NEW GUY TRYING TO HELP REFOCUS THE GROUP:
It's just such a huge topic!
Let me focus on the "intellectual patterns" part of the question.
I think it's at the heart of Pirsig's new metaphysics.
Remember the moving image he used to describe "the train of symbolic
consciousness"? ( ZAMM P. 254-255. ) That train is loaded with
intellectual patterns. All kinds of patterns are in there. Old
ideologies and philosophies are in back near the caboose. And the
train's leading edge represents the most recently developed intellectual
patterns. The best ideas are being born at the front of the train as it
moves along, so to speak.
Ordinary consciousness is like that train, loaded with intellectual
patterns, filled with symbolic maps of experience. Literally, any thing
you can "think of" is an intellectual pattern. To concieve a thing is to
make a map of it. Language itself is a symbolic activity.
Seems to me Pirsig is saying that we automatically, habitually and
immediately make maps of everything that happens and have come to
believe the map is the road.
He's saying we have a non-symbolic consciousness, an awareness without
intellectual patterns. And ironiclly, we can learn about our
non-symbolic awareness through symbolic conciousness. We've learned to
express the inexpressable with our symbols. The map does make the
journey easier. And if you're ever really out there on the road, you can
always make a better map.
AND AND AND here's the mystical and radical part. The train is full of
symbolic intellectual patterns, but is guided and pulled along by our
preintellectual awareness. This mysterious awareness seems willing to
help us on the journey. It guides our map making.
David b.
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