From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Oct 21 2005 - 13:38:02 BST
> [Arlo]
> Oh yes, I am certain he did. But the originating momenet, the "germ kernal"
> moment, if you will, that the underlying thesis was revealed, was in the
> peyote ritual. No ritual, likely no MOQ.
>
> You can tell me all you want about the rational, back-end work that Pirsig
> did, and I'd agree, but it still doesn't change that it's very, very clear
> that this peyote experience precipitated the foundational aspects to
> Pirsig's entire thesis. This one psychedelic experience deveiled reality
> and opened Pirsig's mind to what would later be formulated as the MOQ.
>
> I suggest you, Platt, read that whole thing again. But, just in case you
> missed it, here is a section from Ant's post.
>
> "...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…"
>
> Couldn't have gone that distance without the peyote. That's it right there,
> amigo. Psyedelic revelation. Certainly one that post-session was given a
> lot of rational work, but the origin, the source, the Quality moment...
> well, Pirsig makes that clear.
You can think that the MOQ is based on a hallucination if you wish, but at
the end of the chapter on his peyote experience Pirsig summed it up by
writing:
"And as Phaedrus's studies got deeper and deeper he saw that it was to
this conflict between European and Indian values, between freedom and
order, that his study should be directed." (Lila,3)
No major insight, just a "study" of the conflict between freedom and
order. The great breakthrough came later after weeks of thinking about the
brujo in Zuni story when he made his seminal first cut -- Dynamic and
static Quality. That first cut launched the entire structure of the
metaphysics that followed. "In any hierarchy of metaphysical
classification the most important division is the first one, for this
division dominates everything beneath it." (Lila, 9)
> And on to the other day's business...
>
> But, again, do you think most people question the source of their beliefs?
> You've already said you feel most people don't question th source of their
> morals, and that such non-questioning doesn't imply stupidity. How comes
> when I say it, you always reply with the whole "stupid peons" rhetorical
> tactic?
For the life of me I can't fathom what your hang up is. If you want me to
say I don't think you think people are stupid, OK, I'll say it. Arlo
doesn't think people are stupid. Satisfied? He just thinks they buy junk
from Walmart.
.
> Getting back to the whole premise, Pirsig realized there was a defect in
> the culture that prevented real appreciation or attunement to Quality. His
> solution was to expand (or enrich) the dialogue by giving people a means by
> which they could better live. ZMM was founded on the idea that 100 years of
> SOMist thinking lead to "junk" in the production and consumption of things
> because no one had any way to talk about Quality. I agree with that. And I
> see no evidence that now suddenly, despite the MOQ not being universally
> accepted, people suddenly have the means they lacked 50 years ago. If they
> do, where'd they get it? Or did they have it all along and Pirsig was wrong
> to think as he did?
As I've said, I see one man's junk as another's treasure. I don't think
Pirsig's goal in life was to rid the marketplace of what he considered to
be junk as if he was a Lord High Commissioner of quality products. In fact
the admitted quality can't be defined. His goal was to offer a rational
basis of morality whose highest value is freedom -- in the marketplace and
elsewhere.
Platt
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