I've been following the discussion group for the past 10 days or so and
have decided to give a post a whirl. I studied ZMM about 15-20 years ago,
reading it eventually about 3 times. The Romantic/Classic dichotomy seemed
a stretch to me, although I was fascinated by the motorcycle travelogue
and the identity crisis of Phaedrus. I was bothered by what I perceived
as low quality responses by Phaedrus to his son and his traveling
partners. Fast forward 17 years and we have from Pirsig the incredible
book Lila. I was astounded by the huge increase in explanatoriness of his
revised and elaborated metaphysics of quality, the hallmarks of which are
the DQ/SQ concept and the 4 levels. I believe it to be an incredible
work, much superior conceptually to ZMM. What strikes me as the same,
however, is the low quality of the social responses by Pirsig's character,
in this case to Lila in particular, but also Rigel. He was unable to
engage in social reciprocity, making instead blunt, non-empathic, and
perhaps even uninterested comments to them. He is like Lila in that
neither has much social quality. And while they may have found a
compatibility on a biological level, at least for a short time, Phaedrus
mostly stays in his comfort zone, in his very strong intellectual mode.
This leads to poor outcomes in all of the social interactions in the
story. I found this low social quality a bit sad in both books, but the
ideas! are incredibly valuable. Don Crawford
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