From: Ant McWatt (antmcwatt@hotmail.co.uk)
Date: Thu Aug 18 2005 - 20:33:46 BST
Platt Holden stated August 18th :
Hi Ant,
Let’s cut to the chase.
You claimed:
>Anyway, I can tell you now that Pirsig’s experience with peyote
>(around 1960) was the catalyst for the ideas that underlie the MOQ. I know
>it makes you feel uncomfortable (undermining some of your social values
>that “psychedelics are bad”) but it’s an historical fact about the
>philosophical system that you know and love so much.
What evidence can you offer?
Ant McWatt comments:
Platt,
I’m quite surprized you need to be shown evidence “that Pirsig’s experience
with peyote (around 1960) was the catalyst for the ideas that underlie the
MOQ” but as it’s you (and as my ballroom dancing lessons haven’t been booked
yet), here is some evidence which supports this contention:
Firstly, note Ian Glendinning’s “Biographical Timeline of Robert Pirsig” at
http://www.psybertron.org/timeline.html which clearly states:
“Latest version December 2004. Updated with significant corrections and
additions from correspondence with Robert Pirsig.”
AND
“Spring 60 - Bob attends a Northern Cheyenne “peyote” session on Busby
reservation (Lame Deer, Montana) with Verne Dusenberry, his first pursuit of
Indian Anthropology. (Lila p38)(Lila p465)”
(Note that this date has been corrected since Ian first put his timeline on
the Internet. As Dusenberry is dead, the most likely person who would have
corrected it is therefore Pirsig himself.)
==========================
So, firstly, it is clear that Pirsig did in fact take peyote in Spring 1960
(and has also confirmed this to me in private correspondence).
Secondly, note Pirsig’s comment at lecture given at the Association of
Humanistic Psychology Conference Berkeley, June 1993:
“I’ve been on this MOQ road for thirty-three years now and things that seem
enormously clear to me just baffle other people sometimes and I may have
made a lot of omissions in what I’ve written in LILA and these omissions are
deeply angering to a lot of people who are genuinely trying to figure out
what I’m saying...”
1993 minus 33 years equals 1960 - the year that Pirsig first took peyote. A
coincidence? No, because the account of this peyote meeting in chapter 3 of
LILA Pirsig confirms that the central Dynamic (Freedom) – static (order)
division underpinning the MOQ was thought of that Spring evening. As can be
seen from reading the following extracts carefully:
==============================
Behind the index card for the “PEYOTE” slips was another card called
“RESERVATION.” There were more than a hundred “RESERVATION” slips
describing that ceremony Dusenberry and Phædrus attended-way too many.
Most would have to be junked. He’d made them because at one time it looked
as though the whole book would center around this long night’s meeting of
the Native American Church. THE CEREMONY WOULD BE A KIND OF SPINE TO HOLD
IT ALL TOGETHER. FROM IT HE WOULD BRANCH OUT AND SHOW IN TANGENT AFTER
TANGENT THE ANALYSIS OF COMPLEX REALITIES AND TRANSCENDENTAL QUESTIONS THAT
FIRST EMERGED IN HIS MIND THERE…
Phædrus couldn’t have gone that distance without the peyote. He would have
just sat there “observing” all this “objectively” like a well-trained
anthropology student. But the peyote prevented that. He didn’t observe, he
participated, exactly as Dusenberry had intended he should do…
The “good” analytic side, just watched, and before long it slowly began to
spin an enormous symmetrical intellectual web, larger and more perfect than
any it had ever spun before…
The web grew wider and wider. The [Indians] were not imitating. If there’s
one
thing these people didn’t do it was imitate. Everything was coming straight
from the heart. That seemed to be the whole idea-to get things down to a
point where everything’s coming straight on, direct, no imitation. But if
they weren’t imitating, why did they talk this way? Why were they
imitating?
THEN THE HUGE PEYOTE ILLUMINATION CAME:
They’re the originators! It expanded until he felt as though he had walked
through the screen of a movie and for the first time watched the people who
were projecting it from the other side. MOST OF THE REST OF THE WHOLE TRAY
OF SLIPS, MANY MORE THAN A THOUSAND OF THEM BEFORE HIM HERE, WAS A DIRECT
GROWTH FROM THIS ONE ORIGINAL INSIGHT.
The slips went on and on detailing European and Indian cultural differences
and their effects, and as the slips had grown in number a secondary,
corollary thesis had emerged: that this process of diffusion and
assimilation of Indian values is not over. It’s still with us, and
accounts for much of the restlessness and dissatisfaction found in America
today. Within each American these conflicting sets of values still clash…
But the clash between European and Indian values still exists, and Phædrus
felt he himself was one of those in whom the battle was taking place. That
was why he had the feeling of “coming home” at that peyote meeting. The
division he’d felt within himself and thought was something wrong with
himself was not within himself at all. What he was seeing was a source of
“himself” that had never been formally acknowledged. It was a division
within the entire American culture that he had projected upon himself. It
was in many others too…
It’s still the central internal conflict in America today. It’s a fault
line, a discontinuity that runs through the center of the American cultural
personality. It’s dominated American history from the beginning and
continues to be a source of both national strength and weakness today. AND
AS PHÆDRUS’ STUDIES GOT DEEPER AND DEEPER HE SAW THAT IT WAS TO THIS
CONFLICT BETWEEN EUROPEAN AND INDIAN VALUES, BETWEEN FREEDOM [I.E. THE
DYNAMIC] AND ORDER [I.E. THE STATIC], THAT HIS STUDY SHOULD BE DIRECTED.
=====================================
However, having shown that the above quotes support my contention (about
peyote being the catalyst for the ideas that underlie the MOQ), I must also
emphasise that psychedelics need to be handled with great care and respect -
especially the stronger ones such as LSD and peyote which can’t be mentally
“switched off” like psilocybin mushrooms. This is emphasised by Hofmann in
“LSD - My Problem Child” and also Pirsig, who noted the following about
peyote to me (from the end of last year):
“It does tend to reveal Dynamic Quality by blocking static intellectual
patterns but you need those patterns to keep from harm. People on peyote go
walking in front of oncoming cars and get killed because they think they are
one with God and no harm can come to them. The static patterns that were
blocked would have prevented that. In the American Indian ritual a guard
who does not take peyote is posted outside the teepee to prevent anyone from
wandering off by himself. They know what can happen.”
.
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