[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[david buchanan]

Andre said:
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).

dmb says:
Right. I'd say phrases like "act of love" and "free love" and "love-making" are euphemistic expressions designed to make sex seem more sublime than it usually is. We do that all the time. We have all kinds of words that obscure the uglier aspects of eating, shitting, fucking and dying. You can read a classic love sonnet to your girlfriend and thereby romanticize and elevate mood but nookie is almost always the aim. Freud called it sublimation and, as he saw it through his Victorian eyes, civilization demands that we do this. The Victorians went too far with this pretense, but that's not a bad thing. It's just too much of a good thing. 

Not sure where, but I think there is a line in ZAMM wherein the narrator is enjoying a natural landscape and he poses a question, saying something like, "If all this is just an illusion, then why do I love it so much?" As I see it, loving the natural world is like loving your own mother. How can you not love it? 

But those are trivial points. I wanted to respond mostly to thank you for selecting and posting the Pirsig quotes. I've noticed that you're very good at finding the most relevant textual evidence. What could be more helpful than that? 


Andre quoted a letter from Pirsig (2002e) to McWatt on the topic of compassion:
(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)


dmb says:
On point one, it seems pretty clear to me that empathy would be among the "strong biological emotions" that serve to produce "social cohesion". Brain researchers think that empathy begins very early so that even babies can be made to laugh or cry simply by seeing a face that's laughing or crying. This kind of empathy can even be found among chimpanzees, which are our primate cousins. Also, I'm very pleases to discover that Pirsig thinks "compassion", when opposed to intellectual quality, can result in foolishness or even evil. That particular point supports a complaint I've made many times. Various posters have come through here, usually religious types, who insist that their philosophical positions shouldn't be judged on their intellectual merits, as if it's cruel to hold them to such standards, as if their position deserves respect simply because that position is held by a person and people deserve respect. This silly, self-centered attitude says, in effect, that being critical of another's position is more or less the same as being a dick. These are also the types of people that tend to brag about their magnificent humility. Yea, it's certainly foolish and sometimes it's downright evil. As I see it, if one is upset or offended by such criticism, it's time to get a new hobby because this place is going to be upsetting and offensive to them  all the time. I tend to see such attitudes as a lack of maturity.

On point two, it seems to me that genuine compassion is never, ever used to protect one's self from criticism. The person who uses compassion to deflect criticism or paint the critic as cruel is a manipulative bullshitter, an emotional blackmailer. That's evil. Such a person will see any and every criticism as a personal attack and so they are simply playing a different game, one that has nothing to do with philosophy or truth or any kind of proper intellectual conversation. Such a person is just too childish to play by the rules. If this were my forum, such persons would be banned precisely because they are not capable of playing adult games like philosophy. 

On point three, it seems to me that Pirsig is being a bit too modest. He's pointing out where compassion can be seen in the narratives of his books and that's true enough but it also seems obvious to me that his books are motivated by some rather epic compassion. There is a sense in which his aim is to heal a sick culture, to improve the course of Western civilization. I know that sounds uncomfortably grandiose but we are talking about a metaphysical system that is attempting to balance the shallow artlessness of our tacky, consumer culture. The dominant religion is, for the most part, stupid and childish and people think that freedom is about what you get at the mall. It's a nightmare, no?Anybody who tries to correct this state of affairs is a hero, I think. And that kind of corrective work shows a very large circle of compassion. It speaks to the whole civilization, if not the whole globe. 

Thanks again, Andre, and please keep 'em coming.