Hello Arlo, [Arlo] I changed the thread name, probably should've done that a few posts back.
[Mary] Excellent! There are so many good ideas floating around in the archives that cannot be easily recovered because they are buried in some weird thread. [Arlo] As far as I've seen it, the issue has never been about the substance of your ideas, but ascribing them to an author who has denied such intent. I certainly do respect your ideas, and your right to find a "meaning" in this world that is relevant and valuable to you. So the question remains, if all "interpretations" are not equally valid, how do we parse out the invalid (the MOQ supports rape and torture) from the valid? I'll put my cards on the table and say the problem in this view is that "interpretation" occurs in a vacuum, that we encounter meaningless "objects" and we whatever meaning we "subjectively" imbue them with are all equally valid. [Mary] So right! We could start another thread to debate whether there's merit in my view that the Intellectual Level basically equals SOM. That would be fun for me, but the bigger question you pose is deeper as it relates to how we react to each other here in the MD. [Mary before] ...My conclusions obviously differ a lot from yours. What are we to do about that? [Arlo] Well Mary we should talk about it. For example, I read Pirsig and I am not pleased with a MOQ that limits the social and intellectual patterns to humans. I think a different approach is better. I would love to hear (on or off list) what you think. [Mary] And we can certainly talk about that, Arlo. You might be disappointed, though, because I probably agree with you more than disagree. The fun is in the disagreement, is it not? [Arlo] But again, the problem returns to a movement away from expressing disagreement over ideas to arguing interpretative legitimacy. I don't get that. Why are your "conclusions" necessitiated on gaining Pirsig's legitimacy? [Mary] I covered some of this in a post just now to Dan. This is a fight you should rightly be having with Bodvar and not me. As I said to Dan, I don't personally need to legitimize my ideas by insisting they are exactly or entirely from the celebrity, Pirsig. I do, however, feel the real need to give him credit for them. I did not arrive at my conclusions without Pirsig's influence. It would be dishonest of me to insist that I thought up Intellectual Level = SOM all by myself. I happen to find great value and explanatory power in this but understand that you and most others here do not. The fight you and they seem to want to have with me is always predicated on the rejection of my idea first off. Once you've done that, the rest of the argument gets more and more disengenuous as you go along. This is because you are fighting on 2 fronts. One is to destroy my idea, and the other is to destroy any legitimacy it may have. Since legitimacy always arises from celebrity, it is a cheap shot to just dismiss me by saying Pirsig didn't say that. So what? If you go that route, it starts to devolve into nothing more than the disputes any of the 500 flavors of our local Southern Baptists have with each other here in the south. Being from PA, you may not be familiar with how this plays out. A preacher at Southern Baptist church A says something in the pulpit on Sunday that some critical mass of people in the pews disagrees with. If it goes on long enough, the dispute results in the formation of Southern Baptist Church B in the same town. If you can suspend disagreement for a moment I think you will see what I mean. Just as you say the Social Level is not about humanity only, I imagine you came by that idea from your reading of Pirsig. My position is exactly the same. [Arlo] You say it yourself here, you are reading things into his writings. You are adding things you find valuable and disagreeing with his conclusions (some of them). I don't know why you find this so problematic. [Mary] This is puzzling to me because I don't particularly find this problematic. :) What I find problematic has to do with the discrepancies I see between what Pirsig said in ZMM and Lila and what he said much later on to Mr. Turner and others. In my opinion, he seems to be renieging on his primary insights in a number of ways. If I am at fault here it is for speculating on what possible motivations he could have for doing this. I humbly admit to a tendency to follow Bodvar's lead, and to that extent I apologize. To the extent your argument centers around this, I agree that I do not have the right to speculate about Mr. Pirsig's motivations, and to the extent to which I may have done this in the past, I apologize here and now. I certainly admit to feeling somewhat confounded and betrayed by his later statements in light of the powerful nature of what he seemed to be saying in two entire books previously. I have no explanation for this, but neither do I immediately dismiss what I think I understood from his books because of it. It is a complete conundrum to me and best left unanswered, I guess. Any speculation on my part is unfair to Mr. Pirsig no matter how unfair to me I might think his later statements to be. Does that make sense? What would you think if you were me? [Mary before] Do you see that you are doing exactly the same thing I am? You are carrying around a mantle of legitimate authority in your own mind about Pirsig's words. You see your view as absolutely right, and to the extent that I disagree with you, I am absolutely wrong. [Arlo] What I see in some, is that no matter how loudly Pirsig protests an "interpretation", there is no withdrawl, indeed there is even deeper entrenchment (Pirsig is a weak interpreter of Pirsig). Believe me, Mary, if there is one thing I would want is Pirsig's involvement. I do not understand the "Pirsig needs to shut up so we can think" mentality... [Mary] I do not know who you are talking about here. I presume it must be me since you and I are talking, but this is not what I think at all. I have enjoyed what little Pirsig has added to the conversation over the years. I even went so far as to transcribe his "MoQ and Art" monologue for the pleasure of the entire MD a few months ago. We have no argument here. I would love nothing so much as to check my email some day and find [email protected] posting replies! What an orgasmic dream that would be for all of us! Could somebody talk to him about it? :) [Arlo] I know I am repeating myself here, but again I have no issues whatsoever with any discussion about why X is better than Y. If you and I want to debate the merits of a MOQ where intellect=X versus a MOQ where intellect=Y, I would think such a conversation is valuable. But the issue at hand is that it was NOT about this, it was about THAT PIRSIG SAID intellect=X and NOT intellect=Y. I see nothing valuable here, given Pirsig's denials, and this is entirely a bid for legitimacy. Why should I give this respect? Why should I give respect to someone's claim that Pirsig "meant to support rape and torture"? The latter is the trouble with "all is interpretation" thinking, its all we are stuck with, an endless squabble over whether Pirsig "meant to say" this or that. We spin our wheels, we go no where. [Mary] Arlo, I don't think you and I actually have the disagreement you are interested in. I find the subject interesting too, and like I said, freely admit to speculation about Pirsig's motives at various times in the MD. This was not fair of me. It reflected my frustration at the time. When I am constantly disabused of my own insights because people want to shout that Pirsig never meant what I got from reading his work, I admit to getting frustrated. At the end of the day, it's not about anyone else's interpretation of the MOQ. I do stand by my claim that he has not been definitive enough to disabuse me of my insights. In point of fact, I don't know that it's possible. His books opened a Pandora's box for each of us. He could not possibly be expected to have anticipated every possible reaction to his work. Mine is one that he apparently disagrees with. So be it. He is not God and I am not the Devil. We are all just people and until he says something that is convincing enough to overcome all the unspoken beliefs I've taken on as a result of reading him, he and I will, I guess, have to agree to disagree. I'm cool with that because any authority I cede to him based on his stellar insights is only provisional when it comes to my own. I believe we are all alike in this. You with your "Social Level is not just human" and me with my "Intellectual Level is SOM". It's all good. It makes us think. Best, Mary 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
