In a message dated 4/16/02 3:09:52 PM GMT Daylight Time,
beasley@austarnet.com.au writes:
<< Pirsig tends to hold the view that communication between people is actually
impossible, as several times he says this in Lila (See especially the end of
Ch 22). This is actually a valid conclusion if you go along with
deconstructionism. >>
Hello John,
I have just read your posting from which the above has been taken with much
interest.
There is so much in the posting i should like to discuss, but my time is
limited at the moment!
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To save your time, if you wish to just read the conclusion of my posting,
here it is:
The deconstructionalist enterprise of privileging the material has little to
do with this.
Deconstructionalsim is itself a post-modern irony in that it's proponents are
idealists.
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Postmodernism.
This is the process whereby Intellectual patterns 'eat' all patterns below
the intellectual level.
By eating in this way, Intellectual patterns privilege their own status as
being at the cutting edge of evolution.
The crap, to extend the metaphor, is all the books with, 'Postmodernism' in
the title one finds in libraries and shops around the world. Also, the
products of postmodernism like ironic novels that are not novels but lists of
their authors' favourite CD's; extended arguments for the materiality of
communication by idealists, etc.
Before the Intellect could more fully digest lower patterns the process was
modernism.
There are lists of favourite CD's and these lists are empirical awareness of
quality.
The shift from modernism to postmodernism is a shift from truth to
relativism; it's happened before: the renaissance was a shift from the truth
of dark age scholasticism to the relativism of a cultural flourishing which
explored new science and art; the security of truth was being challenged
every day.
Those who may wish to suggest that postmodernism is nihilistic may be those
who find it difficult to undergo the ongoing paradigm shift?
These people may experience the dissonance of having one foot in each
paradigm so to speak, or to experience a dislocation of feeling they are
moving between paradigms?
(This may help to explain the post-modern value of irony?)
As will always be the case, quality produces experience, and the
interpretation of experience may be couched in truth terms or in relative
terms.
Pirsig's help is in showing us we may also, as a more fundamental alternative
to oscillating between truth and relativism, be aware of quality.
I believe this may explain why many MOQers continue to disagree with one
another: many argue about the truth or relativism of quality; some find
quality to be a source of truth, while others find quality to be a source of
reference, whereas quality produces both.
The characters in Lila fail to communicate because they are the products of
quality.
Products of quality hold an evolutionary relationship to each other.
In rather the same way you would experience difficulty communicating with a
West African gorilla, Rigel finds it rather difficult to communicate with
Lila, (social patterns/biological patterns).
Phaedrus also finds it difficult to communicate with Rigel, (Intellectual
patterns/social patterns.)
As for Phaedrus communicating with you or I?
That depends upon whether you value truth (absolute), relativism (situation),
or quality.
The deconstructionalist enterprise of privileging the material has little to
do with this.
Deconstructionalsim is itself a post-modern irony in that it's proponents are
idealists.
All the best,
Squonk.
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