[MD] The relativity of the MoQ

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Marsha]
But I would like to know what you think too. What is the message here?

[Arlo]
I would say the message is "you can't have one without the other". 
Pirsig has described his books as "the path to enlightenment" (ZMM) 
and "the path back" (LILA), and I think that any attempt to isolate 
or even dismiss one as being "unnecessary" or "unimportant" is very 
problematic. Trying to apply LILA without the understanding (or 
"enlightenment", as Pirsig calls it) of ZMM is like trying to heal a 
gunshot wound by covering it with a band-aid; it does not address the 
root problem.

Do I think that simply reading ZMM induces "enlightenment"? While I 
suppose it *can*, my guess is that its not so machinistically causal. 
In ZMM, he describes *his* path to enlightenment, and walking that 
path alongside him may certainly guide others to the same. But like 
Pirsig later describes about his peyote experience in LILA, one has 
to be *open* to enlightenment, if one merely walks along blinded by 
preconceived prejudices, expectations and whatnot, one will likely 
walk away feeling "enlightened" without really becoming so.

There is an evident historical danger to seeing the inscribed tablets 
of prophets, the words handed down to us by those who have achieved 
enlightenment, in the misunderstanding and reification of these 
"words" as containing the "meaning". On a much larger scale, it 
harkens towards the "spirituality/religion" split, one being the 
pursuit of enlightenment, the other being the reified words of others 
who have achieved enlightenment. When we let the latter forgo the 
former, we are in for a world of trouble, not only in having a 
"cult-like" deification of another's words, but (as I've suggested) 
in not understanding the meaning or importance of the words in front of us.

Or, if you don't "get" ZMM, you are going to understand LILA from a 
S/O perspective that renders the framework of LILA not only 
erroneous, but dangerous, because "applying the MOQ" from that 
vantage point is, as I suggested, applying a band-aid to a gunshot 
wound. You have to dig deep to find that bullet. Then extract it. 
Then, and only then, can you apply dressing to the wound.

That's my take, anyway.