Matt, On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 8:06 PM, Matt Kundert <[email protected]>wrote:
> > But the one thing I would not be is as blithe as John is in asserting > that Pirsig is all about love and empathy. Do you mean the person of Pirsig or the words of Pirsig? Because sometimes when we lack something vital, we struggle for it and create an intellectual context for attaining the thing we lack. Sometimes, especially in his earliest development, Phaedrus comes off as being unloving and unempathetic and all this talk of caring is just a way of seeking something mysteriously lacking. Maybe its impossible to be superman in all areas of life, and if you're born a genius, it makes it harder to relate to your fellow beings. But on the other hand, being a genius means you've got an incredible set of tools to attack the problem and to my reading, that's what ZAMM was all about. hmmm... ya know, I notice a lot of people use the abbreviation "ZMM" and its always bugged me because it seems to leave out the most important part: A is for ART folks. Mebbe I'll start abbreviating it zAmm, just to make that point. Personally, I'm a pretty empathetic and loving guy. So perhaps I'm reading things into the work that others don't see, but from my perspective, Pirsig works out an intellectual justification for the fundamentaltude (I'm liking that word lately) of love and caring and that's just the way I see it. Which is why I'm befuddled by Steve's assertion that Pirsig doesn't address love and empathy. Matt: > Steve seems to be right > when he suggests that we should think through the fact that "care" > is left behind somewhat, and "love" doesn't seem to come up at all. > It's not exactly that John is wrong, but he seems to be lacking in > that self-consciousness. And it could easily be repaired by simply > taking those apparent facts into account, something along the lines > of, "That's true, he doesn't talk about care or love a lot. But if we > move the center of gravity of our understanding of Quality to 'care,' > then there's a sense in which Pirsig is suggesting that evaluative > behavior--the only behavior that exists--is in fact equated, the same > as, a fluctuating circle of concern. I.e., low quality is the same as > judging that you _don't_ care about something. And, additionally, > the reason why Pirsig avoided extensive reflection on care, and > particularly about love, might be a reaction-formation to the hippies. > John: The hippies went off into extremism, and they needed a healthy reaction against that, I agree. But at the same time it oughta be kept in mind that they themselves were reacting against social conformity and a straitjacket existence. Sometimes the ole pendulum swings a bit too far, is all. Matt: > Even as Pirsig wrote, he sensed something a little off about the > hippie movement, something to beware rhetorically of, and by the > 90s it became obvious that if he wanted to bridge-build at the > cultural level between conservatives and liberals, it would be with the > word 'value' (which conservatives seem to have co-opted and think > liberals had abdicated) and not 'love,' which conservatives still were > reacting to in the hippie context. To formulate philosophical > propositions with 'love' at the center would move too close to the > 'soup of sentiments' that he wanted to avoid." Taking things into > account explicitly, being self-conscious, seems to be central to > philosophical articulation. > John: You make a good point there. Matt: > > I don't think Pirsig, the rhetorician, did not choose his words carefully > most of the time. Taking seriously his own formulations will tell you > where he is revolutionary and not. Taking seriously Pirsig's verbiage > is how you pay homage to his thought, particularly if you want to say > something slightly different. Thinking things through, patiently and > carefully, isn't the antithesis of Dynamic Quality. > > And sometimes we should relinquish the thought that we don't have > anything new to learn about Pirsig. John: And you make and EXCELLENT point there! Matt: > Sometimes we might treat the > MD like a laboratory for testing hypotheses, testing an idea for its > consequences, even if we aren't sold on the idea yet. You don't yell > at a scientist if he tests a new liquid in a beaker and it blows up. If > we had more of what Emerson called a "youth of mind," and > approached each other in that spirit more often, I think we'd learn a > lot more about Pirsig and ourselves. > > Right! The scientist in a movie who says, "we didn't get the results we expected. The experiment was a failure, is mainly the victim of bad scriptwriting. Thanks for some good points, Matt. Blithe John 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
