Because I brought it up, I feel obliged to get the ball rolling.
"That's the whole thing: to obtain static and Dynamic Quality
simultaneously. If you don't have the static patterns of scientific
knowledge to build upon you're back with the cave man. But if you don't
have the freedom to change those patterns you're blocked from any
further growth."
What does Pirsig mean here? What does it mean for a real life person to
obtain both simultaneously?
Obviously, the quote is not an exhaustive statement and has to be taken
in context. On the other hand, it seems to me that Pirsig's use of the
phrase "scientific knowledge" indicates that he's refering to the
intellectual level. And so it seems reasonable to believe that he's
speaking about the relative freedom of human individuals. And I like the
reference to "the cave man" because it conjures up images of
pre-historic times as well as Plato's allegory of the cave, where
shadows on the wall are seen as reality. The cave is brutal and dark,
and in spite of Pirsig's criticisms of SOM, he clearly says that a
failure to obtain "scientific knowledge" will put you back there.
Lila was stalled back in the cave. She had none of the static
"scientific knowledge" that leads to Dynamic freedom and furthers
intellectual growth. As Pirsig says on page 214, "She missed the whole
point of everything. She's after Quality, like everybody else, but she
defines it entirely in biological terms. She doesn't see intellectual
quality at all. It's outside her range. She doesn't even see social
quality."
I think this means that contemporary people can easily be without
intellect. And Lila could speak the language and even had certain
opinions about the people around her, but that is not really an
indication that she had any intellectual quality. She could dance, go
sailing and eat steak in the USA, but she had no real freedom in the
Pirsigian sense. I suppose there are millions of folks who walk and talk
and raise children, but are never really free. I imagine there are even
more people who are better off than Lila, who clearly see social
quality, but have stalled at that level and don't see intellectual
quality any more than Lila does. Maybe Rigel and the self-righteous
Victorians serve as an example of that kind of stuck-ness, even though
Rigel had enough intelligence to graduate from law school. Its sort of
odd to imagine that even folks with advanced degrees can lack
intellectual freedom, but it must be true. As smart as he was, Rigel was
a slave to the Giant until the end of the novel, when he helped Lila and
the author escape from the cops in New York. (You can be here for five
minutes or five weeks.)
On page 219 Pirsig refers to his own experience at college just after
world war 2 and underscores this same idea; that intellegence alone
doesn't make us free. "A real scientist is not supposed to sell out that
goal to corporations who are searching for mere profit. Or, if he had to
sell out in order to live that was nothing to be happy about. These
fraternity brothers of his acted like they never heard of science as
truth. Phaedrus had suddenly seen a tentacle of the Giant reaching out
and he was the only one who could see it." He points out that "the
revolution of the sixties was still twenty years off" and "No one had
thought of making the film, "The Graduate," back then."
I suppose by today's standards we would say that Pirsig's frat brothers
were a bunch of sell-outs, corporate whores willing to sell themselves
to the highest bidder. That's why "yuppies" are looked upon with such
contempt. Lots of folks on the lower ends of society are jealous of
their relatively high status while others on the high end are disgusted
that they put career goals above truth and freedom. Yuppies get it from
both sides.
In this same section of chapter 17, Pirsig points out how science is
more Dynamic than orthodox theology, but I feel its important to point
out the less obvious and far more seductive aspects of secular social
values. Even his fellow chemistry students could not see the Dynamic
quality in science. And its not as if we're safe from the clutches of
the Giant just because we're alive at the end of the 20th century. As
Pirsig said in the recent interview, "The present is a good time for
children, but a bad time for revolutionaries."
(This morning I heard a news story about how the public schools in
Kansas are trying to re-introduce creationism. And this is 75 years
after the Scopes trial! Its a good time for children and reactionaries,
eh?)
The trick is to recognize and preserve the evolutionary gains of the
past. Lila isn't wrong to value biological quality, she is just
incomplete. Rigel is quite right in respecting social level values, but
he hasn't quite gone far enough. A well trained, intelligent scientist
is most likely to be at the threshold, but can easily get stuck at the
intellectual level or worse. But if a person can manage to integrate all
these levels, preserving the value of each, then Dynamic evolutionary
growth can begin. In ordinary language we could say that spirituality is
post-intellectual. This is where and when the creative imagination kicks
in. To climb an actual mountain like Everest might be fun and exciting,
but strikes me as a metaphor, a ritual enactment of the "real" journey
that we're all embarked upon. And the struggle that really matters is an
upward climb of expanding consciousness. Up at those heights, even
scientific knowledge becomes a transparent reality, a truth we can see
through. At the peak even the MOQ would be transcended in favor of DQ
itself.
Does anyone have a rope I can borrow? David B.
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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