[MD] Sympathy for the Devil

[Ant McWatt]

Dan,

I wouldn't want to give you a headache but somehow you've misconstrued what I said!
 
Dan said Feb 4th 2013:

I would agree, Marsha. I nearly choked on my chips when I read
Anthony's reply. Aren't we here to talk about the MOQ? 

Ant comments: yes, we are indeed!


Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

We're all familiar with static perspectives of the everyday world, or so I assume. 

Ant comments: ideally, yes we are!


Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

This is the world of subjects observing objects that are apart
and quite independent of us. 

Ant comments: no!

The static perspective of the everyday world - as far as the MOQ is concerned - is with the world of Dynamic Quality and the 
four static value levels as laid out in LILA.  You sound like Mr Skutvik at that other place we don't like to mention!!!

I suppose you can equate subjects to the static intellectual and social levels of the MOQ and objects to the static inorganic and 
biological levels of the MOQ but (as we have seen here!), I think it can confuse people by doing so.  Pirsig always seemed to 
be in two minds about the matter but I'm his acolyte so I'm going to be "hardline" about the matter...  :-)


Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

Sure, our language is built around that foundation. 

Ant comments: is it? Sounds like a bit of a sweeping judgement to me. 

For a start, what's the documentary evidence that when people first began to talk that they had notions of subjects
and objects in their mind?  There's no recordings of this time and nothing written down. I think the latter ideas all came relatively 
much, much later; maybe with the Ancient Greeks.  


Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

And if we are all content to speak from that perspective,
then what are we doing here?
 
I've been butting my head against this keyboard in my efforts to
explain this to David Harding. I've offered quotes backing up my
assertions. And now Anthony is basically saying the same thing as
David! Oh my!

Ant comments:

My apologies here, Dan.  I haven't kept up with your recent conversations with David Harding so I can't make a judgement, whether or not, 
I agree with him about this subject or not.  I'm just giving you my reading of the MOQ as laid out in LILA.



Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

The MOQ can be applied to everyday life. 

Ant comments:

Bang on!  That is what I was trying to explain to Marsha.    



Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

I do it all the time. I use it in relationship building. I use it in my work. It enters my
writings. It has opened up whole new vistas that I had never before considered. 

Ant comments:

That's great to hear Dan.  That's what I try to do with the MOQ too.



Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

And believe me, I am no academic. 

Ant comments:

And, what's that got to do with anything?  I have never rode a motorcycle.  

Moreover, you know my first two degrees were concerned with Sociology and the (so-called) Fine Arts?

Such a background probably gave me the open mind to assess Pirsig's work without the biases that a undergraduate philosophy 
degree would have instilled in me.  If you read the beginning of the MOQ Textbook (the introduction of this is freely available 
at robertpirsig.org) it was the Fine Arts and sociology which were my starting point into Pirsig's work; not academic philosophy.  

Most conventional Western philosophy that you'll find in your average philosophology department has little to do with my 
philosophical interests.  For instance, I've never come across such a department in the UK that deals with Northrop and very 
few that deal with American pragmatists such as William James.  Most of the usual philosophers who are make an appearance in 
the average UK undergraduate philosophy course (i.e. Descartes to Kant to Dennett) absolutely leave me cold.  Especially those 
Anglo-American philososphers of the late 20th century.  To a man (and nearly all of them are men) they really needed a good dose
of LSD or something.  Maybe Keith Richards could take some of these characters out to a party? (My hipster prayer: "Dear Keef, please
take some of your roadies out in the Rolling Stones coach and kidnap Dennett, the Churchlands and the other SOM squares for a long 
party weekend so Western academic philosophy can be saved from itself...")  

Anyway, enough fantasising, if you assume, as Pirsig does, that the "starting point" of empirical reality is value, such philosophers and 
philosophologists have little relevance.  Their starting point is somewhere else and it's a "somewhere else" that I don't want to be or 
waste much time worrying about.  



Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

So to say the MOQ is just an academic exercise with no value in the real world seems, well,
dismissive at best.

Ant comments:

It certainly does, doesn't it?  I couldn't agree more.

 

Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

Anyway, I cannot say I agree with Marsha's definition of self as it
does seem a bit confusing and contradictory. 

Ant comments:

Marsha is perfectly correct in her definition of the self.  She is just taking a Dynamic "World of Buddhas" perspective.  However, this 
perspective is NOT mentioned in LILA but (as I said to Marsha yesterday and she knows too well) is given in Pirsig's later correspondence
 with me and (as far as I remember) to some extent in LILA's CHILD.

So, what I'm trying to do here (rather badly it seems) is to clarify these two perspectives.   From what I was reading in this thread - and 
elsewhere - David Buchanan takes the conventional static perspective of the MOQ (as laid out in LILA) while Marsha tends to take a Dynamic 
"World of Buddhas" perspective.  As I said above, by not qualifying the latter perspective, it confuses things and results in people 
talking over each other; sometimes even being a little rude and frustrated.  (And, we haven't even got back to the Tetralemma which 
provides yet another intellectual perspective...).



Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

But I cannot agree with Anthony in his summation either. Is this what you're teaching your
students? And if so, are you sure you're teaching Quality?

Ant comments: 

Well, let's hope so, Dan!  (In my presentation at MSU in December I took the issue of how the MOQ views celebrity).



Dan continued Feb 4th 2013:

Perhaps I have misread these words. Please correct any
misinterpretations I have made.

Ant comments:

No worries, Dan.  I hope I have clarified what I think even if it disagrees with your own reading of Pirsig's work.  
Now where did I leave my copy of "Let It Bleed'...
 
Best wishes, as ever,

Ant


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