[MD] The strong interpretation of stop signs.

[MarshaV]

On Jul 24, 2010, at 1:54 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> Arlo said:
> It just struck me as coming close to the height of absurdity to declare that the man who's ideas we are here (ostensibly) to discuss is the "least" authority on what those ideas are. It would be like me saying, "Let's talk about what John's ideas are, but the person who we can ignore the most in that discussion is John".
> 
> 
> Mary replied:
> You see, the person with the original inspiration no longer exists.  Robert Pirsig the author is not the person who experienced the original insight. He has no direct memory of it.  No 'arloian' absurdity exists, and if there is any 'bullshit', it is in the 'DuMB' complaints.
> 
> 
> dmb brushes an old post:
> 
> I guess that sort of interpretation is forgivable because people do tend to see what they want to see. In a recent study, conservatives saw Steven Colbert as a conservative. That's hilariously wrong. Anyway, on top of that natural tendency, the narrator in Zen and the Art sees things differently. He and Phaedrus often disagree with each other. It's probably important to realize that Pirsig describes him as an UNRELIABLE narrator. The story is told from his perspective, mostly, but he's the character who said whatever it took to get out of the hospital. He's the bullshitter, the charmer, the people-pleaser. And it's his words and ideas that the conservatives will find most appealing and he or she will take that for the substance of the MOQ. In some cases this means ignoring what Phaedrus says. Pirsig says he got the idea of an unreliable narrator from Henry James' novel, "The Turn of the Screw". That story is told from the narrator's point of view. She is psychotic and paranoid but the reader doesn't necessarily see that fact. It's a neat trick, especially since Phaedrus is supposedly the one who went insane. Anyway, it's easy to notice the shift in perspective in the following passage, although there are many other examples as well...
> "We've had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it's just about depleted. Everyone's just about out of gumption. And I think it's about time to return to the rebuilding of this American resource...individual worth. There are political reactionaries who've been saying something close to this for years. I'm not one of them, but to the extent they're talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they're right. We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really do. I hope that in this Chautauqua some directions have been pointed to.Phædrus went a different path from the idea of individual, personal Quality decisions. I think it was a wrong one, but perhaps if I were in his circumstances I would go his way too. He felt that the solution started with a new philosophy, or he saw it as even broader than that...a new spiritual rationality...in which the ugliness and the loneliness and the spiritual blankness of dualistic technological reason would become illogical. Reason was no longer to be "value free." Reason was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality, and he was sure he would find the cause of its not being so back among the ancient Greeks, whose mythos had endowed our culture with the tendency underlying all the evil of our technology, the tendency to do what is "reasonable" even when it isn't any good. That was the root of the whole thing. Right there. I said a long time ago that he was in pursuit of the ghost of reason. This is what I meant. Reason and Quality had become separated and in conflict with each other and Quality had been forced under and reason made supreme somewhere back then".
> 
> dmb continues:Notice how the narrator's speech is full of cliches and platitudes while Phaedrus is philosophical and far more interesting? It's hard to miss, unless one wants to miss it that is. I mean, quoting the narrator is risky business at best. He's the kinda the villain of the story, you know? Chris knows he's a phony and a pale shadow of his former self and that's what's killing him. The narrator is whoever you want him to be. He's spineless and everything he says is calculated to please. Unlike Phaedrus, he's dominated by social level values. Check out Pirsig's introduction to 25th anniversary edition (1999). That's how Pirsig characterizes him there and he does so in order to prevent misinterpretations of the book. 



Marsha:
If you watch again the latest dvd, RMP states clearly he doesn't really remember much before his hospitalization.   Wouldn't those years before the hospitalization be the Phaedrus years?  
 
 
 

 
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