[MD] The Tao of Quality - Verse 1

[X Acto]

[Robert Pirsig]
I think, furthermore, that all his metaphysical mountain climbing did
absolutely nothing to further either our understanding of what Quality is or
of what the Tao is. Not a thing. 
That sounds like an overwhelming rejection of what he thought and said, but
it isn't. I think it's a statement he would have agreed with himself, since
any description of Quality is a kind of definition and must therefore fall
short of its mark. I think he might even have said that statements of the
kind he had made, which fall short of their mark, are even worse than no
statement at all, since they can be easily mistaken for truth and thus
retard an understanding of Quality. 
No, he did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason. He
showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include elements that have
previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational.

[Krimel]
Notice that refrain? Yet some are convinced that after doing nothing for the
Tao in his first book, Pirsig wrote a second to demolish it.

I think not. I think he proceeds in order to benefit reason, or as James
would put it conceptualization. That is, chopping the world into measurable
parts. But he reiterates in Lila no metaphysics can to anything for the Tao.
Not a thing.

As he points out we are overwhelmed by "irrational elements crying for
assimilation." This is an important point amplified by Dan Ariely and the
behavioral economists. We are at our core irrational. But irrational does
not mean incoherent or even incorrect. It means other than rational;
nonalgorithic. We do not navigate our lives with reason. Reason itself
emerges as an artifact, as a technique, as a process for assimilating the
irrational. But reason does nothing for the Tao, or for Quality. Not a
thing.

[Ron sez]
I have to disagree with that and here is why:
Although reason is indeed an artifact and comes posterior in experience it is also
helpful to see it as an evolutionary extension in the navigation of our lives. reason
improves our lives, it makes them better. Therefore it most certainly improves
the tao.
Rendering the unintelligible intelligible was considered the operation of the divine
by the ancient Greeks and infered (to them) a hint at the nature of the dynamic.
The arguement was not about if something "is" or "is not" but rather what held
the most meaning in experience.

The question to ask, when we inquire into whether or not reason does anything
for Quality is this: What does it mean to live a "good" life?

In the end I think this becomes the point and conclusion of Pirsigs aim, he improves
Quality by expanding and clarifying reason. Or why else get involved.
 



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