[MD] Ghost buster

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

dmb replies:
In their context "spirits are quite as real as atoms". I guess that's the main
point here. But it seems to me that defending ghosts is not part of Pirsig's
attack on SOM. What he's doing here, I think, is pointing out that "atoms" are
just as fictional as all the other explanations that have come and gone and
that some day such beliefs may even seem just as ignorant or nutty.

[Arlo]
This was my point to Platt. We assume our sets of patterns are "real", while the
patterns of others are ipso facto "primitive" or "inferior". I was not
suggesting we call Bill Murray and clan out of retirement. It's the "context in
which they thought" (and WE think) that's important to foreground. And again, I
brought this up only because I think Platt unfairly misrepresented what SA was
trying to say. *I* didn't read SAs post to be a call for ectoplasmatic spirits
in the MOQ, but his quote on the mask-maker and wood involved in a dialectical
relation, I thought, struck a chord with Quality as the source of subjects and
objects. Many artists have said that they are a "conduit" more than a creator.
And that's what I think the quote was getting at, not that netherworldish
ghosts reside in driftwood.