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

[david]

Ian said to Dan:
...And why I say as carefully (caringly) as I can to DMB (the champion / paragon of aiming to get MoQ on a serious academic footing)- "Careful Dave, you're killing the MoQ in the process."

dmb says:
I'm killing the MOQ? How so?
I'd be totally amazed if you had an intelligible answer or a specific point.  



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


dmb says:
Split personality? Why do you think ZAMM and LILA are schizophrenic? I think it's much more likely that you don't understand Pirsig. I think LILA only clarifies and elaborates the thoughts in ZAMM. 


Ian said to Dan:
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. For me these are welcome to their own agenda, I respect their rights to do so - in an academic context. 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. Half dead is not alive.



dmb says:
Like Arlo, I think your phrase "objective subject-object dialectic" is meaningless drivel. Apparently your "agenda" here is to express your hostility toward me personally and against intellect in general - and yet your actual reasons are extremely vague, if not totally absent. What's the deal, Ian? I had unsubscribed and so I haven't said anything at all in about two months. Seems like a strange moment to pick a fight. 

You have herein issued a series of fairly serious accusations; killing the MOQ, subsuming the MOQ, subsuming the whole art of MD, and clamping down with overly objective shackles. But there is no content, no specific basis, there are no ideas to support or refute, no issues to debate. Apparently this is just a hyperbolic rant in defense of your freedom to produce drivel, to write unintelligible phrases like "objective subject-object dialectic". It's about Marsha's right to use contradictory phrases too, I suppose. 

As I see it, the greatest enemy of a discussion group like this one is the LACK of intellectual quality. Nobody ever said that we ought to adopt academic standards here, of course. Nobody ever suggested that we ought to behave like professional philosophers in this forum. And as far as I know, nobody thinks we are shooting for an objective standard or an object truth about anything.  But unintelligibility is simply unacceptable in a discussion group, obviously. The misuse of terms, the use of contradictory phrases, for example, are so lacking in intellectual quality that discussion isn't really even possible. Intellectual quality is REQUIRED if we are going to exchange ideas. There is no way around that fact. Words are all we have here. Obviously.

If that feels like a set of shackles to you, Ian, then get a different hobby.