[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
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