[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[skutvik at online.no]

Mary, Andre, All.

27 May
 
Mary: (to Andre)
> I'm trying hard to understand your objection here, and I can't speak
> for Bodvar, only for myself.  For me, the catalyst for Pirsig was his
> recognition that the world is not fundamentally divided into subjects
> and objects but is Dynamic and Static Quality.  I wonder why that was
> such a great achievement?  Why was it so hard for him to see it?

Mary answers:
> Could it be because everyone else viewed the world in terms of
> subjects and objects ....

You are right. "Everyone else" was (still is) the whole Western Culture, 
I know this so well through my own struggle. The mind/matter chasm 
was given, Immanuel Kant was the last Western thinker who 
confronted it, but merely arrived at the conclusion that there was a 
world "in itself" devoid of qualities and a world "for us"where qualities 
reside and he was the last word - until Pirsig . After Kant all has been 
footnotes to him, we however see that even Kant was a footnote to 
Plato.   
 
Mary ctd.
....and considered anyone who didn't crazy?

Honestly, I do not know of anyone who "didn't", because SOM had to 
be "dicovered" first and THAT was the tough part, so I consider the 
discovery of SOM as the most difficult task of the MOQ. Of course 
there were persons having "gone nuts" due to too much "speculations" 
...etc. but even Nietzsche's insanity did not stem from NOTnot viewing 
the world through SOM's glasses, rather the opposite.   

Andre continues his private crusade thinking Mary unable to think for 
herself:  
 
> Are you saying this because you want to justify Bodvar's
> interpretation or because you yourself cannot think of your experience
> in other than S/O terms? These are two different issues. I think that
> not 'everyone' viewed the world in this way. ZMM is about some people
> who did not and also about some people (representing millions) whou
> could not put their finger on it e.g Sylvia and John. 

As said a million times, there is no lack of people feeling 
uncomfortable with the subject/object world, but what does that help if 
it is seen as GIVEN and that the trick is to forget it or reconcile oneself 
with it. There may have been thinkers who saw the snag - James, 
Dewey -  but without bringing it further it all ran out in the sand.

>This is the way
> I interpret Phaedrus' answer to DeWeese with the anecdote of the
> faulty light switch (in ZMM. Phaedrus always uses a reference to light
> in a special way (an 'aha' moment or denoting a 'mystic' or
> 'saint') How did Phaedrus know the problem was in the switch and not
> the wire? He answers that you have to have some 'familiarity'.(he
> realised his 'squareness' inside out).

All yelping about "quality" brings us nowhere, it is the MOQ with its 
DQ/SQ  that does the trick, as for me when I read ZAMM and 
understood that SOM was the static "intellectual" fall-out of DQ. It 
released me from SOM and the I won't have DMB and you making the 
MOQ a SOM subsidiary.    

> And yes, many people who saw things differently were indeed locked up,
> burnt at the stake, or 'avoided or, at least 'labelled'.

Well SOM or intellect has surely "locked up" and/or "labelled" people 
who lost the objective view of reality, but "burned at the stake" was not 
SOM's method but the Church's for heresy. And apropos "having lost 
the objective perspective", as you know psychiatry is Pirsig's 
"intellectual immune apparatus" so this is another of the countless 
indications of he really seeing Intellect as = SOM. Your resistance now 
is more of a childish tantrum.

Bodvar