-----Original Message-----
From: Donald H Crawford Jr <dhc@acsu.buffalo.edu>
To: moq_discuss@moq.org <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Date: Friday, October 09, 1998 6:50 PM
Subject: MD Levels of Quality
>Hi, Don:
you said:
>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.
yes, don, i felt the same way about his seeming inability to interact
intimately with his son. however, i thought the son was also suffering from
manic-depression and saw it as a two way street.
you also said:
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,
>
it is sad indeed...and it confirms that one may be intellectually gifted and
yet lack a high emotional and interpersonal IQ. it may be that this acute
introversion may have triggered Pirsig's decline into madness. although, in
his Lila he explains it by creating a new way of looking at reality which
is, after all, what insanity is.
lithien
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