ANGUS: Yes, he's a bit Darwinian or even Hegelian about
teleology. I have no opinion about it. Why is it
important to you?
ERIN: Okay in ZAMM he seems to explore the struggle/repression of this
technology/ death force that the "romantic couple" had. Personally I think
that these characters were superficial and flat. It wasn't until LILA that his
treatment of this view was much more in depth.
Sometimes that makes me think that he had made the opposite mistake
(repression/struggle/whatever) of instead of demonizing technology he had
deified it and demonized nature. I think that LILA was superior because he
explored both the problems of demonizing/deifying both technology and nature.
I don't think the book was about coming to terms with a one night stand -- if
I had to give a one word summary it would be FUSION.
PIRSIG about "their" problem:
"It's all of technology they can't take. And then all sorts of things started
tumbling into place and I knew that was it. Sylvia's irritation at a friend
who thought computer programming was ``creative.'' All their drawings and
paintings and photographs without a technological thing in them. Of course
she's not going to get mad at that faucet, I thought. You always suppress
momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate. Of course John
signs off every time the subject of cycle repair comes up, even when it is
obvious he is suffering for it. That's technology. And sure, of course,
obviously. It's so simple when you see it. To get away from technology out
into the country in the fresh air and sunshine is why they are on the
motorcycle in the first place. For me to bring it back to them just at the
point and place where they think they have finally escaped it just frosts both
of them, tremendously. That's why the conversation always breaks and freezes
when the subject comes up.
Other things fit in too. They talk once in a while in as few pained words as
possible about ``it'' or ``it all'' as in the sentence, ``There is just no
escape from it.'' And if I asked, ``From what?'' the answer might be ``The
whole thing,'' or ``The whole organized bit,'' or even ``The system.'' Sylvia
once said defensively, ``Well, you know how to cope with it,'' which puffed me
up so much at the time I was embarrassed to ask what ``it'' was and so
remained somewhat puzzled. I thought it was something more mysterious than
technology. But now I see that the ``it'' was mainly, if not entirely,
technology. But, that doesn't sound right either. The ``it'' is a kind of
force that gives rise to technology, something undefined, but inhuman,
mechanical, lifeless, a blind monster, a death force. Something hideous they
are running from but know they can never escape. I'm putting it way too
heavily here but in a less emphatic and less defined way this is what it is.
Somewhere there are people who understand it and run it but those are
technologists, and they speak an inhuman language when describing what they
do. It's all parts and relationships of unheard-of things that never make any
sense no matter how often you hear about them. And their things, their monster
keeps eating up land and polluting their air and lakes, and there is no way to
strike back at it, and hardly any way to escape it."
ANGUS:
Anyway, the poor fools
>(me included) on this list try to figure the MOQ out
>while Pirsig adds NOTHING to it. Isn't that strange?
>Where is Pirsig? LILA is a sort of performance art
>joke: create a metaphysics that poor sops (me
>included) can't understand and watch them worship it
>on the internet. It's like the movie Being There, or
>George Bush. Let the projections of the people create
>who you are. If Pirsig is not consciously in on his
>own joke, I'd be sadly disappointed. He takes himself
>way too seriously otherwise.
ERIN" I don't think he takes himself too seriously but I don't think he is out
ther laughing at us either. He probably just trying to help US not take Pirsig
or MOQ too seriously.
PIRSIG "I've kept out of online discussions, because, as I say, children have
to make it on their own. But there's another reason that relates to the
distinction between philosophers and philosophologists. People sometimes ask
who my favorite philosopher is and I answer, just to jog them out of the usual
philosophological rut into the idea that real philosophy is not a set of fixed
stale systems of ideas but rather a kind of creative activity: 'Abraham
Lincoln.' Lincoln was a creative philosopher. My favorite quotation from him
was that he liked to take an idea and bound it on the North and bound it on
the East and on the South and on the West, just to see how far it goes.
Lincoln was a surveyor in his early years and I think he used the word 'bound'
in the old surveyor's sense. "
Be Whole and Yonder,
Erin
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