Matt said:
An extrapoloation of the train analogy of ZMM might help to make
plausible my contention that one cannot go around one's SQ glasses.
This, then, dovetails with the train analogy: taking off the glasses
would blind your eyes (bad death/chaos), just as leaping from the
train would kill you.
I reject the premise that I've suggested that "we have limited
access to DQ."
DMB said:
All three lines come from one post. Apparently you reject the
premise because you don't see how your contention suggests limited
access to DQ. But what else could it mean? If one cannot go around
one's SQ glasses, if taking them off means blindness and bad death,
then your contention goes way beyond the suggestion.
Matt:
Oh my god, DAVE! On my analogy, the DQ comes _through_ the
glasses. You're confusing my limiting of the _analogy_ to do only
and precisely what I want it to do with me limiting _DQ_. (Which is
ironic, to say the least, since one of the things we aren't supposed
to do as Pirsigians is confuse the menu for the meal.)
Christ, it's like you're telling us that we can't come up with our own
analogies to do philosophy. Think about this for a second: what if I
revealed myself as Bob Pirsig in disguise, mucking about in the MD.
Would that change your perception of my analogies, or would you
continued to argue that Matt-as-revealed-Pirsig is limiting DQ? The
problem for me and this fake persona is that you still are taking it as
_obvious_ that I'm limiting DQ without explaining how. You tried
magnitude, and I said "lava," and then you said that DQ cannot be a
sliver of lava that yet burns your face off, it has to be the volcano.
Has to why? We only move about in _part_ off the engulfing
landscape that is DQ in the glasses analogy as you pressed it, but is
my pointing out that we are only experiencing part of the landscape
while it actually extends way past our experience of it _limiting_ the
landscape? No, it's explaining how the analogy works.
DMB said:
As you are painting the picture, anything that's not static is portrayed
as fiercely negative. Blindness and death and chaos don't appear in
either analogy, as Pirsig originally presents them.
Matt:
Yes, but Pirsig says that chaos does exist as something of a
counterpart to DQ, does he not? (Maybe not "counterpart," but some
sort of false-DQ.) So I was trying to explain, by modulating analogies
he does use, how we might fit them into the picture of the world as
he presents it. How are the cracks in the glasses, which is my
version of good-DQ/not-bad-chaos, "fiercely negative"? Blindness,
death, and chaos are all not-static, but they're the bad-not-static.
What about my versions of the good-not-static? You forgot my
Titanic-like "I'm king of the world!" version of being good-DQ at the
very front edge of the train--is that "fiercely negative," too?
DMB said:
It seems to me that you're not exploring the meaning of the analogy
so much as strangely appropriating the imagery to make some other
point.
Matt:
Now you're getting closer, except that the "some other point" is
internal to Pirsig's philosophy (as I see what I'm doing, at least). I'm
appropriating his imagery to explore the conceptual consequences of
putting together points he makes that don't appear together or are
generally put together very often by us his interpreters (I guess we
can use your astonishment as evidence).
DMB said:
Frankly, additions like "jumping from the train" don't really make any
sense. I mean, the train is an analogy of experience. What could it
mean to jump off of experience? How would that be possible; what
actual situation would that analogy refer to?
Matt:
Awh, Dave, it's okay: just because you missed the part where I said
explicitly as a warning, and repeated both by copy-and-paste and
explicitly repeating it, to not worry about what the person
metaphysically corresponds to doesn't mean you can't try again to
read and understand the analogy (if you so choose: I'm not sure
you should care; you've already shown zero interest in getting it
right).
-----
*An extrapoloation of the train analogy of ZMM might help to make
plausible my contention that one cannot go around one's SQ glasses.
If we think in those terms, the front edge of the train is DQ and
everything behind it--i.e., the train--is SQ. If we posit a person
moving about the train (don't worry about what this metaphysically
corresponds to), then the only way to get up to that leading edge is
by being right behind it, on the train. If one thinks to get around the
train to the front, the only way I can imagine doing so is to leap off
the train. But if this train is moving fast, as I imagine it is, that
means death. (If it doesn't mean certain death, it also means no
front edge of the train, as it sweeps past you: can you run as fast as
a train?) This analogy, then, explains the relationship between small
self and Big Self in a way that distinguishes a bad death of the small
self from a good death. Leaping from the train is leaping away from
your small self into the terra incognita of Big Self, but it is a pure
and total death, or movement into pure chaos. Enlightenment,
however, keeps your small self in its capacity to live and move in
society/static-patterns, though _solely_ (as I read it) as a vehicle to
pursue Big Self _at the front of the train_, not _off_ the train.
-----
Matt
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