[MD] What is Zen?

[david buchanan]

Mary said to DMB:

If you would place the MoQ no higher than the Intellectual Level, and in fact, place it squarely within it, then you will need to explain exactly what the Intellectual Level values which sets it apart "off on purposes of its own" that differ in Value from the Social.



John replied:

Simply put: Intellectual patterns value truth, social patterns value  celebrity.



dmb says:


That's not a bad way to think about the difference. The Giant rewards his servants with fame and fortune but the truth might very well be at odds with the Giant's wishes. Not that the metaphors actually has wishes, but it does make sense to imagine the society as a whole as if it were a single being with an immune system, defense mechanisms and the like. Scientists and philosophers sometimes get rich and famous too, but that's relatively rare and it certainly isn't the point or purpose of intellectual work. But there is something confused about Mary's question, I think.

Think of it this way. ZAMM is largely about the expansion of rationality. This doesn't begin with some abstract philosophical question but rather with the current cultural situation. Why does his buddy John Sutherland feel so put off by technology? It seems that the hack mechanics over at the repair shop really don't give a shit about what they're doing? Why is the morning commute to work so much like a funeral procession? Why does life seem so absurdly meaningless and why is our built world so damn ugly? These are the manifestations of our current modes of rationality and that's why he wants to thrash those ghosts. As we all know, he traces the genealogy of rationality all the way back to pre-Socratic philosophers to find to roots of our current modes of thinking, which brings us to the problem of subject-object metaphysics. He's trying to solve this problem of meaninglessness, alienation and just plain ugliness of OUR present situation by getting down to the most basic assumptions behind these problems. The problem of SOM is related to Plato and Aristotle and all the other ghosts but what it really refers to is OUR worldview, the perspective held by educated common sense in OUR world. So we are talking about scientific materialism, physicalism, the metaphysics of substance. It is the common sense view that there is one objective reality, the physical universe. And in this common sense view, quality isn't quite real. It has no substance and can't be detected with scientific instruments. It's really "just whatever you like". It's just in your mind, which is really just brains working, so it's meaningless. All we can do is try to keep those genes viable in this dead, meaningless, indifferent universe. As for finding truth and beauty and love and purpose in your life, ha ha, ha ha, ha ha,.. The Easter bunny is on his way, you delusional child. See, this is the problem. This is the kind of world you get when our modes of rationality are used to construct our world and our worldview. You can see it from a plane, you know? We've built a world that's full of straight lines and regular shapes. It's homogenized, bleached, steam pressed, disneyfied, deep fried and sealed in a plastic bag that you can't get into without sharp tools. It's got no soul. It's conspicuously artless and un-groovy. And so the basic idea is to solve the problem of how it came to be that we can do what's "reasonable" even though it isn't any good? How did reason get separated from what's good? 


In Lila, since the case for why we need an expansion of rationality has already been made, the levels and the moral codes constitute Pirsig's expanded rationality. This is the nuts and bolts of his answer to the problem of how we came to have a form of "reason" that's detached from the good. The MOQ's expanded form of empiricism (radical empiricism) and the pragmatic theory of truth fit quite neatly with the levels and codes and are part of the overall expansion of rationality too. Truth is re-conceived as a particular kind of good, as a species of the good, and there is room for many truths. The primary empirical reality is DQ, not the physical universe. Instead of a metaphysics of substance, the MOQ says the primary empirical reality is not a thing at all. It is an event, the ongoing flux of life, the cutting edge of experience itself. SOM says reality is a thing. The MOQ says reality is a process and that quality or value is at the center of that process. He then goes on to explain how there are different kinds of static patterns of value. That's where the levels come in. 


The conflict between social and intellectual values shows us the problem of SOM from a less personal perspective. In Lila, he adds history and politics to the explanation. See, one hundred years ago the social level was still in charge of society, still dominated the culture. In terms of historical time and cultural evolution, that's just yesterday, and in fact we presently live in a reactionary, neo-Victorian age. The BP oil spill shows that we're still doing what's reasonable even though we know it isn't any good. We know we've built an ugly, poisonous world but we fill up our tanks and sadly drive to our cubicles anyway. And the Giant makes sure the defenders of this system are handsomely rewarded with lots of bling. The levels and codes are supposed to show us that it's not economics that we should worry about but rather morality. Why is the immorality of this situation NOT front and center? How is it NOT a moral issue? This is the problem with SOM. It asserts efficiency and productivity where we should be more concerned with excellence and creativity. See, our rationality isn't rational enough. It leave things out even though we know damn well they are the best parts and should be the very last things to leave out. If the Egyptians thought like we do, the great pyramids of Giza would be a giant stack of canned spam. Today the great Sphinx of Egypt stares majestically... at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Damn, no wonder they hate us. That's just wrong, you know? 


Capitalism and technology are supposed to improve life, supposed to liberate us from drudgery and oppression. And it did, it has but they're not doing the job because there is a flaw in our modes of thinking, in the scientific worldview, which has no provision for morals. That's where we get amoral science, predatory capitalism, the reactionary right, the religious right and all the forms of modern alienation. The purpose of intellect in general is to improve life, to serve the ongoing process of evolution and growth and development. We can't say where that's all headed but we can pick our fight and try to make it better, whatever "it" is. In the case of the MOQ, the idea is that life would be better if our modes of rationality weren't so narrow. The truth has to be true but it's just no good if it isn't also beautiful and morally right. There are forms of beauty and rightness at the intellectual level that matter just as much as being functionally or instrumentally correct, the way a motorcycle sounds right and feels right when it's running properly. 


Mary continued:

You will also have to explain how the MoQ, which disparages SOM and finds it anathema, is supposed to fit within the same set of patterns of value.





dmb says:


That question tells me that we have very different ideas about the meaning of the central terms; SOM, the MOQ and the intellectual level. As I understand them your question makes no sense. SOM and the MOQ are both intellectual descriptions. Period. They paint different pictures of experience, of reality. As Pirsig says, they are like two different kinds of maps and the purpose is not to trash SOM entirely. If SOM didn't work, it wouldn't have been around so long. Scientific objectivity definitely has its up side. Hospitals and iPods spring to mind. But we have more than enough twinkies and reality shows. There is an island of plastic garbage the size of Texas in the middle of each of our oceans and millions of anti-depressants are taken every day. It's time to rethink some things, you know? 

The MOQ says rational thought would be wiser and smarter if it had a heart. It's about adding some aesthetic sensibility and moral sensitivity to our ways of thinking. It's about reclaiming the passions, which were imagined as the wild horses of the soul in Plato's picture. We're supposed to tame and constrain them so the rational mind could be in charge, a claim which the Chairman defended so adamantly in that Chicago classroom as "THE truth". By contrast, Pirsig and James are expanding on David Hume's assertion. That great empiricist said that reason was a slave to the passions, not the other way around. And we see this in Pirsig's codes, where "Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress DQ as it is for church authorities to suppress the scientific method. Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself." (Lila, p. 366) 


Anyway, I think that SOM and the MOQ are both intellectual descriptions in the same way that English and Chinese are both languages or the way Hinduism and Christianity are both religions. Or maybe the most apt analogy would be the dirty old sock. When it's turned inside out, you're still walking around on the same territory but somehow things are fresher and brighter and a lot less stinky. This is also very well described in terms of a copernican revolution, where the sun and the earth remained but they're relationship was rather drastically reconceived. In the same way, when we move from SOM to the MOQ, subjects and objects are no longer the essential ingredients, no longer the pre-existing structure of reality that makes experience possible. Instead, subjects and objects are secondary concepts. They are just abstractions derived from experience, conceptual tools that operate in experience. 


John Dewey, as it so happens, also referred to this rejection of SOM as a "Copernican revolution". He was a radical empiricist too and he also insisted that the primary empirical reality was fundamentally qualitative. 


"It is quite tempting to assume that Pirsig and Dewey must have something very different in mind to begin their philosophizing with Quality and experience, respectively. A closer look, however, show this not to be the case. Dewey's conception of experience is directly contingent upon the idea of quality. In EXPERIENCE AND NATURE, he tells us that 'quality' constitutes the 'brute and unconditioned 'isness' of empirical events. As Pirsig likewise suggests, qualities are much more than mere states of consciousness. Rather, they establish the primary field and horizons of everyday experience, the immediate, concrete conditions of human life and activity. Immediate sense qualities are what we live in and for. "The world in which we immediately live, that in which we strive, succeed, and are defeated,' Dewey argues, "is preeminently a qualitative world.' This means that 'all direct experience is qualitative, and qualities are what make life-experience itself directly precious.'" (David Granger in "John Dewey, Robert Pirsig, and the Art of Living", page 27)















 		 	   		  
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