Marco,
Thanks for the insight. Your contributions are always welcome.
"You are not good People, you are Good, in the form of people..."
Undoubtedly, this is what Pirsig was saying, however, it's not problem
free. Good's traditional meaning must be completely shed as it can now be
applied to absolutely everyone and everything regardless of whether those
things are in fact "good(adj)". I reiterate what I wrote to Erin several
posts ago...
from 12/29/01---
"This interpretation is taken to a sublimely silly height when Pirsig
tries to extrapolate it to give new meaning to the comments made by Indians
after hearing that Phaedrus was good friend of Dusenberry, they say, "He was
a GOOD man." Pirsig quips: "The Indians didn't see man as an object to whom
the adjective 'good' may or may not be applied. When the Indians used it
they meant good is the whole center of experience and that Dusenberry, in
his nature, was an embodiment or incarnation of this center of life." Thus,
if "good" is being used not as a description of Dusenberry, but rather, in
the fashion that Pirsig describes, then the fact that Dusenberry was kind to
Indians and helped them out was irrelevant to the use of the word. Had
Phaedrus shown up and said that he was a good friend of General Custer, the
Indians presumably would have said the same thing, since Custer was, just as
much as Dusenberry, an "embodiment or incarnation of this center of life."
If not, and if the use of the word is dependant on the character of the
person in question, then it's a description... an adjective. If so, and the
character of the person in question is irrelevant to the use of the word,
then 'good' has lost its meaning as it can be equally applied to anyone from
Hitler and Bin Laden to Gandhi and Martin Luther King."
If Pirsig means what you say he does (and I believe 100% that he does),
he hasn't actually expanded the meaning of the word "good" at all; Not one
bit!!! Rather, he has created a homonym, a word that is spelled and
pronounced like another word, but completely distinct in meaning. Pirsig's
'Good' (the groundstuff of the universe) and the traditionally defined
'Good' (the adjective and its related noun) have no more in common than
'wake' (an Irish funeral) and 'wake' (the trail of a
boat) ---[best example I could come up with on short notice]. The are
spelled and pronounced alike, but that's where the similarities end....
Pirsig could have used any word, or made up any word, the fact that he
choose the letters 'g-o-o-d' looks to be a coincidence as his definition
seems to have absolutely nothing to do with good(adj).
Be traditionally Good(adj), because you can't help being Pirsig's Good(n),
rick
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