I'd like to comment on this:
"While I agree that Pirsig didn't make such a good job of defining the social
level of his metaphysics, he didn't make the mistake of confusing social
values with an agregate of individual organisms. As you'll remember, each
level is made of patterns of values, but those values are NOT the same.
Inorganic values are different from biological, social or intellectual
values. These are four very distinct worlds, only linked at each stage of
development by a thin thread of "machine code". DNA for I/B, nervous system
for B/S, Language for S/Int (last two are proposed by me). In every case,
the machine code is capable of creating, preserving and passing on data,
every time at a higher level (cellular organisation, behaviours, concepts).
The Giant is not an agregate of organisms, but an agregate of complex
behaviours, run on (but not composed of) organisms, to continue the
hardware/software analogy.
I agree that Pirsig is so vague about what constitutes a society that he
probably compounds buildings, organisations, technologies, mythologies and
laws into the whole mess of what he defines (or rather, vaguely hints at) as
"social patterns of values". But he does not say that they are the sum of
the organisms that compose them. Only that the preservation of social
patterns is morally superior to the selfish desires of the organisms that
support (and not "compose") them. I agree with him on that point (always
with the caveat of preserving the lower
level, of course)."
I beleive that R. Pirsig clearly states that LILA is NOT the MOQ, and that he EXPECTED to be critiquied over what he had to say. I beleive he either states or implies at some point that his endless (all-be-it, HIGHELY interesting) ramblings in LILA are just that - ramblings, and that what is in LILA is not to be interpreted as MOQ. When MOQ is released (we hope and pray soon) then I feel we can debae how 'vague', biassed, unobjective, or whatever else Pirsig is being in the MOQ. Until then we can simply interpret the ramblings of a Buddhist that had stong Objectistic viewpoints that lead him to, in essence, destroy his personal life in a neverending quest for Metaphysical and philosphic truths. (Personally, I'm inclined to think that anyone who contumplates reality in American society will at some point, at least for a time, go through what Robert has - and infact that there is hardly enough compassion expressed for him here, but that has little baring on what my point is here)
Who argees with me?
Jae
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