John, On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 1:48 PM, T-REXX Techs <[email protected]> wrote: > Near the end of Lila Pirsig narrates Phaedrus' encounter with Lila's > abandoned doll. It's relatively brief in terms of the whole book, but it > seems to have been important to Pirsig. It also raises the question of > "acquired quality". Can objects sometimes have, or acquire, quality? Here > are some ideas I wrote about the passage and the idea. I'd like your > thoughts about it. > > > > 1. "Acquired" Quality > > It would be easy to skip over the narrative sequence about > Lila's abandoned doll.[1] But to do so would be to ignore an opportunity > for discovery about Pirsig and about MOQ reality. > > The situation may be fictional, but I believe it was important > to Pirsig to include it in the narrative, both for its symbolism and for > personal reasons. I think his writing about it made it real for him, and I > believe that he would "feel" the sadness of that abandoned doll and would > honor it with a respectful departure.
Dan: There was an interview by Robert Pirsig [http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/nov/19/fiction] where Lila is brought up: The book [Lila] is bleaker, messier than Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, though it carries a lot of the charge of Pirsig's restless mind. 'If I wrote it today,' he says, 'it would be a much more cheerful book. But I was resolving things in Lila; the sadness of the past, and particularly Chris's death, is there. Zen was quite an inspiring book, I think, but I wanted to go in the other direction with Lila and do something that explored a more sordid, depressing life...' TA: [Tim Adams} Was Lila based on anyone in particular? RP: [Robert Pirsig] We've all known people like Lila, but I didn't have anyone in mind who could sue me. [laughs] The hardest part of writing that book was getting inside her mind. It was like that thing I had in college: Why are these women so impossible to understand? They smile and you are not sure they are really smiling. I did huge amounts of meditation to get into Lila's character to try to make her right within her own view. >From Lila: "How old is your baby now?" he asked. That surprised her. That was a new one. "What do you want to know that for?" "I already told you before I started asking all these questions," he said. "She's dead." "How did she die?" he asked. "I killed her," she said. She watched his eyes. She didn't like them. He looked mean. "You mean accidentally," he said. "I didn't cover her right and she smothered," Lila said. "That was long ago." "Nobody blamed you though." "Nobody had to. What could they say. . . that I didn't already know?" [...] "We're ready to go now," Lila said. She got up strangely, as if she was carrying something heavy all wrapped in her arms. Who is "we," Phaedrus wondered. Down below he gave her a towel, but instead of wiping herself with it she opened up what she had been carrying and began to stroke what looked like a baby's face. As he looked closer he saw that it wasn't a baby. It was the head of a doll. Lila smiled at him. "We're all going together," she said. He looked at her face carefully. It was serene. "She came back to me," Lila said, "from the river." Dan comments: Lila is Robert Pirsig and the baby is Chris, the son he lost. Whenever we lose someone close to us, guilt arises. It doesn't matter if we were at fault or not. In my own experience I find by writing of the loss that guilt is slowly absolved though even then it takes years, decades, really, and never really fully fades away. At least not yet. So yes, there is a deep meaning here and not all together fictional. >John: > Do "things" have feelings? That has always been an important > question for me, and I have always answered, "Yes". A closely related > question is, "Do 'things' have Quality?" That question was one horn of the > original dilemma that led to Pirsig's "discovery" and development of the > philosophy of Quality. He answered, "No". If Quality is a property of > "objects", why can't we detect it and measure it scientifically? So he had > to say, "No". But now here he says: > > > > "Something about this doll was giving it all kinds of Quality the > manufacturer had never built into it. Lila had overlaid a whole set of value > patterns on top of it and those values were still clinging to it. It was > almost like some religious idol."[2] > > > > You can explain it away by saying that this was just a > convenient way of saying that "Quality was in the immediate flux of > experience that created Phaedrus' reality in which this doll was experienced > as an inorganic pattern of value." I don't think so. I think Pirsig wrote > what he meant and meant what he wrote. There's something about writing > about an experience that makes it real. There's something about a person > sharing a personal history with an inanimate thing that makes it more than a > "thing". It takes on character and value and "feelings". It evolves. It > takes on Quality. Dan: I take this interaction between doll and person as more of an inevitable breakdown between what that person perceives as an object, apart and separate, and the personal self, also apart and separate. Lila is having one of those moments that only insanity provides. You see, the sane among us know that dolls are simply things. They are inanimate. Children might imbue them with feelings but in time they come to know better. They are brought into the fold. They become members of the adult majority who know without doubt that old dolls are rubbish and are to be treated as such. >John: > In light of MOQ, one can see Pirsig's response to the Quality > dilemma differently. The dilemma is a heavily loaded question. It not only > presumes SOM subjects and objects, but it presumes that the only > "properties" an "object" can have are those that are scientifically > detectable and measurable. In terms of MOQ the right answer to the dilemma > is, "Mu." "Un-ask the question." Hence, without benefit of MOQ the only > answer Pirsig could give to the question was, "No. Quality does not inhere > in the object." Dan: Actually, I think he said that Lila doesn't have Quality. Quality has Lila. Is Lila an object? In a sense, yes. She's a character in a story which the reader builds into an object that exists in a make-believe world. That's what stories are all about, at least stories from the viewpoint of Western culture. Now, what's interesting is how that same story can be construed in an entirely different fashion by using the viewpoint of Eastern philosophy. For instance, when Lila says she's come back (meaning her baby) in a literal sense the Western reader might assume Lila is so whacked out she believes her dead baby has returned. But the river is a clue. The boatman has to do with an ancient myth reportedly imported to Greece from Egypt. Egypt and India have unique parallels in their culture going back thousands of years. So it isn't a stretch to see Eastern influences on the old myths, Buddhism and what not. When we get into stories told from that point of view, zen stories, for instance, Western readers get the distinct impression they're missing something... the stories, that is. Only isn't the stories... it's the reader who is missing something.But what? >John: > Now, we have MOQ, but our everyday experience is still full of > "objects".[3] But an MOQ object is vastly different from an SOM "object". > An SOM object is detached from the "observer"; any "relationship" with the > object is forbidden. In MOQ relationship is central, because that's where > the event of primary Quality occurs. When a craftsman makes a chair and > "does not separate himself from the work so as to do it wrong", the chair is > no longer an SOM "object"; it is an MOQ object, and it is definitely imbued > with Quality and transmits Quality. Dan: Again, I think (and please take this as only my opinion though my understanding of the MOQ tends to back it up) that objects don't have Quality. They are never imbued with it, in other words. Instead, Quality has those objects, though in the MOQ sense this tends toward experience. Objects arise out of experience, first as ideas, and then as that which is corporeal. Take the hot stove example in Lila... when first experienced, the stove is only a vague source of discomfort without any foundation in reality. It is only after the realization (the idea) that the oaths occur, that the stove becomes an object of discomfort. >John: > The other way an SOM "object" can become an MOQ object is > through relationship with someone who values it. The doll was not the > product of a craftsman, so it was only an SOM "object" when some child > received it. Then it may have begun to "acquire" Quality in relationship to > that child. But that relationship must have been transient, because the > doll ended up in the river. It was Lila who gave it value and significance. > In Lila's brief but intense care it became imbued with Quality. Dan: All values are transient. They arise, flourish, and pass away, only to arise again. That's where the river comes into play. Contrary to popular opinion these values are not things that we have, that we may possess. Values possess us. We are submerged in cultural values to the extent that we cannot even see them and only rarely do we ever acknowledge them. Cultural values exist without our having to think about them. We simply know them. Take animism, for example. I think it was Freud who said three great centers of thought exist: animism, religion, and science. The first, animism, is by far the oldest and the most widely held. It paved the way for religion just as religion paved the way for science yet animism is still part and parcel of world-wide cultures today. As you say, children learn to animate toys yet that doesn't necessarily mean they imbue them with value. Instead, the value is already there. They simply uncover it in ways adults have forgotten and glossed over. >John: > There needs to be a word for a thing that, by being valued, has > become more than a "thing", more than an SOM "object". "Belonging". That's > it. A thing that has "belonged" to someone. It's "belonging" that gives a > doll feelings and value and Quality. It can't be measured, but you can feel > it, and that's more important than measuring. Pirsig felt it, and he > honored it. There's a world of difference between an SOM "object" and an > MOQ "belonging". Dan: As long is it is understood the person belongs to the object more so than visa versa. That's what animism is all about. It's smearing the self upon what we perceive as the world until there is no real separation. What is thought outside self turns inside. Belonging becomes a sense of shared-ness. >John: > Pirsig points out another way something becomes an MOQ carrier > of Quality: Sanctification. When an object is ritualized, it is made > transcendent. It partakes of Dynamic Quality. Pirsig does not embrace > theistic religion, but he shows great understanding of it and great > reverence for all that is Dynamic in it. Oliver Cromwell, the Christian, > destroyed countless religious icons in England. Pirsig the atheist would > not have done so. Pirsig understood their meaning as symbols that pointed > beyond themselves. Cromwell saw them as idols that were substituted for > God. Perhaps both were right and moral. Dan: If Dynamic Quality and experience become synonymous in the MOQ, objects, or patterns of quality, are what makes up our (subjective) conception of it. By doing away with that divide we come to see the ritualization process is in fact how we come to know the world and its intricacies. Objects lose any sense o transcendence and instead awareness takes center stage, consciousness, the ability to perceive the world and turn its tumult into rational thought processes. > > > > Many thanks, Thank you too, Dan http://www.danglover.com > > > > John L. McConnell > > Home: 407-857-2004 > > Cell: 321-438-6301 > > Email: [email protected] > > > > > > > _____ > > [1] Pirsig, Robert (2013-11-06). Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals (p. 457-464). > Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. > > [2] Pirsig, Robert (2013-11-06). Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals (p. 458). > Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. > > [3] Sure, you can't say "object" in MOQ; you have to say "static pattern of > value". But that just gets cumbersome and pedantic once you have already > agreed to MOQ as your domain of discourse. So let's just agree to say > "object" and move on. > 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
