[MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[John Carl]

Heya Dan.


> On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 12:22 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Good Morning, Dan.
>
> Evening, John.


> > Jc:  Well, no.  Well, perhaps.  We need to focus our individual
> > attention on the meaning of Pirsig's work and words and that takes the
> > form of assimilating his concepts into the rest of our life and
> > thought.
>
> Dan:
> Hmmm. I think I disagree with this. While focusing attention on the
> MOQ is a good thing, so far as figuring out its intricacies, to take
> it as a template for one's own life seems a bit much. Rather, I would
> advise a person to seek their own level in life regardless of what
> anyone else says, and that includes Robert Pirsig.

Jc:

I agree, of course.  For me the MoQ is not so much a template, as it
is a way of thinking about templates.  Does that make sense?   -- that
judgement of 'Betterness', can be applied to anything, including the
MoQ!  So it's quite an intellectual sleight-of-hand, in a way that is
deeply pragmatic and immediately applicable.



>
> JC:
> > That work of integration is important and individual, while
> > what we write about, and reinforce socially, is something else.  I
> > think our focus should be upon the underlying meanings of "what we
> > hold in common".  That is, the work of understanding each other's
> > "light" and appreciation of Pirsig's work.
>
> Dan:
> We all start out with preconceived notions of the world and our place
> within it. That's pretty much a given. However our personal histories
> have unfolded leave us at a particular point uniquely ours. Even
> though we may form agreements with others, it's still impossible to
> put ourselves in their place and say, sure, I know exactly what you
> mean. Because we never will.
>

Jc:  Well Dan, that "never will" sounds sorta like the absolutism that
James railed against.  Who knows the future?  And effort brings
progress, so a progression can be seen to get somewhere, in the end,
eh?    It's easy for me to say exactly what I mean, if I can my
statements short and logical.  In these instances, my signs line up
perfectly with your understandings and you get what I'm putting out.
that's all.  It's not really a big mystery, but it certainly isn't
"impossible".

To understand everything about me and what goes on in my head?  No,
that's personal and each person has their own personal space.  You
could say we define each other's person, in that matrix, but only
define partially and incompletely, at least one on one.  IT's the
aggregate of testimony that forms the ideas of the persons..

Dan:

> At the same time, however, we have the advantage with the MOQ of
> having Robert Pirsig's novel backing up his ideas. Maybe that's the
> great thing about writing... it is a way of sharing what is uniquely
> us with the world at large. Even then, people are apt to take what we
> say not as we mean it but as what they think we mean.
>

Jc:  I think you are right, but mainly about that unifying effect of a
narrative story - the novel is a story unfolding in time, and thus as
true to itself, a species of truth which speaks analogously to higher
truth.  Analysis and philosophology are great at picking apart this
process, after the fact, but the cutting edge of human evolution is
artistic in nature, not analytic.




> Hemingway comes to mind. His book The Old Man and the Sea is taught in
> school as man's struggle against inhuman forces impinging upon his
> reality while he himself said its just a story about a man having a
> bad day fishing.


Jc:  Great stories are open to many different interpretations.  That's
what makes them great.  I also think the writer ought to be tuned in
to what might be deemed "common problems".  Every culture has them and
artists are those that express their problems in a way everybody else
(or at least many people) can understand.

>
> Dan:
> I like to think a well-developed argument is more than simply poking
> and prodding ideas to see what happens. In the end, the two sides
> should hopefully move toward each other though many times one side
> must be willing to make that first step.


Jc:  I think the first step should be made toward truth.  That is, the
idea of a truth, to be sought.  This is just what I'd deem, the gentle
minimum for dialogue.  The second step is to aknowledge that each of
us owns a partial truth, that we need others to confirm our truths.
Truth is an ideal object, in a social game.  The "game" though, is
quite serious.

Allen Watts, in Psychotherapy East and West, says the great social
delusion, at the basis of all suffering, East and West, is to take the
game seriously, in the wrong way.  and thus, not take the play,
seriously enough!


>
> >
> >
> >>> Jc:  Well, all that might come true, and the world will be speaking
> >>> Chinese, the way things are going...
> >>
> >> Dan:
> >> And is there something inherently wrong with that?
> >
> >
> > Jc:  No, but it'd be different than what we expect in the present!  I
> > really don't think we can think about the future in a concrete way.
> > Probably the best thing would be to think of the future we'd like to
> > live, and think about that.
>
> Dan:
> I pretty much focus on the now these days. The future? Eh. It might or
> might not unfold the way I'd like. The past? Eh. Same thing. It's
> continually changing in regards to now.
>

Jc:  You can't just think about any one - the triune reality we deal
with involves all three in constant flux and communication.  The
relation of time and thought, is what Randy's book was mostly about.


> >
> >> Dan:
> >> That would take way more effort than I'm willing to commit. I tend to
> >> believe lots of people lump the work of Robert Pirsig into many other
> >> philosophers in order to say: there... I've got it. This is what he
> >> means... just the same as Emerson, Dewey, James, Whitehead, and on and
> >> on. To me, that is a grave mistake. But then again, that's just my
> >> opinion.
> >
> > Jc:  Of course it's just your opinion, as mine is as well.  Why is it
> > a grave mistake?  Pirsig himself did it!  When reading the Tao, when
> > reading James, he came upon the maps of other great thinkers and
> > rejoiced to find niches of congruence.  Why is that a bad thing?  Do
> > you think Pirsig would get lost in a crowd?  Man, it's just the
> > opposite.  The crowd is noticed, the man is ignored.  Ideas need
> > crowds.
>
> Dan:
> I don't know about that. If an idea is good, it'll shine of its own
> accord whether or not the crowd gets it.

Jc:  I should quote you from ZAMM: "It's asinine, neh?".   So this
idea, or intellectual pattern just sits there, "shining" with nobody
to notice or care?   No, you know that isn't true... so it comes down
to the individual's appreciation vs. the crowd's appreciation.  But
the thing is, if the crowd NEVER takes a "shine" to an idea, it dies.
It is with some crowd in mind, that publishers and librarians say yes
to a set of ideas.   without that consideration of social usefulness,
all ideas fail to live.

Dan:

>I read somewhere that it took
> fifteen years for the scientific community to realize Einstein had
> come up with a revolutionary new idea. All that time, he spent working
> as a patent clerk... a quiet occupation that allowed him time to work
> on his ideas basically in isolation.

Jc:  "scientific community" -  Without that assent,  you would never
have heard of the name "Einstein".    Truly though, the interplay
between the individual and the review of the peers, is a deeply
complex relation with lots of intermingling desires and values.   I'm
not saying the individual appreciation of ideas is irrelevant.
Goodness no!  I'm simply pointing out that  intellectual patterns are
certain NOT independent of social acceptance.

Dan:

>From what I understand, Robert
> Pirsig was pretty much a loner too during his work on both ZMM and
> Lila. It wasn't that their ideas needed crowds so much as it was they
> attracted crowds when noticed.
>

Jc:  I'm going a bit deeper and pointing to the underlying social
framework of the problems Pirsig was trying to solve.  The fact that
his work did attract crowds, means his ideas "won".  He succeeded in
expressing the solution of his generation.  On a person level, I'm
sure he wasn't motivated to be a popular success or cater to the
shallow needs of any crowd.  If that was the case, he'd  have sold out
to Redford in that New York hotel room.

This is a big topic with me.  It was probably that passage, more than
any other that so endeared me to Pirsig's work.  It dovetails
perfectly with an insight of Jacques Ellul's, that there are two human
frames of reference - images and words and these two realms coincide
with two different terms - Truth and Reality.  But Pirsig adds the
idea that Truth is intellectual, and Reality is social.   What an
amazing insight.  which nobody much gets.  All I know is that its an
insight that earned MY life-long loyalty.




> Dan:
> I've never had any particular religious leanings. One of my earliest
> memories of anything of a religious nature was my older sister telling
> me how a priest had to marry a man and a woman before they could have
> a baby. I must've been four or five years old and she twelve years
> older. I remember thinking even then how if that was actually so, then
> it was definitive proof of the power of god. Of course when I got a
> bit older I realized the fallacy of her teachings.


Jc:  Wow.  But what an effective means of social control, eh?  You
have to have this official, in order to breed and perpetuate the
species.    I am a dissenter like you. I think of  marriage as a
pair-bonding that occurs on an individual basis and the social
confirmation is a nicety, sure, but nothing real significant.   The
important part is the commitment of the pair to stay together.
Coyotes mate for life, without the intervention of priests.


Dan:

>
> It is my opinion that most people of religious persuasion are
> indoctrinated much the same way as my sister attempted with me. Of
> course that indoctrination is quite a bit more nuanced than hers, more
> grounded in centuries of social patterns that have taken deep root and
> grown formidable. But the same principle applies.
>
> These kids today. How often do you hear that refrain. Honestly,
> though, I look at most of them and I see myself forty, fifty years
> ago. Sure, the technology has changed, but the undercurrent of
> morality is still there. Do they express themselves differently than I
> did? Sure, just as I expressed myself differently than my father. But
> isn't that to be expected? All in all, these kids are still more good
> than bad. They still face the same problems I faced. Maybe their way
> of dealing with them has changed but I'm not entirely sure if that's
> right either.
>

Jc:  I bemoan the lack of mechanical skill in this generation, but
then my nephew changes his starter by looking up a how-to on youtube
and I think to myself, "well it's certainly different than the way I
learned, but is that bad??"   I heard an NPR program about a possible
trip (one way) to Mars and they mentioned that there would be no way
to possibly pack all the spare parts they'd need so they would take a
3D printer.  That's actually quite amazing to contemplate.  Anywhere
you can send data, you can create the necessary conditions for life.
It's a new world, for sure.


> Dan:
>Take the commonly held notion cropping up here quite often
> that social patterns correspond to groups of people. It seems that
> I've been over that particular misconception at least a thousand times
> and yet so far as I can remember there's never that 'ah ha!' moment
> when someone says, oh! So that's what Pirsig means! I've had it wrong
> all these years. Instead, people fight to maintain their own version
> of what social patterns mean even if it contradicts what Robert Pirsig
> has specifically stated. Sort of like Bodvar Skutvik and his notion
> that intellectual patterns in the MOQ correlate to subject/object
> metaphysics and no matter who tried or how many times it was explained
> to him, he simply refused to get it.
>
> So yeah, after a while, I get to thinking: what's the use? Why even
> bother responding to these posts? Now, you can say that I'm
> contradicting myself... that I'm both telling people to shut the hell
> up while simultaneously requesting they make an honest effort at
> coming to grips with the MOQ before they begin offering changes meant
> to make it better, and maybe you're right. In a way, that's exactly
> what I'm doing. But I think if you dig a little deeper, you'll begin
> to see there is no contradiction at all.
>

Jc:  I think I see what you mean, about the value of considering
social patterns independent of the actual groups of people, who are a
mixture of all the levels.  And I don't know if I ever specifically
said to you "aha" but you did help me see what everybody should
realize - that the MoQ is a MAP, not the territory.  The main
philosophical work is in keeping this distinction clear and discussing
the quality of the map, and not the quality of the territory.

Jc prev:

> > I'd like to hear your response to  Pirsig's willingness to find
> > congruence in other writers,  and consider the question if it's a
> > valid enterprise then, to explore more of what he found exactly in
> > James, that he considered so good.
>
> Dan:
> "I also have a concern of my own. This is the concern that
> philosophers, instead of coming to grips with the philosophy at hand,
> sometimes dismiss it by saying, “Oh he is saying the same as someone
> else,” or “someone else has said it much better.” This is the latter
> half of the well known conservative argument that some new idea is (a)
> no good because it hasn't been heard before or (b) it is no good
> because it has been heard before. If, as has been noted by R.C.
> Zaehner, once the Oxford University Professor of Eastern Religions and
> Ethics, I am saying the same thing as Aristotle; and if, as has been
> noted in the Harvard Educational Review, I am saying the same thing as
> William James; and if as has been noted now that I may be saying the
> same thing as Spinoza: then why has no one ever noticed that Aristotle
> and Spinoza and William James are all saying the same thing?"
>
> [Robert Pirsig, A Brief Summary of the Metaphysics of Quality,
> http://robertpirsig.org/Intro.html]
>

Jc:  (splutters)  But Dan!  That's my point entirely!  Why has nobody
noticed that Aristotle, James and Pirisig (and the Primal Americans)
are saying the same thing??

Be assured however, that I don't denigrate Pirsig's work because I
find congruence with mainstream Pragmatism.  I find affirmation and
importance in this fact, not derogation.  Pirsig's work IS original
because he presents his thoughts in Novel form and takes us by the
hand so that step by step we are led to undertand his conclusions
clearly and exactly.  The interesting philosophilogical fact that
great minds before him have harmonized with his message is just icing
on the cake, imo.

> Dan comments:
> This is what I'm getting at... none of us are living in a vacuum and
> yes it's enticing to search for congruence between the MOQ and the
> work of other philosophers, but at the same time we shouldn't allow
> that to overshadow the intricacies of the MOQ. If Robert Pirsig is
> saying the same thing as James and Royce and a hundred other thinkers,
> then what part of the MOQ is actually original? Any of it? And if all
> Pirsig's thoughts are simply a regurgitation of old ideas, why are we
> bothering with it at all? Why not simply read James and Royce and be
> done with it?

Jc:  For one thing, the words need to be interpreted for a new
generation.  James and Royce were talking to their culture and Pirsig
is addressing ours.  But the perennial nature of  truth, keeps
cropping up in all contexts.

Dan:

>
> On the other hand, if the MOQ does offer something original, why
> attempt to cover it up by bringing in other philosophers and saying:
> There! He's saying exactly what James is saying! Sure, Pirsig is
> simply mimicking Royce and his Absolute.
>

Jc:  No, I don't believe that.  For one thing, mimicry would imply
that Pirsig read Royce.  And before the new millennium, I doubt
anybody had read Royce.   Truly, I'm not trying to advance either
Pirsig OR Royce as  persons.  I'm trying to advance the ideas they
both expressed.

Dan:

> I happen to believe the MOQ does offer something new. Does it expand
> on previously held ideas? Of course it does. But to say those ideas
> correspond to and are congruent with the MOQ is to do not only Robert
> Pirsig a disservice, but yourself. By hiding one's head in the sands
> of yesterday, the light of today will never reach you.
>

Jc:  I understand your trepidation, I think.  It's not enough to bury
our heads in books of olden times.  The future of the world depends
upon the decisions in the now.  Part of my fascination with Royce and
Pirsig both is the way they were both significantly ignored by
academia.  It's like diagnosing a patient in psychotherapy -  what is
being repressed is more significant than what is overtly expressed.


Thanks Dan,  Good talking with you.

John