The aspect of ZMM that struck me as the most profound was the suggestion
that, thanks to the Greeks, modern day cizilization has placed Truth above
Good, and while this has led to mind-boggling mountains of knowledge for the
human race, it is at the same time a great tragedy. In our race for more and
more Truth, we have left something behind. Good. "Quality" is the word Pirsig
has given to it, and some people have even equated the word with "God." And
in many cases, I think you could easily interchange the words and they would
mean essentially the same thing.
My post to the Lila Squad this month strayed a bit off topic in that it
did not really address the last part of ZMM in terms of the MOQ. I was much
more interested in pounding home my belief that the last section of ZMM
contains one of the most important showdowns of our time. Not with fists, not
with guns, but with two massive opposing patterns of thought fighting for
dominance, and clearly recognizing each other for the first time. When Pirsig
and the Professor start their "fight" we have, for the first time since Plato
and Socrates faced off against the Sophists, we have Good (which is in itself
a disembodied pattern which inhabits every man) represented by Robert Pirsig,
and Truth (also a pattern all by itself which inhabits the mind of all men
during their lifetime) represented by the Professor at the University of
Chicago. When Pirsig, in answer to a tricky question by the Professor,
answers: "According to Aristotole, Dialectic comes *before* everything else,"
the reaction from the Professor is shock and fear. For the first time maybe,
these two opposing patterns SEE each other through the eyes of two ordinary
men, and it's really hard for someone of my limited vocabulary to put this
into the proper words. Since the time of Socrates, Truth seekers had used
Dialectic to effortlessly cut Good into namable chunks. But now, after being
stunned for thousands of years, Good got up off the mat and showed Dialectic
what *Rhetoric* was capable of. And Pirsig proved, IMO, that Truth and
Dialectic are much smaller than Good and Rhetoric. Yes, SMALLER. Think about
that. Truth is SMALLER than Good, and to see this differently is to see a
common illusion.
That's why ZMM struck me as so powerful, more powerful than Lila (which
is itself a masterpiece). I think it is human arrogance (throughout history,
even now, our worst enemy) to assume we have the knowledge to "understand"
Good, or Quality. Pirsig's main point in both his books is that we cannot
define Quality. And if you agree with what I suggested above, that Quality
can be considered God, this inability to define makes more since. No one can
define God. The word in itself suggests a being (for lack of a better word)
that is infinitly incomprehensible, because he's *God* after all. If you can
understand God, then *you* are a God, and I feel sorry for you if you think
you are a God.
Bo was nice enough to respond positively to my post, but said that it was
dangerous to consider Truth incompatible with Good. I see his point but
hesitate in agreeing. No one is doubting the overwhelming importance of
Truth, or the overwhelming dangers of *ignorning* Truth. But if DQ is real,
it seems to be telling me that there is more to meets the eye when it comes
to the conflict between Truth and Good. Much more. Truth still dominates
human thought. It's still the most important voice, the voice that shouts:
"It's not true! It's not true!" I don't know if we humans even know *how* to
put Good first in our lives. We are still a very dumb race of sentient
beings. But Pirsig's suggestion that Good is more important than Truth is
really not examined enough. Sure, a lot of us say: "Yeah, Quality comes first
in my life." But then our minds ooze back into the shell of SOM, Truth
dominates us, and we ALL have our Dialectic swords out and ready to start
hacking things to pieces in the name of Truth. What is it going to take for
people to have the courage to drop these swords? I think it will take more
than we've got within us at this point in human history.
"Realms beyond reason." They are out there. We're still a long way from
them. I remember watching the movie "The Edge" with Anthony Hopkins. Reason
saved his life in that movie, and it was glorious. Reason saves our lives all
the time. It's not the enemy. But I don't think it should be our best friend
either.
Sure, I know other philosophy books have dealt with the conflict between
Good and Truth. But if there was ever a place to have a showdown between
these two forces, a place where it would really be a *showdown*, it was the
University of Chicago that fateful summer. For the first time in thousands of
years, Truth saw the dormant power of Good wake up, and Truth perhaps saw how
small its own power really was. Truth has given people the ability to
manipulate the phenomena of nature into amazing manifestations of our own
dreams of power and glory, but so what? Some would say a beautiful planet has
been VANDALIZED with skyscrapers and ugly asphalt parking lots and
destruction of natural resources. Maybe this is necessary. Maybe it's all
part of our growth. Perhaps the entire body of human consciousness at this
point in history is going through its adolescent stage.
I don't have any answers, and I'm not even sure the MOQ has the answers.
If you, one person, were transported back in time a thousand years with all
the present day knowledge about the fundamentals of life in your head, could
you really make much of a difference in the world? Would people be receptive
to all of your mind-boggling ideas? Probably not. People don't like to
change. I think that much we can agree on. Growth is slow, whether we like it
or not.
I do know this, an essential part of growth is *letting go* and I don't
think I need to elaborate on that. Letting go. You know what I mean. Perhaps
we all need to let go of so much suffocating Truth, quit racing after it day
after day, and try to find Good again. I don't even know what that means, or
how to do it, but I think we should try. I'm not a very educated man, and
probably that shows in these naive posts of mine, but my Quality Inuition
tells me the Good vs. Truth struggle for the top spot is too often ignored,
or not considered in the way it needs to be considered.
I took a road trip with my fiancee a few weeks ago; she's twenty and I'm
twenty-five. I brought up ZMM (which she has never read and expressed no
desire in reading it, even though I offered to let her borrow my copy), the
part where Pirsig tells us about the philosopher (Hume I think) who makes the
airtight case that all reality is just in the mind. I explained that all
reality is based on our sense data (sight, hearing, touch, and so on), so how
does one know that all reality isn't just in one's mind? She isn't one who
finds much fun in philosophical discussions such as these, and she eventually
just shrugged her shoulders and turned up the radio and said something like:
"You shouldn't think about stuff like that." So I took her advice and changed
the subject. Maybe she's right. Questions such as these have the tendency to
make some minds panic.
How does one put Good before Truth? How do we escape Truth? Truth is the
anchor that keeps our minds from floating lost across the vast, uncharted
oceans of thought. Where are these realms beyond reason? Perhaps we should
ask our own minds. Have you ever stopped and asked your mind, your very
intellect: "Who are you?" You don't get an answer because you're asking your
intellect *with* your intellect. It's like looking into a mirror and asking
the same question.
Perhaps throwing down our Dialectic swords is the first step. But it's
not easy. When somebody says "God cares about you" the first thing many of us
do is pick up that sword and start hacking. "God? What God? Show me! It's not
TRUE!"
I was in an ironically titled chatroom a few weeks ago. "Thank God I'm An
Atheist." Of course the usual tired arguments were tossed back and forth.
"Prove God exists," somebody said. I was tempted to say: "Prove *you* exist,"
and then tell them how all reality is deduced from the mind, from sight and
touch and so on, but I didn't. One Atheist said to a pastor who was in the
room: "It's funny how Christians tend to turn to insults when logic fails
them." I couldn't hold back this time and wrote: "It's funny how so-called
intellectuals turn to insults when logic fails *them*." It didn't get much of
a response, just something like, "Christians can't take a joke." But I find
it funny how suggesting to an intellecual that Truth is not supreme is like
suggesting to a Christian that God is not supreme. You get the same knee-jerk
reaction either way. Both sides immediately pull out their swords.
I think it's sad when people say it can be proven that God doesn't exist.
Haven't people figured out that what is true today, isn't true tomorrow?
Pirsig has much to say about this. Truth changes from day to day, my friends.
The key is to strive for exellence with what little knowledge you have.
That's what the Sophists taught. Don't give up the quest for knowledge, but
don't place it above the quest for excellence.
It's all about peace of mind in the end, isn't it? That's what Pirsig
preaches in ZMM. Peace of mind, no matter what you are doing. Quality...no
matter what you are doing. I tend to shy away from frantic philosophical
pondering, because it's not very easy for me to ponder philosophy with peace
of mind. Every so-called answer leads to another question. It will never end.
Personally, I've decided recently that God is the final answer for me, and I
cannot properly express the peace this brought to my mind. Any true believers
in God out there can relate. Peace of mind, brothers.
Let me end this now. A few days ago I was walking along the beach with my
fiancee, watching the sun set above the Gulf of Mexico, our feet squeaking in
the fine sugar-white sand that is the trademark of the beaches along the
Florida Panhandle. We saw some dolphins far in the distance, diving in and
out of the shimmering bronze water. We kissed and expressed our love, and as
I stared at the dolphins I was reminded of a line near the end of ZMM: "In
placing Truth above Good, we have exchanged an empire of understanding of
equal magnitude...an understanding of what it is like to be part of the
world, and not an enemy of it."
I smiled. I experienced a peace that passes understanding. The dolphins
have it figured out; they've had it figured out the whole time. They don't
need to turn the planet into something it is not for their own purposes.
Maybe one day they can teach us something.
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