Hi Ron, Ron said: This post brought up the discussion Matt and I were having about pre-intellectual experience being a fantasy. Matt made some fairly good remarks supporting this notion and the line drawn between intellectual and pre-intellectual is practically invisible. The quote below seems to agree with Pirsig that there is a useful practicle distinction between the two. Matt seems to think that this is making a preferance to certain kinds of experience (the hot stove example) I think it merely pays homage to primacy and primacy another word for "plain and simple"...
Matt: Though I don't like "fantasy," you put the difference between you and I fairly well. The metaphors that Pirsig and Hagen have to use to hold up the distinction (especially ocular metaphors--"it's _seeing_") are ones a lot of philosophers I admire have diagnosed as debilitating. One quick route of exemplification is recognizing Pirsig as wanting to get away from the pure theory of Platonic dialectic (at the top of the mountain) back to the ground-level of life: one could encapsulate this in a slogan like "praxis over theoria." (Parallel to "mythos over logos.") And then you recognize that "theoria" in the Ancient Greek is based on metaphors of seeing, meaning something like "the activity of being a spectator." (I've collected some commentary on the word here: http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2009/06/greek-words-2.html#theoria) But once one turns away from theory to the nitty-gritty of "okay, what are we practically talking about here?" then we come to ground we can both occupy and assess. On the one hand, I think you have me just about perfectly with "creates a preference of certain kinds of experience." We must notice, though, that humans being valuing-machines means they ipso facto prefer certain kinds of experience over others. My problem is the apotheosis of certain kinds of experience as having _theoretical_ priority (e.g., of the form "experience X is necessarily better because of X, Y, and Z). The kind of homage Pirsg and Hagen want to pay to their preference is in the form of an authoritarian "and you'd better like it too!" They don't sound authoritarian, but when we reduce things down to preferences, that's what it is. And, of course, some things should be authoritatively pressed upon people (like the law of gravity upon physics students). But in the area of discourse inhabited by Pirsig and Hagen, it is unclear to me why I should submit. Take your formulation, Ron, of what Pirsig is doing: paying homage to the primacy of certain kinds of experience. My question is: do I _need_ to pay homage to these kinds of experience that are primary? Some people think if I only pay lip-service to nonlinguistic experiences, I've got something faulty with my philosophical outlook. That's not what I call a live and let live philosophical attitude, but a rather authoritarian one. (My reply, I might add, that it _should_ be a live and let live attitude is itself authoritarian, just on a different level.) I don't, myself, pay homage to primary experiences very often because I, myself, am not particularly fascinated with simple experiences like sounds. Experiences I typically like are complex--like when sounds turn into words. The apotheosis Pirsig and Hagen wish to enact carries a lot of weight, and is part of what we might call "nostalgia for childhood." When Hagen talks about confusion, uncertainty, and discontent, he's referring to the kinds of things that only afflict the complexly-formed, to the kinds of problems that only arise for adults trying to survive in an advanced capitalist democracy, like getting a job, paying bills, voting in elections, and believing in God. With the press of all these choices, we look at the carefree child who worries about none of these things. And then we get all theoretical and talk about babies and the look of wonder. Looking at children as a reminder that most of our problems are rooted in things that have been created (like culture) can be a useful rhetorical tact. But I don't think it's a good theory, nor am I persuaded much by it personally. I face most of the same spiritual problems that others do, but my route to relieve the pressure is rather a turn towards other complex activities, like reading philosophy and literature. Rather than the kind of Rousseauian nostalgia for the primitive state (whether we are talking about "of mind" or "of society"), I prefer balancing the annoying stuff that a complex culture presses upon us with the cool stuff a complex culture offers us. The cool stuff is supposed to be compensation for the annoying crap. Sometimes it doesn't always work out. Sometimes the crap can be cut out without any real loss of cool possibilities, and sometimes crap _needs_ to be cut out with real losses but in order to sustain the system. These are all ad hoc choices that need to be taken up peicemeal, not by a wholesale theory. I find, on the whole, that _nostalgia_ for the past, whether cultural or biographical, is a deterent of good decisions about what we should do for the future. Matt > Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:45:41 -0800 > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [MD] Plain and Simple > > Marsha, > I have been following your recent posts on Buddhism > and they are excellent. This post brought up the discussion > Matt and I were having about pre-intellectual experience > being a fantasy. Matt made some fairly good remarks > supporting this notion and the line drawn between > intellectual and pre-intellectual is practically invisible. > The quote below seems to agree with Pirsig that there > is a useful practicle distinction between the two. > Matt seems to think that this is making a preferance > to certain kinds of experience (the hot stove example) > I think it merely pays homage to primacy and primacy > another word for "plain and simple"... > This is an interesting discussion for me, do not know > if it is for yourself or Matt, but it's worth developing > in my opinion. > -Ron > > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Marsha Valkyr <[email protected]> > To: MoQ <[email protected]> > Sent: Sun, December 20, 2009 9:31:26 AM > Subject: [MD] Plain and Simple > > > > I decided to reread Steve Hagen's book 'Buddhism Plain and Simple'. > > > "What is the Basic human problem that no apparent remedy will cure? What > is our existence all abut? How can we ever possibly comprehend the whole of > it? And yet isn't knowledge of the Whole --- knowledge that's not relative > or dependent on changing conditions --- precisely what would be required to > free us from the doubts and dilemmas that cause us so much anxiety? > > "We long to be free from our confusion and discontent, not to have to live > out our lives chained helplessly to uncertainty and fear. Yet we often do > not realize that it's precisely our confused state of mind that binds us. > > "There is a way to move beyond this ignorance, pessimism, and confusion, > and to experience --- rather than comprehend --- Reality as a Whole. This > experience is not based on any conception or belief; it is direct perception > itself. It's _seeing_ before signs appear, before ideas sprout, before > falling into thought." > > (Hagen, Steve, 'Buddhism: Plain and Simple', Tuttle Co., inc., P. 2) _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222984/direct/01/ 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/
