[MD] Overcoming the System

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Ian,

Ian said:
I took your "[Pirsig's MoQ] was created by a person 
responding to his own personal, unique problems" As the 
implied statement "... and therefore not necessarily / generally 
relevant to others ..."

Matt:
Oh, I see.  That's one of my main platforms, that it can be 
both personal and relevant.  The great geniuses turned their 
problems into the problems of humankind, if you will.  
_Realizing_, or reminding yourself, that Pirsig was responding 
to his own problems when he wrote his philosophy can be a 
useful antidote to the abstraction of philosophy, which 
can--as Pirsig said relatedly about essay writing--sound like 
God talking to Eternity.  It can remind you to self-investigate, 
find out whether the two of your problems are really as close 
as the Strong Writer before you seems to suggest (which was 
the wisdom Pirsig suggested from the philosophology section 
(the Socratic injunction: figure out what you believe)--it 
applies to Pirsig as much as anyone else).

Matt said:
"If you get hung up on system, you'll begin to think you live 
_inside_ the system, like a box ... I'm not in a box"

Ian said:
Me neither - Let me say again. The "universal framework" is 
no box. ...

... I see no boundaries to this "box". A "system" that quite 
explicitly has expanding boundaries. Why "overcome" the 
system, if it works fine, and encourages us to take it where 
it needs to go - what can there possibly be "outside" this 
system whose basis is .... possibility ?

Matt:
I think you're cutting me slightly (we're cutting each other...) 
at cross-purposes.

It's not that I think anybody is "in a box," in that pejorative 
sense that hippies get pissed at the Man for trying to put 
them in.  There's naturally the sense arising out of the 
Historicity Movement (which I just made up--the one 
extending from Hegel to the pragmatists that pays attention 
to our embeddedness) in which, to vary the metaphor, we 
cannot see but without glasses (which is why the tossing 
away the glasses line in Pirsig disturbs Steve and I).  There's 
also the sense in which, just saying we aren't in a box means 
nothing, because we aren't always the best judges of it.

That's not exactly what I'm talking about, though I'm resting 
on some of the pieces of that old box metaphor.  I want to 
focus on taking "system," as in a philosopical system which 
by that virtue attempts to explain and relate systematically 
the whole of reality and all of its parts, too seriously.  Taking 
the _metaphor_ too seriously, for instance, breeds box 
mentality--whose consequence sometimes are A) blinkered 
thinking and B) shattered lens syndrome (when your box 
breaks, you become lost in the world, and begin changing 
everything you believe radically--a 
perspectives-are-all-or-nothing perspective).

So, I don't want to say that anyone here is _in_ a box (no 
less by virtue of liking the MoQ), but warn people that taking 
system too seriously is what _leads_ to box mentality, which 
is pretty much the most hated enemy of everyone here.

The self-deception lies in thinking that because your 
system/box evolves, you've immunized yourself from box 
mentality, from blinkered thinking and shattered lens 
syndrome.  It, in fact, gives you a paradoxical 
no-boundary-box.  One might think that's pretty ingenious, 
but you're still thinking about boxes and systems, and that 
one can obscure and break just as much as any when 
paying attention to it too long.  My question is: why is 
_anyone_ still using the system metaphor if we are Pirsigian 
individualists?  Or maybe, why would we take it seriously, 
rather than use Steve's circumlocution?

For instance, Ian, you say my confusion might be my 
emphasis on "inside."  But look at what you wrote: "Why 
'overcome' the system, if it works fine, and encourages us 
to take
it where it needs to go - what can there possibly be 
'outside' this
system whose basis is .... possibility ?"  Do you 
see what I'm trying to point at?--why overcome the system, 
_if_ it works fine.  _If_ we take system too seriously, then 
_if_ it stops working fine, we might enter an angst crisis as 
our world falls apart.  

How can that possibly follow for Pirsig?  Look at your next 
sentence: "what can there possibly be 'outside' this system?"  
The MoQ has become the world (pretty much ala Bo).  What's 
outside of it?  There's always an outside, a margin, as Derrida 
liked to say.  And isn't that the oldest trick of 
Platonism--seeing everything at once, like Kant 
transcendentally circumscribing reality?   It's almost haughty 
in tone (I know you aren't Ian, I'm just trying to point to a 
thematic the metaphor breeds)--what could _possibly_ be 
outside my beautiful system?  Everyone knows that the 
arrogant get their comeuppance--that's the system breaking, 
on this analogy.

The deal is, if you're focused on the system (a _philosophy_), 
then you're ability to repair _the system_ becomes your ability 
to not fall into disarray in the world.  If you come across a 
problem that you can't for the life of you figure out how to fix 
(we can't be ingenious all the time)--isn't that _exactly_ what 
happened to Pirsig in ZMM...? 

But, if instead you are focused on life, then you're already 
well aware that there are tons of problems that you face, 
not all of them at once, some you defer, like that problem 
with your philosophy you just...can't...work...out--ah, screw it, 
I need to do the dishes right now, or feed myself, or put that 
cigarette out so it doesn't burn into my fingers.

That's what I'm trying to get at--rhetoric counts, and I 
don't think taking the system metaphor seriously is a good 
idea.  Which is why I called the self-transcending system a 
weird monster, and thought Steve had a pretty good idea about 
short-circuiting the thought process that might lead to 
accidentally taking it too seriously.  All the stuff about, "Hey, 
_I'm_ not in a box, huh, huh, huh," which sounded really haughty, 
was really trying to punch up the brute fact that _none_ of us 
_are_ in box, so why do we keep flirting with the idea of getting 
inside of one?  The box you get in is a fake confine, a fake jail as 
it were--like self-admitting yourself to a psych ward: you can 
leave at any time.  But by _treating_ it like a box/jail/system, 
you might accidentally forget you can leave at any time, that 
you are free to go whenever you want, that it is just a 
collection of tools and not the only pair of context lenses you 
have to clear your vision.

Does that make sense?

Matt

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