Dave, in combat, there is a strategy used divert and attack
while one force diverts attention and leads in circles the other attacks it's a guerilla technique it wears the opposition down demoralizes them used in vietnam extensivly welcome to the jungle ----- Original Message ---- From: David Thomas <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 4:21:24 PM Subject: Re: [MD] Pirsig/James connection On 9/13/09 5:18 AM, "MarshaV" <[email protected]> wrote: > Dave, > > I see this Pirsig/James discussion lifting James and doing nothing for the > MoQ or RMP. Explain to m[e] why you think this Pirsig/James connection has > value? I am not here to elevate or deflate one or the other. Just to understand the connection. If I have an agenda it is to see if Bo and I can come to a mutually agreeable understanding about Pirsig's "extension" claim. First because Pirsig referred to James work, obliviously thought it had value, and claimed the MoQ was an extension of it. But the brief references in Lila made it difficult for me to understand the connection. Like its hard to understand algebra if you have never had basic math. So I went to some of the sources and commentaries to see if I could better understand his claim and what the implications might be. So how did the James connection come about? It wasn't in ZMM. What follows is complete supposition based on the recent reading of the introduction to an electro shock therapy paper that was linked to the 2006 RMP interview that someone recently posted: It seem that it is common for patients after this treatment to lose whole blocks of memory in very unpredictable ways. It is also very common that some try very hard to reconstructed them through going to see old places, friends or anything else the can find to jog those memories back in place. For a writer like Pirsig ZMM can be view not just as a record of this process, but part of the process itself. He was to some extent lucky in that Phaedrus had kept extensive notes on what he was working on. As this was a very valuable portion of who he was/is. But because of the treatments he still did not have complete access to the whole lines of thought that he previously knew intimately. And sadly probably will never know if he has completely recovered them. So he writes ZMM, gets it published, and it's successful beyond anyone's wildest dreams.......... Then come the questions.... Particularly about the philosophy. Not as he hoped from professional philosophers, but from rank amateur, "naif" folks like me and you. And some of the observations were every bit as pointed as if they were from the professionals. Like, "Aren't you saying some things very similar to William James? For instance.....? RMP commented elsewhere that he didn't understand this. He thought that he had laid it out very clearly, cleanly, and simply so that anybody should be able to understand it. This forum is living proof that this was not the case. So he spends twenty years rethinking, re-researching, and writing Lila to clarify and expand his thoughts in ZMM, into the MoQ of Lila. In that process it's probable that he dug up more of the past memories and developed new paths and links that he didn't know or had forgotten existed earlier. As I stated in another post the intellect is both an individual and community activity. Metaphysics is an intellectual activity with deep historical roots. Impossible to create a whole new one with no reference to the past. If you have been following my conversation with Bo you should be able to pick why I think James thought is a valuable foundation. Going forward, Metaphysics while foundational, is just a tiny branch on the tree of philosophy. Or roots if you prefer that metaphor. It does little work without other branches to do necessary tasks. Pirsig pointed to pragmatism as an existing branch that would be valuable in doing that. So I'm looking where he pointed. What I see doesn't seem be in conflict with the MoQ and may be very valuable for its future progress. But I could be and often am wrong. Dave 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/
