From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Mar 28 2003 - 22:33:11 GMT
Hi Rick,
I've looked at chapter nine again, and I can remember now why this chapter
turned me off when i first read it.
The first thing I noticed is that Pirsig has no problem identifying 'white'
with better. The Zuni had static values, but that great 'white' culture the
Brujo came in contact with, well, those weren't static values also, those
were dynamic values - pure betterness! Hooray for us, we are truly better
and shouldn't be afraid to say so, right?
The brujo was one of the first Zunis to come in contact with europeans, and
perhaps seeing the patterns of that culture made him unsatisfied with
aspects of his own. He was on the outs as a drunkard, even before he was
hung by his thumbs for the peeping tom incident. And I can understand why,
after the whites put the zuni leaders in jail, they gave up, broken. That
Pirsig is so sure that he made the Zunis better somehow by calling in our
calvary and playing up to our anthropolgist's values just sort of makes me
sick. Isn't it clear that there was no "Dynamic Quality" that he
discovered, there was simply a clash of two cultures (really between the
infinite number of static patterns that they comprised between them) and the
brujo just cried to the one that got him out of trouble? Dispicable
behavior. He killed the tribe as a living tribe, the powers of the priests
were broken, and all the tribe was after that was an empty shell of songs
and stories, now all just recounted as myths for our amusement. But we like
his voice and think he's cute, and he adopts our values, so we say he is
more dynamic and better.
I have more to say regarding your post, but I just wanted to get that in
now...
Johnny
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