[MD] Spinning our Wheels, metaphorically speaking

[John Carl]

So the motorcycle needing a tune is the motorcycle known as yourself.

And the road under your wheels?  Why that's experience  my friend.

But where are you headed?  What's your destination?  In what direction are
you tending?

That's the question of Quality.

And if you get there, then you've lost your way.

The only way to get there is to keep moving.

Not that static rest stops are not nice.  They are nice.  Just as long as
they aren't taken as the destination.  Just as long as they aren't codified
as THE point.  I mean, some people might be past there and thus your
destination is another's backtrack. So use 'em.  And lose 'em.

But here's what I notice on this list:  A lot of wheel spinning as people
take points along the journey described the the author,  and try to make
THEIR points by pointing out the congruence with where they're heading.

Bob went there, therefore my way is through that point also.  I want to get
to Quality too!

But the journey wasn't about the points.  The journey was about what the
points were pointing to.

A more concrete example I find all the time is abstracted from a little
piece of literature known as "The Copleston Annotations".  The whole work is
a matter of a whole, and not particular points along that intellectual
journey.  The famous phrase, "the MoQ is antitheistic" comes from this work
but if you don't read to the end, you don't get the point of what a dynamic
and open thinker Pirsig is.  And you take a big rest stop as a destination.

And beat people over the head with it, in a way that's unhelpful.

Here's why.  For very, very many people, the whole GOD thing is a huge
billboard pointing them in a Quality direction.  These people are your most
primitive types, admittedly.  M. Scott Peck illustrates them as the
criminals and police.  The drunkard and reformer.  Often, from a life of
pure hedonistic selfishness, the only way to climb out of the chaotic
patterns is to seek the structures of religion or society.   And he also
points out that all children go through this phase of selfishness.  Which is
one important reason to question the project of removing the GOD billboard.
These people are lost!  That's an immoral act.

On the other hand, there are those who get to the point where they're
restless at this rest stop.  The rituals become hollow and meaningless, the
priesthood venal and corrupt, the ideas stale and outworn.  For them, the
rest stop with the big GOD billboard above it becomes a trap, a trap they
need to flee.  But where?  How?

Going back to hedonistic selfishness is a regression.  They need a
meaningful direction to head in when fleeing the GOD rest stop.  And that's
where I think the MoQ is most helpful.  In pointing out that the same
direction toward betterness that leads from chaotic childishness and
criminal behavior to structured social existence, also leads onward beyond
absolutized conceptual traps of intellectual definition.

The only question remaining, the kid from the back seat whines.

dad are we there yet?