From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 14 2005 - 20:20:28 BST
MSH, Reiner, Scott, Ham, All,
>However, my thinking is that such a transcendent source is
>inaccessible to us via scientific and even philosophical
>investigation. I think Pirsig would agree with this, which is why,
>in ZMM, he simply states that Quality is the source, making no
>attempt to prove it.
One of my favorite parts from ZMM is: "In our highly complex organic state
we advanced organisms respond to our environment with an invention of many
marvelous analogues. We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans,
gods, music, arts, language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and
science. We call these analogues reality. And they are reality. We
mesmerize our children in the name of truth into knowing that they are
reality. We throw anyone who does not accept these analogues into an insane
asylum. But that which causes us to invent the analogues is Quality.
Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to
create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.
Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it
within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That is why
Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something
less than Quality itself."
He continues to explain: "Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented
by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is
an understanding of what they themselves are. You know something and then
the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define the Quality stimulus,
but to define it all you've got to work with is what you know. So your
definition is made up of what you know. It's an analogue to what you
already know. It has to be. It can't be anything else. And the mythos grows
this way. By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is a building of
analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the collective
consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it."
Let me highlight Pirsig's word "analogues". In his later conversation with
the Chairman, Pirsig recalls: Since the One is the source of all things and
includes all things in it, it cannot be defined in terms of those things,
since no matter what thing you use to define it, the thing will always
describe something less than the One itself. The One can only be described
allegorically, through the use of analogy, of figures of imagination and
speech. Socrates chooses a heaven-and-earth analogy, showing how
individuals are drawn toward the One by a chariot drawn by two horses."
The Chairman, and the dialecticians, are unable to see this. Phaedrus, the
rhetoritician and Sophist, is able to see this. This leads directly to the
rhetorical "knock-down" of "All this is just an analogy".
Above the doors to every church, every synagogue, every mosque, every
university, every museum, should hang these words: "All this is just an
analogy". If THAT were understood, we'd be well on our way to true
MOQ-progress.
Arlo
PS: Pirsig reveals his semiotic inclinations when he says of the analogies:
"These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind.
Every last bit of it." Indeed, I couldn't think of a more terse definition
in I had to. Nor could one find a better starting point for examining the
"invisible coercive" force of considering these analogues to be "truth".
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