From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Sep 05 2004 - 01:12:00 BST
Ham, Platt, Paul and all MOQers:
Paul said:
The MOQ agrees with Buddhism that the self has no primary independent
reality.
dmb added::
The MOQ concieves of the self in a way that defies Western common sense. It
defies the idea of a subjective self looking out upon an objective world,
(SOM) and all its permutations. The MOQ's self is more like the Buddhist's
or the mystic's, which says we are one with the universe already, whether we
realize it or not.
Ham replied:
...The basic difference is your "collectivist" conception of man himself.
The fact that there is a need to discuss "the Individual in the MOQ"
suggests that some of us have a problem identifying the individual in
Pirsig's stratified layer ontology which breaks out Intellect (not the self)
as the "highest evolutionary" rung on the ladder.
dmb says:
Collectivism? I think one can NOT get there from Buddhism and mysticism. In
any case, this is not at all what I had in mind. Nobody is saying the group
or the society is the primary metaphysical reality, I'm just saying that the
modern West's notion of the individual self ain't it either. There is a need
to discuss this issue because the modern sense of individuality is deeply
ingrained in the culture and psychologically its very hard to give up this
sense of one's self. The self, as you understand it, can be described in
terms of Pirsig's levels, but this is only a matter of conventional reality,
not the ultimate Self. Political ideology enters into the issue as well...
Ham continued:
This became clearer to me when I read dmb's criticism of my interpetation...
Even if "everywhere (man) is in chains", which is a gross exaggeration
reminiscent of Marxist protests, it does not destroy intellectual freedom --
unless, as I suspect, your understanding of Freedom (as a pattern?) is the
attribute of a group or movement in society at large.
dmb replies:
It was Jean Jacques Rousseau who first uttered this "gross exaggeration" and
it is one of the central ideas of the Enlightenment. Not knowing the meaning
or origins of that famous quote is probably just one of the many reasons
that you've completely misunderstood what I'm saying. Let me leave aside the
issue of the mystical SELF and instead concentrate on conventional reality.
I'll try a completely different explanation, a different approach, in plain
english...
As I understand it, the individual self you're talking about and defending
as the primary reality is what Habermas called the "ego identity". This is
contrasted with a previous sense of self called the "role identity". These
exist in an evolutionary relationship so that the role identity roughly
corresponds to Pirsig's social level and ego identity goes with the
intellectual level. In pre-historic times the social roles that we played
were virtually indistinguishable from our sense of self and the gods of the
state were not to be questioned. Its a relatively narrow and shallow
perspective compared to the intellectual ego identity, which can question
the existence of the gods, can demand evidence, can compare them to the gods
of other cultures, etc. Its a wider, deeper, freeer perspective. And there
are senses of self that correspond to all levels of being. Animals will have
a sense of self that corresponds to the biological level, etc. Any
discussion of artists and saints would likely take us beyond convention, but
that's where the ultimate self is to be found. But the main idea here is
that our sense of self is interconnected with the levels in Pirsig's
hierarchy and so this sense of self changes. And it changes not only within
the time frames of cosmological and cultural evolution, but also within the
arch of our lives. In both cases the idea is that our perspective becomes
increasingly deep and broad. The social level can see past lust and hunger
while the intellectual identity can see beyond cultural norms and social
roles, for example. But there is also an increasing amount of
differentiation, of disassociation from one's body and from one's culture in
the process. It is Pirsig's view that the intellect has gone too far,
disconnecting intellect from its historic roots and distorting our sense of
self as disconnected egos. So, you seem to be asserting as one of your
central premises, a concept of self that Pirsig and others see as a disease
to be cured. (None of this has anything to do with Marx, collectivism,
liberalism or anything like that.)
Ham said:
I'm not an advocate of Ayn Rand's philosophy in general. But she was right
on her ideology of individualism.
dmb replies:
I mentioned Ayn Rand's view of the individual because there is a quote where
Pirsig specifically rejects it in pointing out that she is at odds with both
Buddhism and science.
Ham said:
There is a trend in the Western world, particularly in the liberal
mentality, to view man's inadequacies and achievements in the collective
sense -- as a cause or movement in society. I'm afraid that Mr. Pirsig has
borrowed from this paradigm, making it almost impossible to discern man, the
individual, in this multi-layered heirachy of values.
dmb replies:
No, Pirsig does no such thing and I would suggest that the difficulty in
discerning the individual as you imagine it in Pirsig's hierarchy arises
because Pirsig views it as a fiction that needs to be replaced. From LILA,
the last page of chapter 22...
"Everyone seemed to be guided by an 'objective', 'scientific' view of life
that told each person that his essential self is his evolved material body.
Ideas and societies are a component of brains, not the other way around. No
two brains can merge physically, and therefore no two people can ever really
communicate except in the mode of ship's radio operators sending messages
back and forth in the night. A scientific, intellectual culture had become a
culture of millions of isolated people living and dying in little cells of
psychic solitary confinement, unable to talk to one another, really, and
unable to judge one another because scientifically speaking it is impossible
to do so. Each individual in his cell of isolation was told that no matter
how hard he tried, no matter how hard he worked, his whole life is that of
an amimal that lives and dies like any other animal. He could invent moral
goals for himslefl, but they are just artificial inventions. Scientifically
speaking he has no goals."
Thanks,
dmb
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