Hullo Sam,
I always enjoy your posts but have too little time to reply to them. However
your post on marriage raises some fundamental issues about Pirsig's MOQ that
I really am interested in. I have just sent a message to Mike, in which I
said
"My real interest at present is the intersubjective realm, which Wilber
honours, and Pirsig either ignores, or denies, or mocks, in his metaphysics,
while unavoidably having to deal with it, both in life and in his novels. I
see the loss of community as an implied sub text in 'Lila', as the
loneliness theme comes up so often, and Pirsig deals with it so poorly."
You said "there is what I would call an 'individual' level which I would say
is not reducible to the biological or social", and I wholeheartedly agree. I
think Pirsig has a barren, mechanistic and sterile concept of the self.
You go on to say "However, a number of debates recently (and some old ones -
SOLAQI being the most obvious) revolve around the fourth level being
Intellectual in a much stricter fashion. That is, the Intellectual level is
concerned with the coming into being of a new *theory* or a new
understanding of the world
which allows for a more dynamic progression of ideas ... Pirsig ... would
appear to miss out something important".
Again I am totally in agreement. In ZMM Pirsig talks about working on the
motorcycle called oneself, but by Lila he has almost lost this orientation,
and has opted for the favourate solace of the intellectual, a metaphysics.
And when you read carefully the way the book evolved, it seems to me very
sad that when Pirsig went to talk to the Indians he found himself with
nothing to say, so retired to a Library to read anthropology, and then
emerged to do intellectual battle with the likes of Boas. He says "Whew!
What a job! ... This could fill a whole shelf full of books. A whole
corridor of shelves! ... There was a sense of relief though. Metaphysics was
an area of study that had interested him more than any other ... he had
finally landed in his own brier patch." (Lila Ch 5)
When Pirsig has Rigel say to 'the author', "you're one of the most isolated
individuals I have ever seen" (Ch 6), I feel the sentiment is apt. In ZMM
there are moments when contact occurs and humanity is strengthened, (I'm
thinking of when Chris, after thousands of miles riding behind his father is
allowed to take off his helmet and stand up and see the road ahead), whereas
I struggle to find much that is truly intersubjective in 'Lila'. Near the
end, when he finds Lila obviously insane on the boat holding the doll, he
says "He didn't know what he was going to do with her. Just listen to her
for a while, he supposed, and then figure it out. That's all he could do."
It's not much, but there is some respect evident. But really it just gives
him the opportunity to sermonise again on sanity and insanity in the next
chapter.
I actually see Pirsig's flight from contact to intellect as a pathology, and
it has caused me to re-examine how human contact and community are to be
understood, and presented in a way that can make sense in a post modern
world. So in a sense, I am seeking for an alternative to a theological basis
for honouring the quality that is to be found in human relationships.
However, I realise that a broad sense of 'theology', (perhaps Tillich's 'the
ground (depth) of being', or Buber's 'I -thou') comes very close to what I
am interested in. Wilber, of course, sees everything grounded in 'spirit',
and if the cruder religious connotations of that term are excluded, I have
no problem with it.
Which brings me to my other great interest at present, which is to examine
the intersubjective as interpreted by the mystics. Because I have great
problems with this too. Pirsig sees the big debate between the philosophers
of science, the mystics and the metaphysicians. (He seems totally to have
missed the whole linguistic strand in philosophy, and post modernism
generally.) He certainly accepts that scientism has not improved the quality
of our lives. Agreed. The mystics he sees as too precious, and outside the
mainstream of academic argument, which he really needs as an intellectual,
so he discards them, while making numerous concessions to their world view.
So he tends to treat them as worthy but a bit unreal. His preferred
intellectual realm in my view does little or nothing to advance community,
and if my reading of chapter 22 is correct, (and no one has bothered to take
up my challenge to refute it), then he actually slides into fascism of a
rather ugly variety.
As I read the mystics, broadly they seem in agreement with Hameed Ali's
words, "spiritual teachers rarely get involved with social reform. They
aren't aginst it, but they recognize that it will not solve the world's
problems since those problems are based on cognitive distortions." (Facets
of Unity, p 58) Although there is much truth in this, if my house caught on
fire I would much prefer that my neighbour rang the fire brigade rather than
reflect on the harmony evident in the rising smoke.
So while Wilber asserts a compatibility of mysticism with engagement in the
world, most mystics seem rather aloof. Self and others are equally suspect,
so ethics tends to collapse. When compassion is redefined as judging the
amount of 'truth' another can bear, then it seems to me something essential
gets lost, however much I agree with such a definition in the context of
therapy, for example. This is, of course, the same issue that caused Pirsig
to leave Benares Hindu University, and just 'give up'. So your words about
marriage, and "the level of the individual, their capacity to act in an
autonomous fashion and follow their own dynamic values (what used to be
called the soul)", seem very cogent to me.
John B
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