First, a passage or two from the end of chapter 13.... "The structuring of morality into evolutionary levels suddenly gives shape to all kinds of blurred and confused moral ideas that are floating around in our present cultural heritage. ... Like the stuff Rigel was throwing at him this morning, the old Victorian morality. That was entirely within one code, the social code. Phaedrus thought that code was good as far as it went, but it didn't really go anywhere. It didn't know its origins and it didn't know its own destinations, and not knowing them it had to be exactly what it was: hopelessly static, hopelessly stupid, a form of evil in itself." ... "Everybody thinks those Victorian moral codes are stupid and evil, or old-fashioned at least, except maybe a few religious fundamentalists and ultra-right-wingers and ignorant uneducated people like that. That's why Rigel's sermon seemed so peculiar. Usually people like Rigel do their sermonizing in favor of whatever is popular. That way they're safe. Didn't he know all that stuff went out years ago? Where was he during the revolution of the sixties." "Where has he been during this whole century? That's what this whole century's been about, this struggle between intellectual and social patterns. That's the theme song of the 20th century." As the book concludes, at the end of the last chapter Pirsig writes... "THE MOQ TRANSLATED karma AS EVOLUTIONARY GARBAGE. KARMA IS THE PAIN AND SUFFERING THAT RESULTS FROM CLINGING TO THE STATIC PATTERNS OF THE WORLD." He discusses two IMMORAL ways of killing these static patterns, one is suicide, another is... "...what Phaedrus called a KARMA dump. You invent a devil group, Jews, blacks or whites or capitalists or communists - it doesn't matter - then say that group is responsible for all your suffering, and then hate it and try to destroy it." "Back in Kingston Rigel's whole breakfast sermon was a KARMA DUMP." "If you take all this karmic garbage and make yourself feel better by passing it on to others that's normal. That's the way the world works. But if you manage to absorb it and not pass it on, that's the highest moral conduct of all. That really advances everything, not just you. The whole world. If you look at the lives of some of the great moral figures of history - Christ, Lincoln, Gandi and others - you'll see that that's what they were really involved in, the cleansing of the world through the absorption of karmic garbage. They didn't pass it on. Their follower sometimes did, but they didn't." Then, as he's taking the doll/idol to shore for the ritual, the object speaks to him, telling him how its all going to work out, how everybody wins. "Whew, this was some ido, Phaedrus thought. Sarcastic, cynical. Almost vicious. Was that what he himself was really like underneath? Maybe it was..." "You're the winner, you know," the idol said. "...by default." "How so?" "You did one moral thing on this whole trip, which saved you." "What was that?" "You told Rigel that Lila had Quality" "You mean in Kingston?" "Yes and the only reason you did that was because he caught you by surprize and you couldn't think of your usual intellectual answer, but you turned him around. He wouldn't have come here if it hadn't been for that. Before then he had no respect for her and a lot for you. After that HE HAD NO RESPECT FOR YOU, BUT SOME FOR HER. So you gave her something and that's what SAVED YOU. If it hadn't been for that one moral act you'd be headed down the coast tomorrow with a lifetime of Lila ahead of you." MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
