[MD] Taking words Seriously

[david buchanan]

Matt said to dmb:

An extrapoloation of the train analogy of ZMM might help to make plausible my contention that one cannot go around one's SQ glasses.  
This, then, dovetails with the train analogy: taking off the glasses would blind your eyes (bad death/chaos), just as leaping from the train would kill you.


I reject the premise that I've suggested that "we have limited access to DQ." 



dmb says:
All three lines come from one post. Apparently you reject the premise because you don't see how your contention suggests limited access to DQ. But what else could it mean? If one cannot go around one's SQ glasses, if taking them off means blindness and bad death, then your contention goes way beyond the suggestion.

As you are painting the picture, anything that's not static is portrayed as fiercely negative. Blindness and death and chaos don't appear in either analogy, as Pirsig originally presents them. It seems to me that you're not exploring the meaning of the analogy so much as strangely appropriating the imagery to make some other point. Frankly, additions like "jumping from the train" don't really make any sense. I mean, the train is an analogy of experience. What could it mean to jump off of experience? How would that be possible; what actual situation would that analogy refer to? Seems like made-up, convoluted nonsense to me.