[MD] Insanity

[Carl Thames]

Mark:
> I found that a while back as well, and based a number of my posts on that 
> collection.  I would be interested to get your take on the relationship 
> between the insanity of Phaedrus and that of Lila.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sent laboriously from an iPhone,
> Mark
>
> On Mar 27, 2012, at 7:50 PM, "Carl Thames" <cthames at centurytel.net> wrote:
>
>> It's been a while since I read Lila, so I didn't grasp the term 
>> "Cleveland Harbor Effect" when you used it.  I did a search on it, and 
>> came up with:
>>
>> http://www.quantonics.com/Pirsigs_Lila_Quotes_on_Insanity.html
>>
>> This essay addresses many parts of this message.  I'm going to have to 
>> read it a couple of times to come to some kind of understanding about it, 
>> but I think it's well worth the effort.
>>
>> Carl

In both cases, in this exerpt, both Phaedrus and Lila were caught up in a 
delusion.  The main difference was that Phaedrus had worked through his, 
whereas Lila was in the middle of her experience.  He did comment that it 
was a toss-up whether or not she would come through it, and from what I 
remember of the book, he didn't know what happened.  Wasn't she removed from 
the boat by a friend of hers?

The significant part for me was the discussion of the insanity itself.  In 
both of their cases, they had left what we consider conscensual reality 
behind and confused the heck out of their friends and family.  The 
discussion calls into question the whole function of what we call society, 
IMHO.  We insist that everyone agree with our perspective, however static it 
may be, and if we stray from that, we're going to pay a price.  I had a 
friend who did a couple of involuntary committments, and he said basically 
the same thing Phaedrus says in this essay; you act as normal as possible, 
because that's the only way you're getting out of there.  The real problem 
he had was deciding what normal was.  Essentially, he agreed with what 
Phaedrus said; you accept the "normal" defined by the people in charge.

Phaedrus arrives at the point that he works through the static expectations 
AND his own desire for the reality he had arrived at by himself.  He stated 
that he had left ALL patterns behind, although that is suspect, otherwise he 
wouldn't have been able to function.  When I read that I thought about what 
you had said before, about not being on either side of the coin, but by 
being in the middle.  Clearly, if we try to live in a state of Dynamic 
Quality, we're going to get put somewhere we don't want to be.  IMHO, the 
world isn't set up for people who live in that state.  That's just my 
opinion, though. YMMV

Carl