[MD] Why are things called patterns?

Fri Mar 23 08:12:32 PDT 2012

Marsha said to David H:
...I've always thought she [Lila] is saying something important about the conventional (static) reality-trap that it is so easy to fall into even with one's philosophical/intellectual sophistication.  I don't really see it as a gender issue, but I love that it is Lila's speech.  -  So often I'm accused of being static, or lacking a sense of humor, so I love an opportunity to re-present Lila's words.  Aren't we all too often convinced that the thought in our minds represent what is "really" the case.

dmb says:
This is another major piece of the MOQ that Marsha gets totally wrong. Lila's inability to perceive social and intellectual results in a paranoid refusal to answer the Captain's questions. Her wildly inappropriate accusations (about how he wants to destroy her, like all men) only serve as Lila's personal confession (trading sex for nice clothes and such) as to her own lack of values and morals.
Textual evidence of this was posted just the other day. Here it is again:

"He wondered what it was about himself that she couldn't see when he was getting angry. Just now at the cafe she'd gone on for fifteen minutes about what great people they were and she never saw what was coming. She missed the whole point of everything. She's after Quality, like everybody else, but she defines it entirely in biological terms. She doesn't see intellectual quality at all. It's outside her range. She doesn't even see social quality." (Lila 214)
"Lila's problem wasn't that she was suffering from a lack of Dynamic freedom. It's hard to see how she could possibly have any more freedom. What she needed now were stable patterns to ENCASE that freedom. She needed some way of being re-integrated into the rituals of everyday living. ..These defensive pattens were not only as bad as the patterns she was running from, they were worse!  ..RTA. That's what was missing from her life. Ritual." (Lila 386 - emphasis is Pirsig's in the original)

If we consider the fact that she defines Quality "entirely in biological terms", her hostile reaction to the Captain's questions make a lot of sense. She wrongly assumes that the Captain is going to use her for sex and then hate her for it, like so many other men in her past. She is so lacking in self-awareness that she doesn't see her own defensive anger as a rather transparent confession, but that's exactly what it is. She is telling us about her own past, how it is she came to be destroyed. Her angry refusal and her insistence that he can't know her because she's not anything is ironically set against her paranoid confession. 

The Captain says he's only asking questions, but Lila sure doesn't take it that way. Listen to what she's confessing about herself. In the passage Marsha reads so badly, Lila says...

'You're trying to . . . you're trying to destroy me.' .... 'All men do that. You're no big exception. Jerry did it. Every man does it. But you know something? It won't work.'  ...'You're not a woman. You don't know. When men make love they're really trying to destroy you. A woman's got to be real quiet inside because if she shows a man anything they'll try to kill it.  '...But they all get fooled because there's nothing to destroy but what's in their own mind. And so they destroy that and then they hate what's left and they call what's left, "Lila," and they hate Lila. But Lila isn't anybody.  ...'Women are very deep,' Lila said. ... That's why they always have to try to destroy them.'  ...'Fuck your questions! I'm whatever your questions turn me into. ... If you think I'm a whore then that's what I am. ... So whatever Richard tells you, it's true. There's no way he can lie about me.' ...'Everybody wants to turn Lila into somebody else. And most women put up with that, because they want the kids and the money and the good-looking clothes. But it won't work with me. I'm just Lila and I always will be. And if men don't like me the way I am, then men can just get out. I don't need them. I don't need anyone. I'll die first. That's just the way I am.'

Marsha read this and finds great wisdom in Lila's words, as if her denial of self were an indication of enlightenment. It's not. What we see here is a woman on the verge of a psychotic breakdown and her denial of self is only an indication of her increasing loneliness and isolation from society. What's destroying her is the look of disapproval on every face she sees. Her reputation is ruined among people like Jerry and Richard Rigel and even her former pimp totally disrespects her. Every face is a mirror set up by the giant and that's what's destroying her. She is intellectual nowhere, Pirsig tells us, and she's pretty darn low on the social scale too. She can only understand Quality in biological terms and now that her child is dead, her sexuality fading, and she's basically homeless, she is losing that battle too. She's in a vey dynamic state but not because she's a mystic or a Saint. She's falling apart and desperately needs some static order. If she remains isolated ("I don't need them. I don't need anyone.") she really will die. 

"These defensive pattens were not only as bad as the patterns she was running from, they were worse!  ..RTA. That's what was missing from her life. Ritual."

If we follow Marsha and take Lila as a hero to be emulated, then we would have a philosophical discussion group in which the asking and answering questions would be considered a hostile, wrong-headed and destructive practice. It's hard to imagine a more intellectually paralyzing position and I suppose it explains how Marsha can rationalize her own uncooperative behavior as somehow heroic. Fortunately, Marsha's reading is explicitly contradicted by Pirsig's text and nowhere near plausible. 

"These defensive pattens were not only as bad as the patterns she was running from, they were worse!  ..RTA. That's what was missing from her life. Ritual."

I think Marsha has some pretty strong defensive patterns going too and she vaguely imitates Lila in constantly refusing to answer questions on the premise that they constitute some kind of assault or persecution. In a discussion group, obviously, that kind of behavior is not acceptable. If you're fundamentally opposed to getting wet, then you don't join the swim team. Answering objections and laying out arguments is the nature of the game. Anyone who can't accept this basic premise really needs to get a different hobby. 