From: Brian_Pillion@brown.edu
Date: Fri Nov 07 2003 - 18:56:49 GMT
hello all, this is my first post to this site. i read zamm for the first time two weeks ago, after having given it to my sister as a gift some two and a half years ago. i quickly read lila after that. i was happy to find mention of this website in pirsig's commentary in my edition of zamm, and while i've been able to read several of the reviews and some commentary, the sheer volume of it on the site makes it tough to get through anywhere near all of it.
these books both seemed to hit me in the exact right spot, tying together a lot of the thoughts i've had over the last couple years. i am now currently in the process of trying to formulate my undergraduate concentration around some of the ideas of the MoQ, particularly the potential of the arts in re-establishing the mystic perspective within the academy and society at large.
all that being said, i had some thoughts and questions that i hoped some people might be able to address. i'm sorry if they may be re-hashing things previously discussed and/or hard to digest. any commentary would be greatly appreciated.
1) in zamm, pirsig seems to view the change that took place in regards to arete around plato and aristotle as the subordination of dynamic quality so as to elevate the SOM means of approaching the world. while societies prior to this most certainly had their own science and significant scientific developments, the depth of scientific inquiry that came out of the greek tradition seems to be due to the devotion of the field to the SOM almost as a sort of intellectual level religion. i'm curious as to whether greater moral value would then be seen in the cultures before Greece which maintained a more MoQ directed approach, and how that would apply to the moral results of European imperialist expansion.
2) in ch. 24 of lila pirsig jumps through a great deal of MoQ-based explanation of recent history. this chapter probably gave me the most problems of any in the book. I was struck by his only mentioning the conflict between different levels of static patterns, and not noting possible areas of agreement. I think that on each level of development there seems to build a sort of tension between freedom and order. the need for order is what puts the static patterns into place, the need for freedom, or dynamic quality, is what ultimately springs forward the next level. yet with each level, especially the subject-based static patterns, there seems to be the possibility to return and address the need for value of the previous level. thus intellectualism has as a responsibility not only to put into place the highest possible level of social static value, but also biological value. pirsig spoke of a colleague who lived in an area with gang problems. while a direct extension of!
intellect may not solve a gang problem, intellect can be applied to creating more stable social structre, in addition to meeting the basic biological needs that cause beings to enter into societies in the first place (food, shelter, health). non-rational hierarchies of physical well-being as put forward through the society will ultimately push backward toward pre-social disorder.
pirsig also spoke of the need for policing and weaponry in the wake of the destruction of the victorian social values. he said that intellectuals can sometimes be overly optimistic(naive) as to human nature, and that once social values have been eroded, this policing structure is needed to maintain order. i found this invoking of human nature troubling, and would argue that human nature is more or less the face of value within any social structure. rather than policing as an instrument of stability, new social structure, social values simply need to be established(ones the prioritize the meeting of biological value). intellect can help within both of these problem areas, but it seems to have trouble when it addresses them from a SOM. (I find the order/freedom question particularly interesting given the current conflict within the US pertaining the "war on terrorism", Patriot Act, etc.)
3) i particularly enjoyed the end of lila and pirsig's commentary on ritual and its place within the mystic tradition. it seems to me that ritual, static patterns, become bad only when they begin to see themselves as ends of their own and not as enabling the pursuit of larger ends, dynamic quality. this seems to be a conflict within any society when order becomes taken too seriously thus stifling freedom. on the other hand, i was disappointed by pirsig's rather short analysis of capitalism/socialism. i thought his dismissal of socialism, while historically accurate in addressing the stifling of dynamic freedom via excessive static patterns, failed to address the similar occurence within the capitalistic framework (concentration of power, wealth, resources thus eliminating the dynamic freedom gained through competition.) I thought an important point would have been to look at the creation of competition as a social value of great importance, and how that ultimately plays!
out in the pursuit of dynamic quality (my own opinion would be: not well). While finding beauty in the dynamic quality of the Giant (New York), it would seem to me that the movement and dynamism need not necessarily or actually be directed toward Quality, but some mistaken step-sister due to the failure of intellect to rein in the misplaced social values.
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