[MD] Art and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[Ian]
The real question seems to be: is this discussion group a culture of its own? 

[Arlo]
"Cultures" (in this sense) are the normative, shared expectations that provide cohesion and structure, while allowing growth ("chaos" is not fertile soil). Like all activity systems, this (and all) discussion forums (I'd say "discourse community") are shaped by 'rules', 'media/tools', and 'division of labor/expertise', and of course into this people bring their own "culture of use", histories and goals. I'd add that all although these activity systems can be bounded, like any other analysis (think the various ways of dividing the motorcycle in ZMM) its more descriptive than prescriptive.

[Ian]
But the core culture is of course schizophernic / split-personality between ZMM and Lila. (And Paul gave us a "two views" perspective on this.)

[Arlo]
This is entirely NOT what Paul gave us. His "two views" (epistemologic and ontologic) are not meant to endorse any "schizophrenic/split personality" between ZMM and LILA. Indeed, I read it as quite the opposite. Paul concludes his paper saying "It is my view that, with the two contexts combined as phases within its overall development, the MOQ enacts a major expansion and evolution of the modern Western mythos." (Turner) If you think his "two views" supports a "core culture" being "of course schizophrenic", I think you're way off target.

[Ian]
Those on the philosophical academe agenda, the Lila half, clearly seem intent on subsuming whatever qualities MoQ has (had) into some objective subject-object dialectic.

[Arlo]
Pairing "philosophical academe" (as an "agenda") with "objective subject-object dialectic" is demonstrating a gross misunderstanding of not just Pirsig's expanded intellectual level, and of philosophy in general (and "objective subject-object dialectic" is a ridiculously meaningless lexical string). On the contrary, I think scholars like Ant, DMB, Dan, David Granger, etc. far from "subsuming whatever qualities [Pirsig's] MoQ has", are creating an expansive, intellectual platform that enriches not just the Academy, but all interested in Pirsig's ideas. And, I'd add it is those who seem to suggest that Pirsig's ideas are nothing but destructive (aggressively destructive, even) to intellect and reason that are not only 'subsuming' but trapping his ideas (I'm picturing Dante's frozen lake of Cocytus here) in a perpetual anti-intellectual 'agenda'.

Intellectual quality is not writing posts in broken sentences, randomly combining words, and raging against artificial boogeymen (such as the dreaded university). And while intellectual quality is not the end all of human endeavor, we should approach it the same way we approach painting, or fixing a motorcycle. I see this in everything the above scholars write.

[Ian]
What I can't accept is this agenda subsuming the whole art & rhetroic of zen and the art of MD, which only flourishes without the overly objective shackles.

[Arlo]
Well, as I've said before, this forum is one of many expressive/creative "zen" outlets for our activity. No one, I suspect, gets their entire dose of "art & rhetoric" from this forum alone. All activity systems have shared/negotiated structures (to call them "objective shackles" only reveals a serious misunderstanding of community), and these structures are as much enabling as they are necessarily constraining. Indeed, as Archer, Giddens, Bourdieu and others have argued, 'structure' (or habitus) enables BY constraining, these are inseparablely symbiotic. And while, of course, structure is always in a state of negotiation, it is not just foolish but a great blunder to think that it is nothing more than 'shackles'.