[MD] Sympathy for the Devil

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[Ian to Ron]
We accept that language has limits, but we don't accept that fact need limit living real life, surely?

[Arlo]
Why wouldn't we? Language, of course, both limits and enables what we consider the "human experience". We don't seem to have a problem suggesting that inorganic patterns "limit" living real life, do we? Is 'gravity' a prison? Or, is it because of gravity we are both constricted AND enabled to 'live' as we do? And we don't seem to have a problem suggesting that biological patterns "limit" living real life, do we? Certainly we recognize that (social-intellectual methods for alleviating aside) biological impairment absolutely impacts the spectrum of experience an individual will encounter. And we don't have a problem suggesting that social patterns "limit" living real life, do we? Certainly there are qualitative "limits" to the life experienced between affluent New England and the slums outside Kinshasa? So why we start to balk at "limits" imposed by intellectual patterns? Aren't they, like all the other levels, part of "living real life" in the first place? I mean, one of the points of Pirsig's MOQ is that the menu matters, right? Its not just some arbitrary, irrelevant abstract thing we do to pass time when we are not "living real life", but, like all patterns across every level, is part of the lived real life in a meaningful, impacting, and concrete way.