[Mary] Pretty late for me on a 'school' night, but your excellent post deserves a response - quickly.
[Arlo] No worries. I am going to try to trim down (I probably won't succeed) the discussion away from Bo, because I am more interested in how you think we should parse out invalid from valid "interpretations". [Mary now] Of course it is stuck in subjectivism. Absolutely! Remember, I am one who thinks the Intellectual Level is SOM all the way, for all of us, all the time. [Arlo] But you see the problem, if its all "subjectivism", than Pirsig can have meant whatever anyone wants to believe he meant. If you want to believe he "meant" the SOL, then that's what he "meant". If Ron wants to believe he "meant" rape and torture, then that's what he "meant". [Mary] Shoot me now, I guess. [Arlo] Our contention is not that THIS is better than THAT, as I said many times in my last post, we all hear ideas that we agree with or disagree with, and as we contemplate those agreements and disagreements we revision what was said and in turn offer something new. If you think that your ideas as you expressed them are better than Pirsig's or mine or anyone else's, then this is a valid argument. What I do not see as valid is instead continually seeking to legitimize your ideas by ascribing them to Pirsig's intent. [Mary] Whether this is my interpretation or his makes really no difference to me. But I will tell you this, I don't believe I'm smart enough to have thought this Quality, ego-negating stuff up on my own. [Arlo] Well, this is another thread, but I think you are far to self-defacing. Everyone constructs their own beliefs and ideas as they encounter the vast multitude of others ideas in the ongoing historical dialogue. Yes, Pirsig generated his ideas as part of his experience in this dialogue, responding to (for example) the voices of Kant and Aristotle, and anticipating the way future voices would respond to his. [Mary] I am willing to give Pirsig credit for it. YOU, on the other hand, seem ready to take that credit away from him. You want to say he never said it. [Arlo] Power to the people, Mary, why should something be less legitimate for you because someone else didn't say it, that it was something you generated on your own. For example, I disagree with Pirsig that the social and intellectual levels should be restricted to humans. I don't need his authority to legitimize my view. I am fully capable to stand up and say that MY ideas, a MOQ that does not disclude certain non-human patterns from the social/intellectual levels, is BETTER than his ideas. Yes, I attribute the general structure of a MOQ to Pirsig's insights, but what's to gain from my saying that Pirsig really MEANT to include non-human patterns, and he can't be counted on as an expert on what he MEANT? I know he didn't say this, I know he didn't "mean" it, and so what? Why does that make my idea less valid? Why does it stifle talking about a MOQ for me to say "my ideas about this are better, Pirsig was wrong"? [Arlo previously] How do you define "well" and "honestly"? You seem to suggest that not ALL interpretations are valid, so how do you parse out the ones that are not? [Mary Now] Given my soliloquy above that should be obvious to you. If your interpretations are motivated toward bolstering your own ego (where I use 'your' not to mean you personally, but anyone), then your interpretations are suspect. Your motives are impure. [Arlo] I'm going to stop here and say that, no, its not clear. How would you determine whether one person's "interpretation" was guided by ego and another's was not? [Mary now] I accept what you are saying, but reject the motivations you are assigning by default to Bo. I do not believe Bo is in it for self-aggrandizement. [Arlo] I didn't suggest it was self-aggrandizement, I suggest that his tunnel-vision towards interpretative legitimacy was guided by thinking that this was the only way his ideas would attain legitimacy. When I said to Bo, tell me why your ideas are better than Pirsig's, he never responded, never made an attempt, and instead would fall back into talking about how his ideas express what Pirsig really meant to say, as I said, even going so far as to call Pirsig a weak interpreter of Pirsig. There was a singular effort to attach his ideas to Pirsig's voice. Answer me, Mary, what is wrong with expressing disagreement and offering something you genuinely feel is better? Why spend all that effort in doing nothing but denying disagreement? [Bo] my gut feeling is that he experienced the same profound world-view shift that I did, was happy to attribute it to Pirsig's insights, but then later felt betrayed by Pirsig's own denial of his own insight! [Mary] Why? Because if his insight was generated by him and not by Pirsig it was less valid? Why would he so strongly need to ascribe those ideas to someone else? I've read Pirsig, and I agree with a lot of what he said, but I think I'd be happier if my epiphany was the result of something I came up with rather than something I was told. [Mary] I am honestly telling you that from my (and Bo's) perspective, Pirsig seems to have sold out to the DMBs of the world in a bid for American Academic Legitimacy at the expense of the real, true, mystical nature of the original message he had in ZEN. So shoot me. [Arlo] I think Zen is Zen. The world has Zen. It has a lot of Zen. Well, maybe not in America, but Zen is Zen and it is here. Pirsig, like Northrop, wanted an integrated bridge, and way to combine the mystic and the rational, the aesthetic and the scientific. He wrote a philosophy, not a book of Koans. Pirsig also sponsored, for example, the addition of a Zen Center to the Minneapolis area. I don't think he has "sold out", but is true to his belief that the Buddha rests just as comfortably in an engine as a flower. He wasn't out to debunk philosophy, he was out to save it. [Mary now] I'm pretty sure I understand what Bo was always saying. I'm equally sure he DID make many efforts to explain it to you. [Arlo] I asked him repeatedly, Mary, to explain why his ideas were better than Pirsig's, he ignored all those requests. [Mary now] Yeah, I know you mistrusted Bo's motives. You thought it was Bo's ego talking... [Arlo] No, I find the impetus towards interpretative legitimacy invalid, that was my contention with Bo. I'd say, instead, Bo's ego cannot have been the reason, because a strong ego would have little problem standing up and expressing disagreement, it would need to legitimacy of "this is what Pirsig meant to say". [Mary] For good or ill, ideas released into the wild are subject to evaluation and interpretation by any and all eager minds. A writer secure in his words is only pleased by the interest, not threatened. [Arlo] Right, and these "evaluations" are negotiated dialogically, between interlocutors acting intentionally and interpretatively. A writer would be very insecure if he insisted that everyone had to agree with him, and the only way for his ideas to evolve is for subsequent people to reassign what he "meant to say". [Mary] Here's another way to look at it. You see, DMB does the exact same thing with James. He wants desperately to equate almost everything Pirsig and James ever said. You really can't do that without ignoring about half of what James ever said. [Arlo] I am not a scholar of James, so I can't answer that charge. But it was Pirsig who pointed to James, so I don't see what the issue is there. Ron DiSanto wrote an entire book looking at people, sometimes peripherally, mentioned by Pirsig to help contextualize and clarify Pirsig's ideas. [Mary] It's late. I'm tired. I hope I've made some of where I'm coming from a little bit clear. I am not an ogre out to destroy Pirsig. [Arlo] I never said, nor meant to imply, that you were. Thanks for a good dialogue. Frankly, its been the only real dialogue about this at all. You caution against demonizing, but such rhetoric is all I've gotten from the others. 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/md/archives.html
