Fri, 30 Oct 1998 Richard Budd wrote to Lithien:
> What I'm thinking about now is when and how
> members of our society are inducted into SOM. I remember someone making a
> post about rearranging an encyclopedia and planning a school curriculum
> around the ideas of the MoQ. After reading this I started wondering where
> exactly in early education the ideas of SOM are first introduced. I mean,
> obviously there was no day when you came into school and the teacher said,
> "Okay class today were going to learn about subject/object metaphysics and
> why you're an isolated observer of the world around you." Sure there were
> some lesson about scientific method, but the method is just as compatible
> with the MoQ as it is with SOM......
Hi Rick , Lithien and Squad
Excuse me for butting into your discussion, but the above by Rick was
so interesting that I simply must add a few words. You are d...
right, the so-called Subject-Object metaphysics is not part of any
syllabus, and you won't find the manuscript for the "Principia
SOMalis" in the vaults of the British Museum or the Congress Library
(see David Thomas' essay "Strawdog bites Strawman"). To most people
the S-O division is unknown, it's better known as the mind-matter
split and considered so fundamental that no induction is necessary:
it comes with "the mother's milk" as we say in Norway.
A metaphysics (in the way we treat it here) is the most basic notion
there is so to initiate a metaphysical change is quite a feat: much
like Baron von Münchausen who lifted himself and the horse out of a
bog by his own hair. This is the funny version, the other one is of
madness, simply jumping out at the five thousand fathom depth as
Kierkegaard says. I have compared it to the Copernican cosmological
shift and it is the best simile yet to demonstrate the enormity of it
all.
To Medieval man the earth was all of reality, the firmament; sun,
moon, stars, everything were just background for the earth. IT WAS
THE S O M OF THAT ÆRA; something so obvious that one did not
question it. The Copernican revolution inverted all this and
the impact upon humankind's self-picture was enormous; it still
haunts us, but the proofs for its correctness were so overwhelming
that no authority could deny it. I consider the present a similar
shift, but of still greater proportions.
The circles-within-circles constructed to keep the SOM going is
just as fictious, and the Quality inversion as revolutionary, but it
all takes place at a field not trodden by many: there's no
philosophical Tycho Brahe who had amassed astronomical data that
after Compernicus suddenly fitted, no "Galileo" who can demonstrate
the philosophical equivalent of Jupiter's moons. The present day
philosophers (I shudder even calling them so) are the SOM cardinals,
completely uninterested in looking into Pirsig's work.
For Lithien: You once asked me if one has to turn mad to understand
the MOQ. No, no longer, once the new platform outside of SOM was
established it's nothing more than a little unsteady feeling shifting
standpoint, but for poor Phaedrus of ZMM it was more risky and I often
wonder what made him step out into the no-man's land? Will we ever
know? Does he know himself?
There's discussion what is best: ZMM or LILA? IMHO Pirsig could
have gotten away with the first as a masterpiece and a status
much like JD Salinger, embraced by all as a great work of art,
he had not committed himself with clear-cut assertions as he did in
LILA. Just consider: For seventeen years he plugged away at
explaining a system that he did not have an inkling if anyone would
understand at all, throwing to the wolves all ambiguity of the ZMM
that could be interpreted to fit everyone's favourite taste. Well,
now there is an Internet discussion going like wildfire while the
those who praised the ZMM are silent.
I better get down from my soap box now. :-)
Bodvar
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