As for the ZMM vs. LILA debate I have to stay on the side of ZMM with only
the comment that I think LILA might have been far more comprehensive if it
had been written by "Phaedrus" (if you know what I mean). Not that I don't
love LILA but... ah it doesn't really matter anyway- this is a discussion
not a fan club (although I am wondering what ever happened to Redford's
movie).
As for the where does SOM come into play.... First off, Bodvar, there is
no need to apologize for entering, your input is always fascinating and
more than welcomed. I was thinking along the lines of the Copernican
Revolution myself- I had once explained it to friend like this "Imagine one
day someone tells you that you are going to go to different town, you are
going on a trip. To take you on this voyage we will use a magic box called
a "train". The way the magic box works is that you sit inside and it pulls
the landscape past itself. You get into the train and the journey starts.
You look out the window and just as you were told, you see the landscape
being pulled right past the window. Eventually someone comes along and
tells you that in fact it is the train that's moving, not the landscape.
They explain to you that it would be silly to think the landscape was being
pulled and bring up the contradictions involved (like what would happen if
one train passed another). Now you look out the window and (of course) you
still see the exact same thing that you saw before, only now you have a
whole new understanding of it and why it's happening."
The implications here are slightly confusing. What would most likely
happen in that after being corrected you would look out the window and
still believe that the landscape was moving, despite what you've been told.
You probably couldn't help it. On top of that, if everyone else on the
train still believed that the landscape was moving you question what
advantage the new understanding brings to you if it "changes" nothing at
all and only separates you from the rest of the passengers.
Using this idea, no matter how compelling the MoQ ideas are we will never
be doing more than preaching to the converted. I doubt whether any school
ciriculum or new encyclopedia could change the minds of a whole society
(especially as you said, without proof like exists in astronomy). Imagine
Copernicus and Galileo preaching their ideas without proof, they didn't
even do so well with proof.
I guess that leaves us exactly where we are- letting each person convert
them self - one at a time.
RIck
At 02:28 PM 11/2/98 +0000, you wrote:
>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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