On Aug 27, 2013, at 10:53 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote:
> Marsha said to dmb:
> You seem to want to label som "the disease," but the only problem with som is
> that it dismisses value. Within the MoQ, value is seen as primary.
>
> dmb says:
> I want to label SOM "the disease"? Okay, but that's not my label but an
> allusion to Pirsig's descriptions. He talks about the problem of SOM in
> medical metaphors, as a "genetic defect" or as a "patient" on the operating
> table. And, yes, he says the defect
>
> As Pirsig puts it, "the thing to be analyzed, is not Quality, but those
> peculiar habits of thought called 'squareness' that sometimes prevent us from
> seeing it. ..The subject for analysis, the patient on the table, was no
> longer Quality, but analysis itself. Quality was healthy and in good shape.
> Analysis, however, seemed to have something wrong with it that prevented it
> from seeing the obvious." (ZAMM 218-9)
>
>
> From ZAMM, Chapter 10:"The cause of our current social crises, he would have
> said, is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself. And until this
> genetic defect is cleared, the crises will continue. Our current modes of
> rationality are notmoving society forward into a better world. They are
> taking it further and further from that better world. ...the whole structure
> of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It
> begins to be seen for what it really is... emotionally hollow, esthetically
> meaningless and spiritually empty."
>
>
> Pirsig even sticks with this sort of language in Lila, where he is spelling
> out the detail of "the cure" to "the disease". In this case, he's using
> "defect" and "paralysis" as metaphors for the problem of SOM.
>
>
> "Now, it should be stated at this point that the MOQ SUPPORTS this dominance
> of intellect over society. ...But having said this, the MOQ goes on to say
> that science, the intellectual pattern that has been appointed to take over
> society, has a defect in it. The defect is that subject-object science has no
> provision for morals. Subject-object science is only concerned with facts.
> Morals have no objective reality. ...Now that intellect was in command for
> the first time in history, was THIS the intellectual pattern it was going to
> run society with?" (ch 22 LILA)
>
> "Phaedrus thought that a MOQ could be a replacement for the paralyzing
> intellectual system that is allowing all this destruction to go unchecked.
> The paralysis of America is a paralysis of moral patterns. Morals can't
> function normally because morals have been declared intelllectually illegal
> by the subject-object metaphysics that dominate present social thought.
> ..It's this intellectual pattern of amoral 'objectivity' that is to blame for
> the social deterioration of America, ..." (ch 24 LILA)
>
>
> Marsha added:
>
> As far as you reifying the MoQ into "the cure" RMP wrote: "Remember that the
> central reality of the MOQ is not an object or a subject or anything else. It
> is understood by direct experience only and not by reasoning of any kind."
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> That makes no sense. The "cure" is an expanded and improved intellect. The
> central reality that the MOQ talks about is Dynamic Quality. The cure is
> conceptual but the central reality is outside of language. I'm not even
> talking about that, much less reifying. This little bit of nonsense is just
> one more symptom of the basic confusion I've been complaining about all
> along. You're confusing the MOQ (static intellect) with Dynamic Quality
> itself, which is outside of language and cannot be defined. That's what these
> quotes are saying...
>
> "The Metaphysics of Quality itself is static and should be separated from the
> Dynamic Quality it talks about. Like the rest of the printed philosophic
> tradition it doesn't change from day to day, although the world it talks
> about does."
>
> "Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there
> is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. A
> metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any
> metaphysics."
>
> I don't know what goes through your mind when you read these passages, but
> what they say quite clearly, I think, is that the MOQ is a static and
> intellectual, is like the rest of philosophy in that respect, and that static
> intellectual systems must be definable and knowable or you have no
> philosophy. You can't have the MOQ without being intellectual and
> intelligible.
>
> Your confused anti-intellectualism leaves you rather empty handed, doesn't
> it?
Marsha:
No, not when my aim has been to explore RMP's writing, rather than accept your
(David Buchanan) opinions, beliefs, assertions and criticisms as Scripture.
Your paraphrasing has never impressed me. I can accept that you have different
value judgements than mine as a result of our different histories and current
patterns of values, but I find no sound reason to adopt them. RMP said:
"Remember that the central reality of the MOQ
is not an object or a subject or anything else.
It is understood by direct experience only
and not by reasoning of any kind."
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