Erin, Rick,
ERIN asked:
Do you remember where you read this?
>Also, support for this interpretation comes from his
>experience with the karmakaya (sp?) light. Until he was
>told about it, which I guess is a kind of social initiation,
>he hadn't seen it. Afterward, he started to.
It's in Lila, for sure, but I was doing this from memory and I'm not even
sure I'm remembering the right bit that I had in mind. I remember it ends
a chapter with "Tiger, tiger, burning bright"...Found it. Near the end of
chapter 26, p.387. It's Dharmakaya light, sorry. He even says, with a
bullseye: "The Dharmakaya light. That was a huge area of human experience
cut off by cultural filtering." This *really* bolsters the interpretation
that "observes", in the other quote, should be taken literally! Further
down he says that he thinks this light is a phenomena of nature (like the light from the sun is) and not a subjective quality: "In fact he was sure
it was grounded in physical reality." Then he says:
PIRSIG:
But nobody sees it because the cultural definition of what is real and
what is unreal filters out the Dharmakaya light from 20th century
American "reality" just as sure as time is filtered out of Hopi reality,
and green-yellow differences mean nothing to the Natchez.
I'm convinced. Of course, the other things he mentions about the Hopi and
the Natchez - the Sapir-Whorf research - has been discredited, and the
Dharmakaya light, despite what he thinks, is most likely a subjective
feature of the brain, related to his mental illness.
The Cleveland Harbour story precedes the Dharmakaya stuff.
On page 385 he talks about the "green flash" of the sun found in yachting
literature. This was the bit I intended to talk about in my last post and proceeded to mix up with the part about the Dharmakaya light. But it's all
relevant and it's even all in the same chapter, which I also didn't
remember. Concerning the "green flash", he says:
PIRSIG:
Yet all his life he had never seen it. The culture hadn't told him to so
he hadn't seen it. If he hadn't read that book on yachting he was quite
certain he would never have seen it.
"Valence" <valence10@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Hey Glenn and all,
>Great stuff Glenn. I have a couple of thoughts on it I'd like to run by
>you...
Thanks.
>
>PIRSIG
>> Our scientific description of nature is always culturally
>> derived. Nature tells us only what our culture predisposes
>> us to hear. The *selection* of which inorganic patterns to
>> observe and which to ignore is made on the basis of social
>> patterns of value, or when it is not, on the basis of
>> biological patterns of value.' (p 343, paperback)
>>
>GLENN
>> I was torn about how to interpret the word "observe".
>> Does by "observe" he mean "study" or does he mean it
>> literally, as if we are as good as blind without the social
>> patterns lighting the way.
>
>RICK
> I suggest Pirsig is using 'observe' as something closer to "study."
>
> The italics in the quote fall upon the very deliberate sounding
>"selection." He is emphasizing that this is an active process of
>'selection'. To further make this point, Pirsig juxtaposes "observe" with a
>deliberate sounding "ignore" rather than a more passive opposite (ie. 'not
>observe').
> If he meant that we were 'blind' to those patterns without social
>mediation I suspect he would have written something more like: "Which
>inorganic patterns are observed and which are unobserved is decided by
>social patterns of value."
I'd be tempted to agree with you before I re-read the Dharmakaya quote,
but not now. That's a real smoking gun, don't you think?
>
> Clearing up one more thing might help....
>
>GLENN (from earlier)
>Suppose a physicist selects for study the decay rate of plutonium, and she's
>funded by the government to build nuclear power plants. Clearly this is a
>selection made on the basis of a social pattern and Pirsig is correct about
>this.
>
>RICK
>Agreed...This selection is clearly made on the basis of a social pattern.
>
>GLENN
>Suppose another physicist selects for study the radiation emitted from
>quasars. Obviously a social pattern is not the basis for this selection
>because there is no social gain to knowing anything about quasars, and let's
>suppose he is funded to study anything he wants.
>
>RICK
>Ah... But a social pattern IS the basis for this selection, namely... the
>PHYSICIST! It is social patterns that make him a 'physicist' in the first
>place. Remember Glenn, the MOQ's 'social level' is not restricted to
>'government'. In an MOQ sense, the identity of that physicist is no less
>social a pattern than the government in the first example. The physicist is
>funded to study anything HE wants. And the "he" in "he wants" is a social
>pattern of value.
>
> Thus, either 'study' is socially mediated.
>
I considered this too, but rejected it. A person is a whole range of
patterns, and if the "he" is a physicist, that includes intellectual
patterns. But the key here is to find the kind of pattern that the
*selection* is most directly based on. There might be social factors that
turned him into a physicist (a cushy tenured university appointment), but
these don't typically select the inorganic patterns to study in the
course of a career. A physicist might be interested in studying any
number of physical phenomena. If he has no social pressures, he is free
to choose the one that is most intellectually stimulating. Anyway, that's
my take, but obviously not Pirsig's.
Glenn
--__________________________________________________________________ Your favorite stores, helpful shopping tools and great gift ideas. Experience the convenience of buying online with Shop@Netscape! http://shopnow.netscape.com/
Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:54 BST