ZMM is "the path to enlightenment",
> while LILA is "the voyage home"

Did I say he was apologizing for ZMM. Don't think so.

> ""As I see these two books," Pirsig says, drawing an oval on a notepad,
> "there is a Zen circle. You start here with Zen," he says, marking an X,
> "and then you go here to enlightenment, that's what’s called 180 Zen.
> 
> "Then you go back to where you started from — that's 360 Zen — and the
> world is exactly as it was when you left it." Pirsig sits back and lets
> that sink in, then adds: "Well, I felt that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
> Maintenance was the journey out, and Lila was this trip back.""
> 
> Hardly "an apology". 

I always preferred the trip home. 

> [Platt] 
> I think it's important to emphasize Pirsig's atheism rather than hint he
> might be receptive to the idea of the Great Spirit. But, I could be wrong.
> 
> [Arlo]
> I have no problem with that, I just don't think that what SA was "hinting".
> I think you're reacting to his inclusion of Indians and Zen.

Whatever you say.

> [Platt]
> I see good old relativism, the bogus idea that other cultures are just as
> knowledgeable as our own. 
> 
> [Arlo]
> Ah, I see, is this a call for some cheerleading? Should I say, "Why Platt,
> far be it from me to suggest that our culture is anything but the zenith
> culture, the most great and glorious the world, nay TIME itself, has ever
> known"?

Do you know a better one?

> As Pirsig cites Kluckhohn in LILA, "Any language is more than an instrument
> of conveying ideas, more even than an instrument for working upon the
> feelings of others and for self-expression. Every language is also a means
> of categorizing experience. The events of the "rear world are never felt or
> reported as a machine would do it. There is a selection process and an
> interpretation in the very act of response. Some features of the external
> situation are highlighted, others are ignored or not fully discriminated.
> 
> Every people has its own characteristic class in which individuals
> pigeonhole their experiences. The language says, as it were, "notice this,"
> "always consider this separate from that," "such and such things always
> belong together.  " Since persons are trained from infancy to respond in
> these ways they take such discriminations for granted as part of the
> inescapable stuff of life."
> 
> So when SA had quoted "we don't blend with the atomic structure of the
> earth in the way they do", methinks you reacted to some imagined slight of
> American Culture (how dare SA imply validity to another cultural
> perspective!), rather than to the similarity between this and what Pirsig
> describes in LILA (not to mention ZMM in the "sand sorting" analogy).

If you wish to think that, so be it. I don't see Pirsig knocking our "culture"
other than saying intellect has no business trying to control society since it
wouldn't recognize a moral if it fell over one. Nor do I see him saying it's moral
to "blend with the atomic structure." In fact, he says biology gained
supremacy over inanimate nature many moons ago. (A little indian lingo
there.) 

But, I could be wrong.