Jamie, Roger and all:
I don't mean to ignore the other threads, but its impossible to resist
new participants with fresh questions. I gotta try.
Like Roger, I'm not at all sure what Jamie's thesis is about. But the
questions all point in a certain direction and hopefully I can see what
they're getting at. The classic/romantic split is all but abandoned in
LILA, as Roger described, but Pirsig doesn't contradict himself so much
as expands and clarifies the ideas in ZMM. He wrote LILA because, as he
put it, you can't have a metaphysics that consists of just one word;
Quality. I guess its not really necessary to go through a whole new
metaphysical system to address the issues of rhetoric, although it
wouldn't hurt. Until then...
The word "techne" seems like a good place to start. Pirsig uses it to
point out that the difference between art and technology wasn't always
as distinct as it is in our time. He uses it to point out that the
classic/romantic split has not always existed. He takes us back to a
time and culture where creativity was creativity and it didn't matter if
one were making a wagon wheel or carving a sculpture. In the same way,
he points out in LILA that the words "rhetoric", "write" and "right" are
all descendents of the Sanskrit "Rht", which could mean technically
correct or morally proper or even both at the same time. Its a bit of a
strech, but one could almost say that the classic/romantic split is
portrayed as a difference in personality, taste and style. They're two
ways of looking at the world. But in Lila Pirsig says, hey, this is
bigger than I thought. Its not just about turning my artsy fartsy
friends on to the joys of engine repair, this Quality thing is about the
very structure and meaning of the universe. Like I said, its an
exaggeration. The truth is that Pirsig's metaphysical system can be seen
in both books.
Picture the moving train. Remember that image? If I understand it
correctly the cutting edge at the front of the train represents Quality.
It is the point where PRE-INTELLECTUAL REALITY IS DIRECTLY EXPERIENCED.
What follows behind in the box cars are what is left in the wake of that
cutting edge. Those box cars are full of all the "things" we learned
from that direct experience. Again, LILA is a huge expansion and this
epistemological idea is enlarged into an evolutionary cosmology. In the
second book the pre-intellectual reality in called Dynamic Quality and
is the creative force behind the evolution of everything, not just
biological life and paintings. You could say that LILA has the box cars
full of all phenomenal reality, all known or knowable things. Even
individual persons and the fabric of time and space itself are made of
the stuff in the box cars. This is static Quality. But, hey, you're just
trying to get that thesis done.
Roger analogy of echos in the canyon underscores the primacy of the
original experience. It portrays the echos as a dim reverberation of the
real thing. And this is apt because Pirsig says the train's cutting
edge, or Dynamic Quality, is the PRIMARY EMPIRICAL REALITY. The edge is
where its at. The front of that train is not only where the creative
people like to be, its the point of creation itself. Using LILA language
we'd say that the Romantic is more Dyanamic. The Romantic is more
creative and more open to direct experience. And the Classically minded
are more concerned with static quality, its correct form and structure.
They emphasize what has been learned from experience and appreciate its
value.
I've a friend who teaches English and Literature at a small college and
he also writes fiction. He describes the first draft in composition as
an act of vomiting. "Just puke it up", he says. In spite of the gruesome
image he uses, he's talking about Dynamic Quality. He realizes that the
creative process can't really be constrained by the rules of spelling
and grammer. That comes later, as Jamie pointed out. That's when the
Classical mechanic gets busy to make sure the thing really works.
But we hope that there is an artist and a scientist inside each of us.
And in LILA Pirsig essentially says that we are composed of static
quality and that's good, but we are only free and alive to the extent
that we are open to that cutting edge. We see this conclusion in both
books. In zmm the resolution occurs as their helmuts are removed and the
re-united father and son speed down the road feeling all the wind and
hearing all the noises that were previously muffled. At the end of LILA
Pirsig leaves the hurricane filled rivers and lakes and sails out into
the great wide Ocean. In both cases we get this sense of freedom and
open-ness. I don't even remember if there was ever a mention of any
destinations ahead. Trains, bikes and boats. Whatever. Just keep it
moving.
David B.
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