[MD] Overcoming the System

[Ian Glendinning]

Actually Matt, I don't think it does make sense to me yet ...

Obviously I can accept that "in principle" getting too attached to -
taking too seriously - any one system view of the world, could lead to
being un-necessarily boxed in, even if just through complacent
"haughty" pride. But I'm being quite pragmatic here ...

In practice what is there (anything specific you can identify) that is
beyond the MoQ ?

Where are the blinkers, the broken lenses the lack of rhetoric ? Where
does this particular "system view" actually exhibit constraints ?

I mean, I'm not suggesting MoQ full stop, that's it, job, done -
philosophers can all shuffle off and retire. There are plenty of
problems to solve, questions to answer. Plenty of
bio-socio-intellectual patterns to work and re-work for the good of
humanity - that's what the MoQ is about. But this all seems to be
"within" the bounds of the MoQ - the MoQ description of the world - to
me ?

Regards
Ian

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 10:10 PM, Matt
Kundert<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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