Arlo to Andre: I'm not sure if your father was a cynic or a Marxo-Pirsigian, but interpreting his words via the illuminating light of the latter thinkers makes his statement quite profound.
Hi Arlo, Marsha, dmb and all Thank you for your lengthy response Arlo. I think my father was a bit of a cynic. It goes a bit too far to explain everything but he was expected/ forced to take over his fathers business whilst he (my father) for himself would have wanted to persue an academic career. He was very good academically and to be placed (literally) in the mud (so to speak) sent vibes to his children which were confusing to say the least.(never overtly condemming but covertly you saw he wasn't happy...kids are very good at picking up contradictory vibes) To cut a long story short, I never associated work with pleasure, and it has taken me a long time to convince myself that this is indeed possible. Pirsig, in this sense gave me a very big push in this direction. I am not suggesting that all work is pleasurable but one's attitude towards whatever work needs to be done is a pattern forming or pattern following opportunity. The former attitude builds, the latter one enslaves. Marx, and this was before I'd even heard of Pirsig, had of course made his famous statement that it is not the consciousness of human beings that determines their existence, but, conversely, it is their social existence which determines their consciousness. This is true , but not the whole story. For me it was Pirsig, through his ZMM, that sparked and gelled lots of things together with which I was grappling at the time (not suggesting I am free of grapples now). I think, to wrap this up, it was the unspoken-of labour of my father that taught me most.A 'simple' case of being born into circumstances (as we all are) not of our own creation and making the best of those, leaving enabling patterns behind in us, his children, to change those things we want to change. Andre Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
