Thanks DMB for reproducing the passage in question. It proves my point. In an single sentence you quote Pirsig directly "a new spiritual rationality" followed immediately by "not cliched ideas about self-reliance," falsely implying Pirsig said the latter. It's a rhetorical trick called conflation, used to mislead.
As for the switch from the narrator to Phaedrus, Pirsig explained he did that to avoid repeating "I, I, I." Obviously as a careful thinker he wanted to present both sides of an issue. So he invented the Phaedrus literary device as a substitute for saying something like, "On the other hand I think . . ." or "From another point of view . . ." Finally, I note when I asked for examples of my hijacking the MOQ you came up empty. Why am I not surprised? On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 5:10 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]>wrote: > > dmb said to Platt:One example that springs to mind is the narrator's > comments about big government programs and the individual. Just a few lines > later, Pirsig tells us that Phaedrus went a different way, that he saw the > solution in a new spiritual rationality, not cliched ideas about > self-reliance. I've pointed this out to you before, but apparently you just > don't care what Pirsig says about it or what he really means. > > Platt replied: > For someone who claims to "know how to locate textual evidence for the > assertions I make" it's more than passing strange that you include in your > "evidence" the phrase, "not cliched ideas about self-reliance" which is > nowhere to be found in the cited "few lines later." On second thought, not > strange that you would edit what Pirsig wrote to support your own misguided > theories. > > > dmb says:Yea, that's the kind of response you always give and that I fully > expected. Not that it'll make any difference to you, but that phrase you > can't find in the passage is mine and I never said otherwise. You've already > proven to be completely unteachable but for the sake of any other interested > MOQers, I'll quote the referenced passage again. It comes from chapter 29. > You should know. You've quoted the narrator on this point many, many times. > As you can see, a few lines later we see that Phaedrus has different, > contrasting view just like I said. > "My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the > world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all. > God, I don't want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of > social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. > These can be left alone for a while. There's a place for them but they've > got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. > We've had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural > resource without knowing it, and now it's just about depleted. Everyone's > just about out of gumption. And I think it's about time to return to the > rebuilding of this American resource...individual worth. There are political > reactionaries who've been saying something close to this for years. I'm not > one of them, but to the extent they're talking about real individual worth > and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they're right. We > do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned > gumption. We really do. I hope that in this Chautauqua some directions have > been pointed to.Phædrus went a different path from the idea of individual, > personal Quality decisions. I think it was a wrong one, but perhaps if I > were in his circumstances I would go his way too. He felt that the solution > started with a new philosophy, or he saw it as even broader than that...a > new spiritual rationality...in which the ugliness and the loneliness and the > spiritual blankness of dualistic technological reason would become > illogical. Reason was no longer to be "value free." Reason was to be > subordinate, logically, to Quality, and he was sure he would find the cause > of its not being so back among the ancient Greeks, whose mythos had endowed > our culture with the tendency underlying all the evil of our technology, the > tendency to do what is "reasonable" even when it isn't any good. That was > the root of the whole thing. Right there. I said a long time ago that he was > in pursuit of the ghost of reason. This is what I meant. Reason and Quality > had become separated and in conflict with each other and Quality had been > forced under and reason made supreme somewhere back then." > > Man, I really should take my own advice. Why do I bother? Now I'm gonna > just skip right to the phase where I see the futility of trying to reason > with you. I give up. > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that’s right for you. > http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 > 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/ > 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/
