[MD] Bo's right! For all the wrong reasons? (Part2)

Wed Aug 4 02:42:17 PDT 2010

Mary,  

I'm sorry Mary to disagree with you.  I so admire your writing style and that 
you so often and so elegantly state my own  point-of-view, but...   

Mr. Pirsig, like the rest of us, is an ever-changing flow of inorganic, biological,
social and intellectual static patterns of value interacting within a field of Dynamic 
Quality.  If one makes a judgement about him from the position of the small self, 
it will be nothing but the reflection of the small self's limited perspective.  He, you 
and all of us are wonderful.   

Marsha 

On Aug 3, 2010, at 9:15 PM, Mary wrote:

> I've been uneasy for many years with "Lila" the book.  If you check back in
> the archives you will find where I objected to the sexism in it many years
> ago without even being aware of the truth of it.  It wasn't until recently I
> learned that Pirsig was so completely dishonest about it.  What an ugly
> secret!  Had I known he was a married man having an affair with Lila on his
> journey down the Hudson, that would have put the whole thing in an entirely
> different light for me right from the start.  Now I'm not such a prude that
> I can't get past that to see the value in his writings, but when I did learn
> this I must say I was disappointed to see it in a man self-proclaimed to be
> in search of beauty, truth, and Quality.  I am a grown up woman and
> understand entirely the weakness of men (having observed this at first hand
> numerous times - they are but children in the grips of testosterone after
> all, and cannot really help it, but wouldn't it have been much more
> revelatory for him to be honest about what he was doing?  I mean, if you are
> writing a book fraught with psychology and heavy with metaphysical meaning,
> wouldn't you think honesty would be a prime directive?  When I first learned
> about his philandering, I was so disappointed I almost chucked the whole
> thing.  Then I realized that he already had chucked the whole thing in Lila
> on his own.  By this I mean where he disavows his original insights into the
> intellect of Man and in Lila waters the whole thing down to a thesis
> proposition worthy of a Masters degree.  But the original ideas in ZMM were
> worthy.  The Intellectual Level as SOM makes perfect sense for me and makes
> even the most egregious BS in Lila palatable - especially now that I
> understand he was merely justifying his own lack of integrity with that
> book.  What a shame really.
> 
> Mary
> 
> - The most important thing you will ever make is a realization.
> 
>> bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of David Thomas
>> Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 5:33 PM
>> Hi Krimel,
>>> 
>>> [Krimel]
>>> Excellent set of posts here, Dave. I have been beating away at most
>> of this
>>> for a long time but you have summarized it all very nicely.
>> Thank you.
>>> I also agree strongly with what you said about the relationship of
>> ZMM to
>>> Lila. ZMM is almost universally regarded as the better book.
>> After nearly 15 years and countless hours of head banging I finally
>> came to
>> the conclusion that the MoQ just has too many problems. Since I just
>> recently came to this conclusion, from a philosophical point of view
>> I'm not
>> sure how much is salvageable from either book.
>>> I see it in almost every
>>> bookstore I wander into and while Lila is there sometimes it is
>> nowhere near
>>> as ubiquitous.
>> I always make it a point to check out where they are shelved in my
>> local
>> Barnes and Noble. They're always restocking and moving things a little
>> based
>> on shelf space. Both are always in or around "Oriental Religion" but
>> you
>> will sometimes find them the next shelf over in "New Age-Occult." Last
>> time
>> it was four copies of ZaMM in "Oriental Religion" and one forlorn copy
>> of
>> Lila at the bottom of the "Christianity" section. What a hoot!
>>> I would almost recommend the opposite of what Paul Turner
>>> suggested. He claimed that since Lila was later than ZMM, whenever
>> there was
>>> a conflict Lila should be regarded as taking precedence. I think Lila
>> is
>>> full of errors from the making of up of James quotes but the failure
>> to
>>> understand the basics of evolution.
>>> 
>>> Here is an example of that which I haven't heard mentioned before.
>> Take
>>> Pirsig the social critic. He spends a lot of Lila talking about
>> Victorians
>>> and hippie and the radical social transformations of the '60s with
>> very
>>> little mention of civil rights and feminism. These were far more
>> profound
>>> and radical changes in the American way of doing things than the
>> peace and
>>> love anti-war movement of the hippies. It is hard to take serious any
>>> analysis of trends in American culture of the 1960's that ignores
>> civil
>>> rights and feminism especially in a treatise on morality.
>> Right. What about the Weatherman,SDS etc ? I recently heard somewhere
>> that
>> there were more acts of terroristic bombing and arson during that
>> period
>> than any other in American history. Pirsig, no comment.
>>> I particularly agree that to the extent that Pirsig is trying to lay
>> an
>>> intellectual foundation for morality, he fails utterly. He doesn't
>> even
>>> address Mill and doesn't talk at all about Kant's ideas about
>> morality other
>>> than to call them ugly. He doesn't mention at all any contemporary
>> thinkers
>>> in morality. How are we to take this seriously?
>> Right, just this morning before read your post I Googled "moral
>> metaphysics"
>> in addition to Kant and many, many others I found this:
>> http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/95_docs/cunningham.html
>> Any reference to Dewey's "Natural Metaphysics" or the whole class of
>> similar
>> work by others in Lila?
>> 
>> Or this which I recently caught in a reread of "The Matrix and
>> Philosophy"
>> 
>> "...dialectics is a theory of evolution or progress. It is based on
>> the...idea that the engine that drives motion and change...is the
>> struggle
>> of opposing forces. Someone who thinks dialectically thinks the of the
>> world
>> as a constantly evolving place, a place that life is never still.
>> Moreover,
>> a dialectician (which Pirsig forthrightly claims to be) thinks of the
>> world
>> as space in which oppositions between everything from individual
>> molecules
>> of matter to complex ideas are striving to reach new levels of
>> consciousness
>> and organization."
>> 
>> Cross out "consciousness" and is this not a pretty good synopsis of the
>> system MoQ proposes?  Now the other shoe. The lead in to this paragraph
>> before the first dots say:
>> 
>> "The theoretical foundations of Marx's thought are derived, in part,
>> from a
>> novel reading of German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel's "dialectical"
>> philosophies. In Marxist thought,..."
>> 
>> Why no reference to Marx, and only these two for Hegel, in Lila?
>> 
>>> A review of his book in the Harvard Educational Review had said that
>> his idea
>>> of truth was the same as James. The London Times said he was a
>> follower of
>>> Aristotle. Psychology Today said he was a follower of Hegel. If
>> everyone was
>>> right he had certainly achieved a remarkable synthesis. But the
>> comparison
>>> with James interested him most because it looked like there might be
>> something
>>> to it. (Lila 152)
>> 
>>> He didn't like Hegel or any of the German idealists who dominated
>> philosophy
>>> in his youth precisely because they were so general and sweeping in
>> their
>>> approach.(Lila 152)
>> 
>> The world wide consequence of Marxist definitively answers that
>> question.
>> 
>> The Matrix maybe an apt metaphor for Lila.
>> 
>> Dave
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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