[MF] Is the pinnacle of human experience a rational or irrational thing?

Muzikhed at aol.com Muzikhed at aol.com
Wed Jan 11 10:04:00 PST 2006


 
Kevin wrote (quoting from ZMM)

>From  chapter 12:

I suppose if I were  a novelist rather than a Chautauqua orator I'd try to 
``develop  the characters'' of John and Sylvia and Chris with action-packed 
scenes  that would  also reveal ``inner meanings'' of Zen and maybe Art and maybe  
even Motorcycle Maintenance. That would be quite a novel, but for some  
reason I don't feel quite up to it. They're friends, not characters, and  as Sylvia 
herself once said, ``I don't like being an object!'' So a lot  of things we 
know about one another I'm simply not going into. Nothing  bad, but not really 
relevant to the Chautauqua. That's the way it should  be with friends.

And I suppose if I were to take  Pirsig at his word then this explanation 
should satisfy.
But it  doesn't.  Which is why I'm raising the  question.

I suspect a deeper reason why Pirsig chose  not to develop this side of the 
book has
something to do with the  tendency of most middle-aged American males of his
generation, when  it comes to sharing with others the value and meaning of 
one's
personal relationships, to focus on the head stuff, not the heart  stuff.



-------------------
Ted responds:
  I took this passage differently...  as usual, every question  seems to be 
pointing off topic, but perhaps this will be an idea for a future  topic...  I 
saw the narrator's statement 'that's the way it should be with  friends' as 
representing a sense of fairness, in the sense that it wouldn't be  right for 
the author to use his friends' personal details in a way that they  can't 
control, because, ... who would want that?  It breaks the symmetry  code, the golden 
rule.  He respects their privacy.   Intimacy  seems to carry with it an 
assumption that the sharing is personal, that trust is  involved.   Could you say 
he was loyal to them?
 
  I have a (future?) issue  is with LOYALTY. Loyalty seems to have high 
social  value, yet it often serves as a barrier to truth, and a component of  
traps.  As kids, we are given a mixed message:  Tell the truth,  but don't 
'tattle', or tell on others.   Loyalty  is about protecting the group... traitors are 
hated, and rejected by the  group.   In that loyalty usually asks the 
individual to 'stick up' for  the group, it can be a positive force, it has survival 
value for the  group.  But there can be a dark side for the individual:   
Loyalty can be used as a personal weapon.  If a person is loyal, they  can be used 
for corrupt purposes, for they will protect, sacrificing  themselves for the 
group, or the leader, or the partner.
 
  Loyalty seems to have little intellectual value, and loyalty to  ideas is 
often considered dumb.  In general, the smart people are  onto the smart new 
ideas... everyone jumps ahead to the next best new way  to fit the models to the 
data, and the models to the data.   When  scientists (or Philosophers) get 
together to discuss the ideas, it looks like a  social club, bet there's 
something else going on.
-----
Back to the ZMM quote, recall it is the socialized narrator (not  Phaedrus) 
that is choosing to keep his friends' details private, (though he  hints there 
might be some more useful material there.)  He initially  said Sylvia and John 
had "a problem in their relationship" ... which  made me as the reader think 
he might discuss an issue between John &  Sylvia.
But then the narrator started talking about the Bike maintenance, and  the 
dripping faucet, and he never got to any issue between John &  Sylvia... just 
the anti-technology issue.    He respected Sylvia's not  wanting to be treated 
as an object.   Maybe Phaedrus, who  cared much less about social codes, would 
have been more likely to use "all the  data", not caring who he hurt, to get 
at the truth.
-----------
When I think of writing the true story of my life I'm stopped by this issue  
of loyalty.  What do I owe to the people I interacted with in terms of  
privacy?   You can change the names, places & facts to try to hide  it, but then 
it's not true, you're just writing fiction.  It's either  transparent (not 
disguised) or it's not true.  It feels like the only way  to tell the whole truth 
would be to dedicate the whole project to a future  audience - via some time 
capsule mechanism.  I think telling whole  truth is considered anti-social. 
 
I got bounced from a jury selection process for a murder case once very  
quickly for telling the whole truth.  The lawyers were trying to  determine if I 
could be fair.  Although I felt I could be fair, it  felt as though I'd have to 
lie to make them believe me.  In a way, it  seemed I was sorted out for being 
too picky... undesirable - unwilling to 'play  along', anti-social.  The und
erlying (between the lines) message from the  lawyers was: "C'mon, you know 
what I mean, now tell me what I want to  hear."   Most people in the jury box 
could figure out 'what they  wanted to hear' and, if they could do that, they 
were usually acceptable.   I knew what they wanted to hear, (and they knew that), 
but by answering  with the whole truth to their questions, I failed to play 
along, i.e. failed the  social test.  In fact, they suggested I was a bit of an 
amateur  philosopher, the way I was responding to their questions.  I didn't 
deny  it.   Anti-social:  "Thank you, you're excused."
 
Where is the boundary between a 'selling out those around you' and  'speaking 
your whole unvarnished truth' ?
Can anyone really tell the whole truth about their life?
-----------
- Ted
 



More information about the Moq_Focus mailing list