[MD] Zen at War

[david buchanan]

Dave Thomas said:

For quite some time many here have had their knickers in a knot over Marsha's interpretation of Pirsig's work vis-à-vis Buddhism. The latest pissing and moaning centers around this:
"Phædrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange. Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been correct, but for Phædrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the classroom, left India and gave up."



dmb says:
No, actually, the so-called "pissing and moaning" centered around Marsha's claim that "the static world is like an illusion". And in an attempt to get Marsha to see the moral implications of this stance Andre asked, "Do you believe that the atomic bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory?" He also asked if the Holocaust was "like an illusion". 

It seems that your post does not address that question at all, Mr. Thomas. Instead you've just changed the subject to Japanese nationalism and turned the whole thing into a low-brow flag-waving contest. The question of whose crimes were worse isn't relevant to the question and it doesn't even matter if you think those events count as war crimes or not. The question is whether or not these horrible events were "like an illusion".


It's amazing how often Marsha makes assertions about what's illusory, hypothetical, conventional, conditional,  without ever once saying what that actually means. 

Unlike the "hopelessly inadequate" answer given to him in India, the MOQ's moral hierarchy says reality is made of static values all the way down. The Metaphysics of Quality says "it is absolutely morally bad" when "society undermines intellectual freedom for its own purposes"  and "it is absolutely morally good" when that same society "represses biological freedom for its own purposes". "These moral bads and goods are not just 'customs'," Pirsig says, "They are as real as rocks and trees." The MOQ also says that moral reasonableness and human rights "have not just a sentimental basis, but a rational, metaphysical basis. They are essential to the evolution of a higher level of life from a lower level of life. They are for real." Even ordinary objects are "a complex pattern of static values derived from primary experience". Pirsig says inorganic patterns "are completely real". He says human rights and moral reasonableness are "for real" and "essential" to evolution. He says the moral goods and bads that distinguish social values from intellectual values are "as real as rocks and trees". This is Pirsig applying the term "real" to the whole world of static patterns, to all of the analogies we've created. 

Since he's saying that static patterns are "for real" and "real as rocks and trees" and "not just customs", Marsha's claim is pretty implausible. Marsha wants everything to dissolve into a kind of anti-realism wherein "conventional" truths are just clouds of reified falsity - or whatever. But this is a half-baked version of solipsistic subjectivism. The MOQ is neither of those things.

And that's why Andre posed the question the way he did. Marsha's assertions about the static world being "like an illusion" should raise moral objections. It totally makes sense that Andre would frame his question with the use of atomic weapons and the holocaust. The question becomes, "in what sense is the murder of millions of innocents like an illusion"? Saying this is "as conventionally real as rocks and trees" is unhelpful as an explanation, of course, and the emotional coldness is more than a little disturbing. Pirsig is referring to moral codes when he says they are "as real as rocks and trees". Why is morality so strangely absent from the scene, even when the question so obviously involves morality?