Diana McPartlin (diana@asiantravel.com)
Sat, 18 Oct 1997 07:55:23 +0100
Doug Renselle wrote:
>
> Hi, Diana and Lila Squad!
>
> Diana McPartlin wrote:
> > Sounds like Pirsig has contradicted himself. If the sense of value
> > resides at the biological level and only living beings can perceive
> > dynamic quality, how did the inorganic patterns ever evolve into
> > biological ones?
> >
> > Diana
> Diana,
>
> It is interesting that you see this as a contradiction. Jason and I
> have found others too. We are trying to understand what is happening
> here. Could it be that this is an issue of context instead of
> contradiction?
That may be a solution but, no, I don't think that is what Pirsig intended. I
can't believe that Pirsig would slip something like this into the MoQ without
making it clear.
> Have you noticed that when you read the whole thing contiguously these
> apparent contradictions do not glare back at you? They seem more
> prominent when we quote small segments of his work.
Yes I have noticed that. Lila seems to make perfect sense when you read through,
but when you try to piece different parts together somehow you can't quite get
them to fit.
I agree we have to be careful that we're not taking things out of the context in
which they were written, but Pirsig states both points of view more than once.
Anders Nielsen wrote:
> But we do have an advantage that Moses didn't have when he had to explain
> the 10 commandments...We can go to the source and ask questions, so
> how about we write up a letter pointing out the contradictions we seem to
> have stuck upon, and giving big P (or "the great author" as you people insist
> on calling him) a chance to elaborate on what he meant?
If anyone wants to write to Pirsig that's entirely their own business. Writing
communal Lila Squad letters is a possibility too but I think we should only do
that after we've thoroughly thrashed the issues out amongst ourselves first.
Diana
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