John Beasley wrote:
> John C and others,
>
> I'm a little amused at your assumption, John, that as I do not accept the primacy Pirsig
> accords the intellectual level that I am somehow agin intellectuals. For me its "Been there,
> done that." (If you are familiar with Myers Briggs I belong to that 1% of the population,
> described as INTP, generally known as intellectuals. According to the blurb "They approach
> almost everything with skepticism, form their own opinions and standards, and apply these
> standards rigorously to themselves. They highly value intelligence and competence." I think it
> fits.) My core argument with Pirsig is that he ignores the complexity of quality through an
> unwillingness to explore the possibility that it might be complex rather than simple.---------
---------------->> What? Excuse me? He ignores the complexity of quality? I would have thought that the
fact that he continually refuses to define quality says something about Pirsig's appreciation of the
complexity of quality. Like maybe, just maybe, he argues that quality is kind of like (vague
non-intellectual statement coming up) beyond the dualism of simple and complicated; these, like all
other concepts and abstractions, being derived from quality. Why oh why oh why Mr Beasley are you
trying to pigeon-hole quality?
(And why must everyone take on a clever-clever tone in this forum just to get a response? Are you all a
bunch of reactionaries or something?)
>
>
> I'm sorry you see me as engaged in trying to tear down what Pirsig constructs, since it is in
> defining what appears wrong to me in Pirsig's thought that I clarify my own.
Well maybe start your own newsgroup or write your own book.
> I do owe him a
> great debt of gratitude, for opening up the whole issue of quality, even if I remain
> unconvinced by his metaphysics. I agree with Struan, here. Either we are a rather stupid
> bunch, which I don't accept, or what Pirsig has to say is just not up to the task of clarifying
> moral issues, amongst other things. And since he asserts quality is morality, this is a rather
> serious outcome. Serious, that is, if you are a 'true believer'.
Hmmm. Well I just think that you are missing the point of what Pirsig is trying to do really. I don't
think that he ever intended to write a Metaphsics that was True. Nor do I think that the 'true
believers' you poke fun at are actually trying to defend anything that is true or believe in any such
thing.
>
>
> Your seem rather glib when you talk about "the brand new me in this moment doesn't take
> any responsibility for the old me's promises." Try telling that to the Judge when the person
> your old me promised takes you to court! Try reading the brief quote from 'Dark Nature' again
> slowly, then re-read my bit about agency. New York is not a biological organism, it cannot
> think and it cares nothing for anything because only agents care. We can talk about the
> 'qualities' that define New York, as Pirsig does, but this is where his use of 'quality' goes
> awry. He uses the word in too many ways, while denying it can be defined, yet equating it
> with several different things. It's all very confusing.
Only if you're stuck in the SOM. Yes I'm sure that this has been said before but it feels reet good to
me. There is a leap to be made here.
> I'm arguing that the quality that equates to
> morality only makes sense in agents, not in collections of things such as cities.
>
> May I expand a little on my understanding of self and free will. What makes a self is the
> ability to plan for the future,
What? What? What ? What? What? What ARE you saying here? What kind of life do you lead exactly? Can we
have some backgrond?
> in which I might just meet you again. In interacting with other
> "calculating beings", I (my self) am an object to them, as they are objects to me. (Please no
> howls of SOM anguish.)
Can I? Please? Are you refusing criticism on that point?
> But I know well that how I treat them is likely to rebound. I can make
> promises and break them, and if we meet again there will be consequences for 'me', even if I
> tell them that the new 'me' is quite different, they are likely to assume that a punch on the
> nose could improve the chances for 'my' delivering on my next promise. Do you see? The
> objectification (if that's the word) that occurs allows for the building of social structures, moral
> strictures, the Law, and so on.
Yes that is just ONE way of looking at things. Well Done.
>
>
> Free will is in the "calculating". Because all future calculation is fantasy, it is my extrapolation
> from past experience and may well be wrong. Indeed, when dealing with people it usually is,
> to some extent. But only to some extent. On balance it makes good survival sense to act as
> though the person I am interacting with is likely to respond in reasonably predictable ways.
I think you spend too much time in front of a computer and have forgotten what interacting with people
is actually about mate.
As far as I can tell you are suffering from depersonalisation and the fragmentation of society from
micro-electronic gadetry that have changed in a very real way how you experience things. You are talking
about people as if they were computer programs or algorithms. This is exactly the kind of thing that
restricts Freedom. You are a huge static fan Mr Beasley.
>
> Part of that prediction is assigning to the other person similar needs and wants to those I find
> in me. Again this is fantasy, but if this is usually right, in evolutionary terms it will shape
> behaviour. So the result of the evolution of complex societies has been in time to create
> selves and others, useful concepts in keeping my nose unbloodied. Lyell Watson points out
> that for chimpanzees and gorillas the biggest threat to their well being is not starvation or
> predation, but other chimps and gorillas. This might be true for us, too. So when I assign
> certain qualities to another person and act in accordance with that prediction, and in so doing
> I improve my survival prospects, there is a lot of value in that behaviour, from an evolutionary
> perspective. Keep in mind, too, that this behaviour was refined in quite small groups where
> most individuals had ongoing relationships, and that this remains true for most people.
>
> Mystics quite rightly complain that the fantasy that goes into the creation of self and others
> often gets in the way of reality.
And which mystics might these be? Names and quotes please.
> Therapists see it as 'projection', and so on, and equally decry
> the outcomes.
Again names and quotes please.
> So the issue becomes "Is the whole of evolution therefore a movement away
> from perfection? Are all our ambitions for more intelligence and more delicate perception and
> awareness misconceived? Or is regression [as in mystical experience] the error? Is the
> mystical state, or Nirvana, a rejection of all that evolution has achieved in two thousand
> million years? Or can we have the best of both worlds?" (Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Natural
> History of the Mind, p111) Like Taylor, I regard mysticism as "a rejection of the whole great
> process of encephalisaton to which evolution has been devoted." Like him, I don't know the
> answer to his questions, but I would like to try for the best of both worlds.
>
> No John, I don't feel anything you have said particularly inflammatory. I wonder at your self
> image when you speak in terms of "criticism of the artist by the rabble". I have more self
> respect than to consider myself 'rabble'. You wear that description if it fits. I'm a fellow artist
> with Pirsig. He is not my guru, though that seems to upset some people on this forum.
>
> Finally, in your other post you make much of "the path to Dynamic Quality is through self
> denial." Where is the self denial in enjoying a song on the radio? You've got it badly wrong
> here. Do I smell an unreconstructed puritan conscience behind your "I'm a lazy westerner I
> am"?
>
> John B
>
>
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