Howdy partners: I have to address an issue that seems to be clouding our conversation. The issue is (gasp) the use of peyote. It won't go away. Normally i don't mind playing the scapegoat, but in this case I think it will only obscure what Pirsig is trying to say. If anyone wants to express outrage at the person who said favorable things about peyote use, well then you should send your hate mail to Robert Pirsig or the publishers at Bantam. I didn't write Lila, just quoted it. As I see it, the peyote experience just happens to be part of what Pirsig reports. And it just happens to be the part some folks would apparently like to throw away. Imagine the disaster that would result if a motorcycle mechanic simply tossed out or ignored the parts he didn't like. Imagine the results if a scientist simply ignored or minimized the data he didn't like. Imagine an actor who refused to speak certain lines. Or a judge who only noticed some of the laws. Imagine a philosopher who simply tossed out or ignored the parts he didn't like. Each of these cases would be outrageous and irresponsible, no? I'm just trying to make sure we have ALL the parts before we hit the open road. Otherwise we could have a terrible accident. Yea,.. that's it... Its.. a saftey issue. : ) TODAY'S POINT: THE PEYOTE EXPERIENCE OUGHT NOT BE CONFUSED WITH "VICE". I think Marco rightly made such a distinction with respect to alcohol. And I generally agree with his most recent post. (Except that thing about time. If Pirsig presented TIME as an issue in the first three chapters, I missed it. Also... Has someone suggested that peyote is the ONLY way or that its the ONLY necessary element in the vision quest? If someone did, I missed that one too.) The issue of drug abuse, alchoholism and addiction simply doesn't come up in the first three chapters and none of those things is relevant to what happened to the author during the peyote ceremony. This is about the MOQ, not the war on drugs. I'm afraid that providing an answer requires a Pirsig quote from chapter 24.... "The hippie rejection of social and intellectual patterns left just two directions to go: toward biological quality and toward DQ. The revolutionaries of the sixties thought that since both are anti-social, and since both are anti-intellectual, why then they must both be the same. That was the mistake." (That destroyed the movement before it really got started.) "Back in the fifties and sixties Phaedrus had shared ths confusion of biological quality and Dynamic Quality, but the MOQ seemed to help clear it up." These quotes come from deep in the book and he's waited to explain lots of other things, like the four static levels and the moral codes, before he finally makes those points. He doesn't mention peyote or LSD explicitly, but its clear enough. Pirsig admits that he suffered from the confusion between biological quality and DQ, until the MOQ cleared it up. We haven't come to the part about the levels yet and so I won't go into much detail, but let me just say... Vice cops are a good thing because social values should be in charge of biological static quality. But Pirsig's use of peyote was intellectual/spiritual and vice cops have no business controlling those higher levels. Social restraint of the intellect is immoral, not to mention unAmerican. Back in the first three chapters Pirsig even refered to the prohibition of peyote use as a violation of religious freedom. (Which is deliciously ironic if you stop to consider the fact that Indian mysticism gave us the very notion of religious freedom in the first place.) He tells us about the vast intellectual web too. This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no foolin' around. Pirsig's participation in that ceremony was certainly NOT a degenerate act, it wasn't about physical pleasure and it can't rightly be classified with other "vices". As Cory rightly points out, the bar scenes display vice quite nicely and they only serve as a contrast to the teepee scene. Peyote is not addictive, its effect is almost entirely in the "mind" and it has very few physical side effects except it may cause one to vomit. The taste is horrible. Not exactly a hedonistic delight. Its not fair or smart to make blanket statement about "drugs". And then there is the issue of abuse and misuse... SMALL POINT: The Indians used peyote long before they had to transport it up from Mexico in the 19th century. The only thing new about their relationship with the plant was the logistical problem of harvesting it. This problem were created by the new political boarders imposed by the expanding United States. Thanks to the Louisiana Purchase, the war with Mexico and the settling of the west, among other things, the Indians had been cut and fenced in. SMALL POINT about wide practice: There are specialists in Ethnobotany that pay close attention to "de-hallucinogenic" plants. Lots of different cultures have used lots of different plants to achieve the same kind of vision quest. (None of them used crack or heroin.) I wouldn't go so far as to call it a universal, but most cultures in most times have practiced such religious ceremonies. (Anyone remember my Christmas post about Santa's magic reindeer? Deer piss. Yum. And it gets even more shocking than that! Quite XratedBut you don't want to know.) The awesome power of such experiences was also nearly universally recognized and often these plants were used only by the most high ranking members in the society. Sometimes only one person was allowed. This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. That's how religion was found. Thanks for your time. DMB MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
