Hi John, On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 4:31 PM, John Carl <[email protected]> wrote:
> I guess I'm just gonna have to beg to differ. To my mind, Pirsig addressed > love and caring as eloquently and more precisely than any other writer I've > come across. Maybe he didn't use the exact words you're looking for, but to > my understanding, that's the whole point of it all. For instance, when he > says: > > "They all look like they're in a funeral procession. > > Once in a while one gives a quick glance and then looks away > expressionlessly, as if minding his own business, as if embarrassed that we > might have noticed he was looking at us. I see it now because we've been > away from it for a long time. The driving is different too. The cars seem to > be moving at a steady maximum speed for in-town driving, as though they want > to get somewhere, as though what's here right now is just something to get > through. The drivers seem to be thinking about where they want to be rather > than where they are.... > What he's bemoaning is the loss of love in our society. No, he doesn't call > it that exactly, it WOULD be too Hallmarky, but that is what he's describing > exactly. And if Quality isn't caring, then I don't know what it is. > > Which, admittedly, has been an accusation I've heard before, but nevermind > all that. I know what I like. Steve: On some level, everything that anyone ever wrote about anything is about caring, but that's not what I mean. My point again is that Pirsig does not talk about morality and more specifically moral _progress_ in terms of compassion, empathy, and love. Progress is not described as self-enlargement but as the evolution of organic patterns to biological to social to intellectual. It isn't that describing moral progress in terms of empathy and compassion is necessarily incompatible with Pirig's perhaps broader evolutionary take on the matter, it's just that it is a completely different take on the matter. (I feel like I keep pointing out where Pirsig's work is revolutionary and the responses I get as in the case of free will is that it is just a reworking of the same old thing.) 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
