Hiya
3WD I'm with you all the way on this. But I think that you short-sell Pirsig in some ways
with his take on the hippies:
"Of these periods, the last two seem the most misunderstood. The Hippies have been
interpreted as frivolous spoiled children, and the period following their departure as a
"return to values," whatever that means. The Metaphysics of Quality, however, says
that's backward: the Hippie revolution was the moral movement. The present period is
the collapse of values"
Lila Ch. 24
The change brought about in the sixties that's epitomised by the hippies probably won't
be appreciated by many because of the fearful consequences. The late sixties was a
period of massive social change against an enormously repressed and repressive
pattern of Intellectual and Social patterns. These patterns had effectively destroyed any
advancement along a dynamic path.The hippies were the realization of a return to
dynamism and change but unfortunately the way of DQ is, for most, frightening - so the
movement had to be destroyed. Except that it wasn't completely destroyed - it just went
underground.
The repercussions are still with us and continue to exist with the social patterns that
were created 30 plus years ago. Civil rights movements, the 'drug culture', the music,
the art etc. still persist and grow stronger.
Additionally there is a new emerging culture based on the hippie/DQ value of freedom
which is epitomised in the free/open source software movement. Most of this was started
(and continued) by hippies and the children of hippies. The spread of the internet -
although created by the military - has also continued the return and resurgence of many
hippy values along with it's own civil rights (cyberspace) movement, drug culture, music
and arts.
You're completely correct in your assesment and Pirsigs role as a leader (although
maybe unwillng and/or unknowing) in this movement is important. You did forget to
mention his experience with peyote though and as the hallucinogenics were pivotal to
the hippy movement so was peyote pivotal to Pirsigs understanding of Quality.
But as I said much of what happened in the sixties probably won't be appreciated for
many years to come.
Horse
On 7 Aug 2002 at 17:38, 3dwavedave wrote:
> And another point about hippies, if the truth could be reconstructed I
> would wager that the "hippies" made Pirsig a best selling author. There
> would be not Lila without hippies. The demographic segment potentially
> open to his voice in America alone was 850,000 strong and when ZMM was
> published in1974, they had just awoken to the reality that the just
> because a position seemed morally "right" it did not assure that it
> would manifest "good". They were just waking up to reality and along
> comes ZaMM
>
> Think about it, the "hero" of Zen, Phaedrus, was the ultimate
> anti-establishmentarian.
>
> One of the principle hippy creads!
>
> American college dropout who sojourned to the East for enlightenment
> during his youth. Highly critical of the establishments of education,
> science, religion, philosophy who goes mad in the pursuit of the
> "better" way. Now after the big fight was lost (in the hippy case love,
> peace, and happiness) trying somehow pull the pieces together so that
> his son would not go down the same path to madness. The same thing they
> were doing.
>
> And he deified the same word, Freedom!
>
> Bob I'm think'n you were a hippy.
>
> 3WD
>
>
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