[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Matt:
I really don't understand why you feel pressed or hounded. ... In fact, writing a monologue or essay, rather than having a dialogue, is one of your favorite sports. My last couple of posts have come to you in what I thought was your favorite shape.  ...they were aimed at you and your points on your topic in your style. ...

Matt replied:
Like I told you, it's your style that creates the appearance of pressure and hounding.  Your posts, particularly in the last year or so of your posting to the MD, are littered with these "see's," and I think this kind of use of them does create a rhetorical performance like the one I described, particularly when used on a peer.  (That, of course, assumes that one is communicating with someone one considers a peer: if it isn't, it creates a different rhetorical performance: condescension.)  Whether or not you intend that or not, I think we need to take responsibility for our rhetorical quirks.  And because I consider it a runaway quirk on your part, I have chosen not to feel hounded, so you've mis-read me on that score. 

dmb says:
You think my use of the word "see" is a condescending rhetorical performance? But "seeing" is just the way Pirsig happens to handle the topic of creative excellence in his rhetoric lessons. He also uses the path metaphor, but asking his students to write about thumbs and coins and upper left hand bricks were the heuristic devices he used to teach the secret of originality, which he describes as fresh seeing or seeing with your own eyes. Since my comments are an extension of the way Pirsig is handling the topic, your objection seems pretty silly. I've used the word "see" for as long as I can remember and, as far as I know, nobody ever took it as condescension. As I use it, "see" is just short for "see what I mean?" or "you know what I'm saying?" or "please notice this part because it's important" or "look at it this way".

Matt continued:
...I'm quite calmly asking for clarification on all of it, for it all remains obscure.  After all, in these last few posts you have just addressed "Matt" and nothing at all he's said specifically recently.  If he doesn't get it, is it all his fault?

dmb says:

Actually, I decided to go with the essay style - as opposed to engaging your specific comments in a dialogue - so that you wouldn't feel pressed or hounded, so that you could respond however you like. Naturally, I hoped you'd say something about the substance rather than the style but the aim was to give you some latitude, some room to maneuver.  


Matt said:
So: to think I still need lessons on a good view of amateur philosophy is to claim that you don't believe me when I say that we are on the same overall page when it comes to amateur philosophers.  Right?  I said, "I don't want to suggest that one should start with standards"; you say, "Oh, I thought you were saying that" (that was Sept. 19th); and then you give more lessons implying that I need the lesson that we don't need to start with standards.  If that is _not_ the lesson that was being offered, then, as I tried starting with instead of assuming you were saying that you didn't think I was sincere, what are you saying to me?



dmb says:
As I see it, your view is that one doesn't need to start with standards because one IS standards. That stance simply doesn't make any sense to me. When I expressed my inability to even see the relevance, you confessed that you couldn't say because you hadn't quite worked that out yet and then you said "thanks for the conversation". It seemed to me that you intended to bail out because you felt pressed to explain. So I wrote a very casual essay about the ideal reader, which was just based on things I've heard through my earbuds. Your response to that was something like, "oh, that old trope."  Then I wrote something a little more formal, an essay with quotes from ZAMM that I selected in order to expand the context a bit and otherwise show how that upper left had brick fits into Pirsig's overall theme. Your response to that is to file a complaint about use of the word "see" and all condescension that implies. That seems pretty dismissive and condescending toward me, so maybe we ought to just call it even on that score. 

Remember, you had said that the brick was static and I replied by saying that the lesson is not really about bricks, it's about seeing freshly? As is often the case, I'd said, our difference comes down to the DQ part of the equation. The essays were both supposed to present my claim without putting you on the spot or making you feel defensive. I thought, "I'll just make my points and Matt can respond to whatever part he wants without feeling pressured or cornered". Instead, apparently, these classroom scenes are just making you feel like I'm trying to school ya. But talking about this stuff in terms of lessons and in terms of seeing is just a matter of being consistent with the author's analogies, a matter of not mixing metaphors too much.

As I understand it, you're asking what it means, as a practical matter, to be a good amateur. I think that is exactly what Pirsig giving us in those classroom scenes and I think he's also saying that these lessons can be applied to anyone at any level, regardless of whether they are climbing a spiritual mountain, posting a blog essay or even doing stand-up comedy. That doesn't exactly strike me as a trivial matter. In fact, I think it's kind of awesome and it's very central to Pirsig's work. He is, after all, a modern day Sophist trying to resurrect those maligned ancient Sophists - against Plato's fixed and eternal Good. 

Quotes from ZAMM made up most of the last essay. I'll just repeat my comments about them. Maybe that'll help.


dmb said:
Imitation is a real evil but originality is risky business. Blazing your own trail up the mountain can get you killed and writing something original can earn you an F. .., this isn't just a lesson for creative writers. Pirsig's rhetoric lessons are analogous to the spiritual mountain-climbing lessons and both are really lessons in living. There are as many routes as there are climbers and the speed of each climber should be determined by the reality of his own nature, he says. .. These parallel lessons sort of come together to serve his overall theme, namely "Corruption and Decay in the Church of Reason". Pirsig makes a case that the purpose of "real education" is to produce free men, not mules or slaves. The cart of civilization or "the system" should be moving forward by efforts of knowledge-motivated people, as opposed to grade-motivated mules who are only led forward by the dangling of carrots. 
The dull student with thick-lensed glasses, he says, was strangely unaware that she could look at things with her own eyes. She didn't know that she could venture off the beaten path but forcing her to start with that upper left hand brick left her with no options. There were no paths by which she could approach that brick. There were no essays about that brick for her to imitate and that brick conformed to nobody's idea of a standard essay topic. What made it work was the way it precluded the possibility of taking a path already cut by somebody else. She had no choice but to find her own way, to speak with her own voice, to see with her own eyes. However you like to imagine it, fresh eyes or new roads, the idea is the same. Quality is the goal of every creative person but the route to that goal should be determined by your own nature, not imposed by external rules or standards. The latter can be helpful so long as you realize such rules are abstractions based on somebody else's journey and so some of them may not apply in your case. Imitating somebody else's success might very well be a betrayal of your own nature or otherwise work against you.