[MD] What is metaphysics to you?

Tue Apr 1 01:17:42 PDT 2008

Greetings Matt,

So, we're back to ambiguity.  Well, I like my 
own, not necessarily anybody else's.  Unless it's 
presented as poetry, song or less than 50 
words.  I think I'll answer your last question which is fairly clear:

>Wasn't the idea behind Pirsig's Quality that it 
>is value, i.e. judgments, all the way down to the very core of reality?

It was a suggestion from personal experience, not 
RMP's written word.  There is an awareness sans 
concept to be found.  But never mind.  It sounds 
like meditation is not for you.  It was a suggestion, not a command.

Marsha

At 12:41 AM 4/1/2008, you wrote:

>You shouldn't apologize Marsha.
>
>In a way, I just trapped you (though I actually 
>wasn't really thinking about it).  What I said 
>took advantage of certain instincts that we can 
>find in Pirsig's philosophy, instincts that lead 
>to some heavy conflict, both in one's 
>"philosophical positions" (if one is inclined to 
>have such things) and in one's practical dealings with people.
>
>The case is laid out in a paper I wrote, "Pirsig 
>Institutionalized," in the Forum, but it's 
>pretty simple: Pirsig says "trust only 
>yourself," but the whole idea behind 
>philosophical conversation is that one shouldn't 
>trust _only_ themselves.  This sums up what I 
>just saw happen (earlier in the paper I had 
>argued that the MD displayed the earmarks of a 
>"profession," and so here I'm referring to the 
>phenomena as "antiprofessionalism"):
>
>"The consequence of antiprofessionalism is not 
>only a bad attitude towards the others in your 
>field, but because you are also in the field, a 
>bad image of yourself: it breeds 
>self-flagellation and bad 
>self-esteem.  Antiprofessionalism 'urges 
>impossible goals (the breaking free or bypassing 
>of the professional network) and therefore has 
>the consequence of making people ashamed of what 
>they are doing.'  In the MD, this causes a 
>curious event in which people are engaged in a 
>conversation of exploration, but seem forced to 
>add (implicitly and invisibly or explicitly as 
>salutation or closing) the addenda 'but that's 
>just my opinion' which conveys the sentiment 
>that participants don't really even want to be 
>having the conversation.  Of course they are 
>your opinions, whose else would they be?  The 
>conversation is there to explore those opinions, 
>to weed out the bad ones.  But in stating 
>'that's just my opinion,' you've excluded 
>exploration because you’ve basically just 
>asserted them as the bald truth of you and 
>exited the room: 'Hey, here’s my opinion, see 
>you later.'  The reason this 
>half-foot-in-half-foot-out approach exists is 
>because participants feel bad about saying 
>anything at all because they feel they are 
>intruding into an area where they have no 
>jurisdiction.  This is the feeling of shame that 
>emerges from Pirsig’s impossible 
>antiprofessionalism.  No one has authority over 
>anyone else, so you should feel bad for making 
>an assertion of truth over someone else’s."
>
>You said that you hope I meditate because you'd 
>"hate to think" that I'm "missing the really 
>good stuff."  My confession is that one of my 
>pet peeves are, what I see as, blithe 
>suggestions that my life is missing 
>something.  It's not suggestions: its the ones 
>that invoke "my life"--as if I had a huge hole 
>in my life that I didn't even know about.  While 
>that could always be true of anyone, and I don't 
>mind suggestions at all, I just react to that 
>particular way of formulating the suggestion.
>
>I reacted as I often do in such circumstances 
>when confronted by MDer's with 
>views/arguments/whatever that I don't like: I 
>respond with Pirsig saying/doing/arguing/viewing 
>the opposite.  I don't even need to explain why 
>I do this, because the very nature of the MD, 
>the fact that people are here in the first 
>place, while not itself explaining the strategy, 
>implies the instinctive understanding we all 
>have: we take very seriously indeed what Pirsig says.
>
>But what does it mean when the guy we all take 
>seriously says that we shouldn't take seriously what he says?
>
>It could mean all sorts of things, and only a 
>weak understanding of life and philosophy would 
>allow someone to get away with thinking that 
>such an obvious contradiction itself justifies a 
>dismissal.  And we here don't dismiss 
>Pirsig.  But such things do need confrontation.
>
>Even if you were sarcastically replying with 
>your apology, as in, "I'm sorry Your Majesty, 
>all due apologies.  My mistake for intruding my 
>lowly opinion upon your busy ears, for we all 
>know that you have everything figured out, Your 
>All-Knowingness."  I know what I sound like, and 
>I'm certainly ripe for such picking.  But what I 
>balk at is the notion that there is a "right 
>way" to, in your words, "discover it 
>firsthand."  This is part and parcel with the 
>"huge hole in your life" rhetoric that I've 
>never been partial to, but this one strays 
>beyond a formulation of a suggestion to an 
>actual philosophical position, one that I find 
>at the bottom of both Pirsig's distinction 
>between philosophy and philosophology (which has 
>been the focus of most of my criticisms) and at 
>the bottom of Platonism (which I think is 
>fundamentally antithetical to Pirsig).
>
>At the root of my distaste is this: what is 
>secondhand about my experience of life if I 
>never meditate?  Are not all experiences 
>direct?  My experience of a book, for 
>instance?  Sure, I'm not experiencing a 
>motorcycle journey by reading ZMM.  But the 
>deployment of the distinction between direct and 
>indirect seems to grabbing at much more than the 
>simple, easily understood distinction between 
>watching Rattle and Hum and seeing a U2 concert 
>firsthand.  What if a person honestly and 
>sincerely doesn't enjoy live concerts because 
>they are a little claustrophobic, sensitive to 
>loud sound, and not that in to handing over $200 
>to see Bono's fat head on a Jumbotron?  Are we 
>really going to press the general claim that 
>typically is pressed on others here, that, in 
>this case, Rattle and Hum is a second-rate 
>experience compared to a live show?  What if 
>this person disagrees?  What then?  Have they misunderstood reality?
>
>This last rhetorical question seems to follow 
>from the direct/indirect deployment--but then it 
>runs afoul of Pirsig's Phaedrusian injuction: 
>every person has a keen enough grasp of reality themselves.
>
>I like suggestions, though I have to confess 
>I've never felt the urge to meditate.  And I 
>agree, seeing one's own nature is valuable.  But 
>your suggestion wasn't the easy platitude, it 
>was that I may have a very mistaken notion 
>indeed, but I doubt one can ever have _radical_ 
>doubts about their own self-image unless they 
>are already in the throes of a radical 
>make-over.  And those are randomly produced--DQ 
>can appear anywhere, when we least expect it.
>
>But to confront you one last time with Pirsig: 
>you said, "To watch your thoughts without 
>judgement, to see your (human) nature is valuable."
>
>Wasn't the idea behind Pirsig's Quality that it 
>is value, i.e. judgments, all the way down to the very core of reality?
>
>Matt
>
>
>
>
> >>See, that's what I never understood: if I
> >>meditated, then I _would_ miss the good
> >>stuff--I'd be meditating, and not out and about
> >>doing what I do when I'm not reading and writing.
> >>
> >>Besides, I'm a big believer in Pirsig's epigram from Plato's Phaedrus:
> >>
> >>And what is good, Phædrus,
> >>And what is not good...
> >>Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
> >
> > Greetings Matt,
> >
> > Of course, and I'm nobody special to be giving
> > good advice. Yet I still want to say
> > something. It's one thing to have philosophers,
> > scientists, psychologists, holymen, and even
> > great authors explain to you about self and
> > reality, and it's quite another to discover it
> > firsthand. To watch your thoughts without
> > judgement, to see your (human) nature is valuable.
> >
> > I apologize for the advice.
> >
> > Marsha
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