[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[Andre Broersen]

dmb says:

It's the only thing there's just too little of. "I'm lovin' it!" is one of the latest slogans for McDonalds. Given this cultural context and Pirsig's purposes in writing, do we really need to wonder why he would choose not to rest very much on that word? I don't think so. Given the context and his purposes, it would be very bad taste to use "love".

Andre:
Agree dmb (as usual). The only time when 'love' is discussed (as far as I can make out) is at the breakfast table with Rigel and Phaedrus and Bill after the night in the bar. The 'act of love' (biological quality) is muddled with who really did who in (LILA,p 78) and overlaid with social qualities such as honor and respect (which the 'act of love' supposedly destroyed).

And this is only the beginning when Phaedrus simply asked Rigel to become a bit more specific about the 'act of love' perpetrated by Lila with this bank employee.
It is a hot/cold potato and to suggest that the omission of the idea of love detracts from Pirsig's work because he does not use it as a central theme seems a bit misguided to me.

The word "love" as is the word "God" is too conventionally, statically embedded. ("_Forget_  God".Rigel says in half frustration because he knows that Phaedrus will explore the use and meaning of that one as well).(ibid, p80)

It seems perhaps more useful to suggest that Pirsig, in the MOQ, places the idea of love in a greater, more expanded context, namely the Buddhist term "compassion". Now Pirsig does not explicitly mention Buddhist compassion (karuna) in ZMM or LILA, as Anthony notes in his PhD (p163), but to not 'recognize it' between the lines is to miss the aim of the koan (or, in a different context, of poetry I suppose).

"Compassion is defined by Rahula (1959, p 46) as representing universal... 'love, charity, kindness, tolerance, and such noble qualities an the emotional side' qualified by the following advice:
If one develops only the emotional neglecting the intellectual, one may become a good-hearted fool; while to develop only the intellectual side neglecting the emotional may turn one into a hard-hearted intellect without feeling for others. Therefore, to be perfect one has to develop both equally. That is the aim of the Buddhist way of life: in it wisdom and compassion are inseparably linked together.

"In the context of compassion, Pirsig (2002e) states: 'No I have never thought about it until now' though he does make the following three points:

(1)The MOQ seems to classify compassion as a pattern of social cohesion driven by strong biological emotions. When these two are combined with intellectual patterns of quality the result is a strong force for the good, as in the abolition of slavery. When compassion opposes intellectual quality, however the result can be foolishness or even evil.

(2) Genuine compassion and talk about compassion often have different purposes. When compassion is talked up intellectually there sometimes emerges a certain aroma of unction and piousness that makes me suspicious. Some preachers use compassion the way Uriah Heep...uses humility, i.e. to advance themselves.

(3) The narrative of ZMM is dominated by the compassion of the narrator for his son even though he doesn't talk about it as such, and when Phaedrus says Lila has quality he is speaking compassionately and is held in contempt for this by Rigel... . Rigel is arguing that Phaedrus' compassion for Lila is damned foolishness. Phaedrus struggles in subsequent chapters to show that it is intellectually sound'. (ibid)

Pirsig argued that a metaphysics that does not make the world a better place to live in useless. The MOQ is designed to improve the world a little bit. Through the heart, head and hands.