[MD] Awareness and consciousness in the MOQ

[Andre]

dmb:

The anti-intellectualism in Pirsig has been wildly exaggerated.

Andre:
Very good observation dmb. This whole notion by some who see, in the process of (let me call it) the intellectual 'manifestation' of experience, nothing but conceptualizing, objectifying, dividing, etc. appear to miss Pirsig's point completely. Or, to put it in the context within which you seem to make this comment, they completely misunderstand Pirsig.

Let's be very clear. Reason/rationality is an evolutionary advance on what it's parents did. These parents were living in the mythological world informed by dogma, ritual and rule by the Gods/Goddesses.

Reason/rationality was a liberating force from this oppressive, suffocating way of experiencing the world. In other words it was an advance in consciousness. An advance from a consciousness dominated by gods (wherein the individual meant next to nothing) to one of rationality. Our current (average) consciousness IS rationality. One cannot deny, nor underestimate the huge liberating effects this has meant and the great freedoms that went along with it. These experiences would never have been released were it not for dissociating the various spheres of consciousness that were 'embedded' in what can be termed the pre-rational consciousness.  Think only of the liberating effects of the separation of the Church and Science. Think of the 'Enlightenment' period.

Pirsig has sketched a depressing and chilling account of the effects and implications of this in ZMM. The deadening effects of separating the Good, the True and the Arts (the Beautiful). These values were separated and stretched to such an extent that they became dissociated. A plethora of little specializations developed which, after a certain level of advance, failed to recognize each other, became strangers and sometimes even enemies. The result? The flatland of SOM.

Enter Pirsig who, by using his powers of reason, his powers of induction and deduction retrieved the oldest idea in the world and pleads for, what he in ZMM termed, a spiritual rationality.  By rearranging a few things (actually putting things back in the correct order) as outlined in LILA he created an expanded form of rationality more integrative and therefore more encompassing of experience as it is lived and can be lived.

In that sense the MOQ is highly intellectual and rational. Those that stress Pirsig's so called anti- intellectualism appear not to have understood ZMM nor LILA. Nor, may I add, the further implications of what this man has done for the GOOD.