Andy:
> My point is that the "patina of
> quality slapped on the surface," is not American culture. Scrape away the
> surface and you can still find "tasteful" aspects of American culture that
> are firmly rooted and deeply entrenched in our Psyche.
I hate being the bearer of bad news, but the "tastefuf" culture "firmly
rooted" in the American psyche that you lavishly praise has seen better
days. To understand why, read Chapter 24 of LILA in which Pirsig sums
up the demise of the beat generation like this:
"Back in the fifties and sixties Phaedrus had shared this confusion of
biological quality and Dynamic Quality, but the Metaphysics of Quality
seemed to help clear it up, When biological quality and Dynamic
Quality are confused the result isn't an increase in Dynamic Quality. It's
an extremely destructive form of degeneracy of the sort seen in the
Manson murders, the Jonestown madness, and the increase of crime
and drug addiction throughout the country. In the early seventies, as
people began to see this, they dropped away from the movement, and
the Hippie revolution, like the intellectual revolution of the twenties,
became a moral rebellion that failed."
Get it? Failed.
Platt
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