Hey everyone,
When I first started reading Pirsig's stuff it took a very strong hold on
me and I started quoting from the books on relatively regular basis (after
all, when you've got a Chautauqua in your head, its extremely hard not to
inflict it on innocent people). Friends usually paid little mind to the
"Pirsigisms" I would throw out casually but I didn't mind because I felt
that was only because they didn't really understand. How could they???
Occasionally someone would ask me to explain the whole thing to them and
back then, I would try to. They would seem intrigued and ask questions,
but the whole thing would often turn out too abstract and obscure to hold
anyone's interest for very long.
I tried different ways to explain Pirsig. I tried by giving them the
levels and the rules that govern their interactions. I tried to explain
Dynamic Quality (an ultimately unexplainable phenomenon). I tried to go
along the classic and romantic split of ZMM. I tried offering some of
Pirsig insights into Morality, Quality, logic, analysis, gumption traps,
art, religion, the scientific method, etc., etc. But in the end it would
always turn out the same. I would say, "If you really want to understand
it, read the books."
I think that if somebody isn't interested enough to read the 2 books (or
even just LILA) then there's no short explanation that's going to give them
the picture. Giving over the time and effort to the challenges Pirisig's
writings present is an expression of caring. If you don't care enough to
even read the books, you'll never be able to appreciate the Quality inside
them.
If the MoQ could be explained in short Pirsig would have written a
pamphlet. "The medium is the message!!!" Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance would have been a totally different book if was just written as
straight philosophy (Imagine a different title: A Treatise on the Apparent
Divisions Between Classical and Romantic Modes of Understanding by R.M.
Pirsig). I hardly think we would be involved with this group today if
Pirsig had chosen to go that way. Why would we care??? The books make you
care, the caring leads you to understanding. A distilled LILA would be
equally as ineffective. I think simply presenting someone the rules of the
MoQ without the artistic and narrative elements of LILA would make the
ideas appear to be the irrelevant, intellectual sideshow
that those of us who have actually read them know they are not.
I think a more useful goal for this discussion might be something like,
"How do you get someone interested in reading LILA?" which I think is very
different from, "How do you explain the MO in 45 minutes or less?" Just a
thought.
It's all good still,
Rick
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jan 17 2002 - 13:08:38 GMT