Hi Marty!
I read in your post that you are re-reading LILA, and you had mentioned that
you found it "darker, with an almost depressing tone." LILA was one of those
books that literally blew my mind when I read it, and I haven't seen the
world in anything near the same way since. One of the reasons, I believe, is
because I found LILA really dealt with an enlightened devolution, so to
speak, and questions man's misguided use of his creative powers to build a
civilization of restraint and statutes.
LILA is a phonetical representation of a Hindi word meaning the act of
creation through joy. Pirsig, through his persona of Phaedrus helped me to
question why we accept such institutions as Churches, Cities, Countries,
Cultures, Marriages, Sacraments, etc... and the associated morals and ethics
that they promote as somehow higher than us, when they are in fact, our own
creations. Reading LILA convinced me that I could reject these, my own
creations as nothing more than ideas run rampant, and return as a child to a
life of creating only for joy, never for restraint or control, relying on a
morality that already exists in each of us without being spoken or written
down or enforced. That morality stems from the Quality that is in each of us
and is all of us.
Giving up a faith in conventions, never comes without some discomfort and
pain, but the rewards are amazing, and after all, isn't pain just another
degree of comfort?
I hope that after your re-read that you will share with us any new insights
that you gain.
ThracianBard
----- Original Message -----
From: Marty Jorgensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 4:51 PM
Subject: RE: MD Glenn
> Hi Glenn -
>
> I enjoyed your comments on ZMM, I thought they were very well said. I am
> currently re-reading Lila, mainly because of this discussion group.
> Although it gives me much to think about and I enjoy the challenge, I find
> Lila much darker, with an almost depressing tone. While I find I agree
with
> most everything Pirsig proposes on Quality in ZMM, I have some difficulty
> with the Morality structure and hierarchy levels that are proposed in
Lila.
> It seems to me that anytime you propose 'higher' levels of evolution you
> open the door to creating a justification for suppressing (or
exterminating)
> that which is at a lower level. The idea that "life" or the human
> condition, must be evolving in a ever-improving direction is mostly a
modern
> western notion. IMO, the social and personal quest for "a better way" is
> the root cause of a great deal of dis-satisfaction.
> marty j
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 8:56 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: MD Glenn
>
>
> Jon,
>
> JON:
> I'm curious: as one of the MOQ's more vocal critics, is there anything
at
> all
> that you admire about Pirsig, and his two books? Did you like ZMM or
LILA
> better?
>
> GLENN:
> There are probably two broad reasons why I like ZMM so much. Firstly,
> the book has marvelous literary structure, and it is this structure that
> makes the book work. I'm not sure any other structure would work as
well.
> Pirsig is very ambitious. He wants to tell you his life story, and he
> wants to tell you his philosophy, and both are very complicated. He
wants
> to stress the importance of the journey in describing both, and he wants
> it to be personal without being melodramatic. And he wants to pass on to
> the reader life lessons which he has worked very hard to learn. The
> structural elements that help him do this are:
> - a very personal viewpoint, told from the first person narrative.
> - a description of his philosophy and life lessons in a series of essays
> (Chautauquas) which start out fairly easy and get more and more
> challenging as the book progresses.
> - a sense of here and now that is the motorcycle trip. This grounds the
> reader in some kind of reality and is essential for giving the reader a
> chance to breathe. But even the trip takes on a kind of drama, where he
> develops an unresolved tension between himself and his son.
> - he uses flashbacks as the ghost of Phaedrus returns to haunt his
> consciousness.
>
> But its how he uses these methods together that's so effective, trading
> off among trip, essay, and flashback, going round and round just like
his
> philosophical musings go round and round. At first the essays are
> triggered by events on the trip, but later they are triggered by the
> events in the flashbacks. And as the book moves along, the passages
about
> the trip get shorter and shorter, the essays get more and more
difficult,
> and the flashbacks get longer and longer, coinciding with his slippage
> out of reality back into Phaedrus at the story's culmination. All of
this
> is brilliantly conceived and executed. At the end there is a wonderful
> crystallization, where he realizes what the blockage is between himself
> and Chris, and he grabs hold of what is truly important in life, saving
> himself from the abyss.
>
> The second broad reason I liked ZMM is because of the subject matter.
> While I'm not much of a philosopher I do enjoy philosophical musings and
> of course I love science. I loved the whole Quality subject and all the
> little tangential subjects and observations he discusses. I'm telling
> you, this guy could be me! I don't think it's worth going insane over,
> but this doesn't make the Phaedrus character any less fascinating. He
> gives us a rare and revealing tour of the thought processes of not only
a
> philosopher but a recovering madman and a struggling father.
> For all the intelligence and insightfulness of his
> inner voice, for example, he is remote and wooden when he speaks to
> Chris. I thought this was very realistic, a common problem in smart
> people. Pirsig covers all kinds of ground, from the abstractions of
> subject/object duality to the practical quandries of work being "stuck"
> by the stripped grooves of a screw head. If anything you'll gain a new
> appreciation for quality, that mysterious thing that creative people
> strive for, that good thing that you can't quite describe but you'll
> know when you see it. It's the thing that happens when a person starts
> understanding how an object works, or when troubleshooting you start
> selecting the helpful facts from the unhelpful ones, or when your mind
> is free when doing a repetitive task, or when you decide you want peace
> of mind, not just a fixed machine. Pirsig gives some fascinating
> techniques for teaching students how to write, a wonderful character
> description of a taciturn welder, a triumphant showdown with his
> University of Chicago professor, and a painfully brief but striking
> glimpse at a man at the height of his breakdown. And I loved the
> Chautauqua about gumption traps! We all know what they are but have we
> ever read about them before?! And Pirsig isn't perfect. He leaves a lot
> left unanswered about Phaedrus ideas, for example, and his multi-themed
> approach doesn't always tie together. But he even writes about that -
the
> messes people leave whereever they go. And he's to be forgiven for not
> getting the theory across to us because he went through that shock
> treatment. So even that works in the book. We're talking flawed
> individual here. If you think ZMM is a textbook or treatise on the
> Metaphysics of Quality, and that this should make or break the book,
> you're missing the point. It's a brilliantly conceived and brilliantly
> crafted auto-biography. It's like nothing I've ever read before or
since.
>
> I wrote this email in July 1999 to a friend who, at my urging, had just
> finished ZMM. It was in response to a rather unflattering review of hers.
> I was disappointed she didn't like it, and I wanted to tell her why I
> thought it was good. But I realized I couldn't answer her questions about
> his ideas about quality, because I didn't really understand them myself.
> These questions led me to this website.
>
> Certainly I like ZMM better than Lila. Lila has good parts, too. He makes
> you think. He's a good read. I can't say how I'd feel about ZMM if I read
> it straight through again, because I understand so much more now. This
> website made me look at his ideas more critically, in a way I'd never done
> when I read the books for my own enjoyment. I've learned a lot here.
> Glenn
>
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