From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Sun Jul 20 2003 - 20:26:30 BST
Thanks David, I can't comment on your specific "local knowledge" examples,
but one reason for using the timeline format is precisely so I can overlay
"what else was going on around the subject at the time" type issues.
Ian
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
[mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk]On Behalf Of David Buchanan
Sent: 20 July 2003 19:32
To: 'moq_discuss@moq.org'
Subject: MD Biographical landscapes
Ian, Rick and all:
Ian said:
Thanks for the feedback Rick, creating them was certainly a chore, and their
value is as a framework from which to hang and link thoughts about the
subject. (For example, if I hadn't done this I would not have spotted
Richard Rorty's earlier encounter with the Hutchins Mob in Chicago, whose
chairman so
incensed Phaedrus.)
dmb says:
Thanks, Ian. The timeline is interesting. I'd like to offer some thoughts
that are such a tangent that it might even be a different topic, but it is
at least something like biographical info. I'm thinking of the cultural and
political landscape in which these events occured. The recently mentioned
rivalry between Dewey and the Chairman, for example, is one of those
apparently "little" facts that actually turns out to be pretty damn big.
I've always had an unspoken hunch about these things, but that bit a data
has encouraged me to say it out loud.
One doesn't have to know that the University of Chicago has a reputation for
being conservative, but it helps. One doesn't have to know that Dewey was
one of those liberal New Deal intellectuals, but it helps. No wonder they
were rivals! I can't exactly put my finger on it, but maybe you, dear
reader, will help with that. I'm thinking that the clash between the
chairman and Dewey tells lots about the world Pirsig was dealing with. There
is a vague sense that many of the main terms he develops along the way are
related to this rivalry. On the side of the chairman there is classic
quality, static quality, conservatism and that whole Aristotelian gang. On
the side of Dewy is romanitic quality, dynamic quality, liberalism and
Plato's gang. And it seems these two rivals were fighting it out within
Pirsig himself as well as the culture at large. That's how he could write a
culture bearing book, because his struggle was/is everybody's struggle. As I
said, there is only a vague sense about all this. We have to use additional
material about what was going on in the larger context, material not
explicitly found in Pirsig's writings, but are nevertheless widely known.
On even more of a tanget, I think its not unimportant to know something
about the landscape that he sails through in Lila. (Maybe Rick or other New
Yorkers will help here.) Its generally true, for example, that upstate New
York tends to be conservative. Rigel belongs in that part of the country.
But people tend to get increasingly liberal as one moves toward the New York
city, generally considered a very liberal and dynamic place. It doesn't hurt
to know this kind of stuff because as he sails down the Hudson he's talking
about Victorians and contrarians, about the conflict between social and
intellectual values, about the struggle between fascism and socialism and
all kinds of things that are related to the world he's moving through.
I've changed the subject line in case others want to go down this road.
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