RE: MD Pirsig, Falck, and Wolfram

From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Sat Aug 16 2003 - 22:49:20 BST

  • Next message: Ian Glendinning: "RE: MD Pirsig, Falck, and Wolfram"

    Jim

    You said
    Attitude is the key to everything ... You can kind of tell these things.

    Instead of "attitude", I use the word "intent".
    That aside - I totally agree.

    Objectivity is the cultural averageing of subjectivity over many individual
    lives.

    Ian Glendinning
      -----Original Message-----
      From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
    [mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk]On Behalf Of james marshall
      Sent: 14 August 2003 13:38
      To: moq_discuss@moq.org
      Subject: Re: MD Pirsig, Falck, and Wolfram

            -------Original Message-------

            From: moq_discuss@moq.org
            Date: August 14, 2003 2:45:00 AM
            To: moq_discuss@moq.org
            Subject: Re: MD Pirsig, Falck, and Wolfram

             Hi folks, my name is Jim and this is my first posting here. In my
    retirement I gave myself a project - to learn the history of western
    philosophy. In "Lila" Pirsig suggests that the best way for me to do this
    is to enter my project with some ideas of my own and then compare my ideas
    with those of the philosophers I read. (can't read them all, not even all
    the "great" ones - far as I can tell I only have one lifetime). He says that
    I will find some that support me. He also says to be aware of being
    seduced. Philosophers are very persuasive people. I have found that my
    primary idea is pretty sound in the face of the challenges to it. My idea?
    There is no such thing as an object. I am now, in view of Buber's "I -
    Thou" considering changing my idea to: "Live as if there is no such thing
    as an object, all is subject." Yeah, I know, animistic.

            Aha! Attitude. A metaphysics of attitude perhaps. An old friend
    told me: Attitude is the key to everything. It felt right at the time. It
    still does.

            There is a word in Lila that Pirsig uses - mean (meanness). He uses
    it in his attack against moralyzers. The character, Lila, uses it often.
    Remember L'il Abner? Mammy Yokum said, "Good is better than evil because
    it's nicer." That feels right too. There's some kind of an identity/unity
    between Lila's and Mammy Yokum's attitude. It feels right. It feels good.
    As Pirsig said in the last sentence of ZAMM, "You can sort of tell these
    things."

    >
    >(Hi Lars - I'm a DQ party-pooper here, I believe "DQ" is used as a
    >religious fudge factor to introduce subjective opinion into any
    discourse,
    >as well as a 7th Calvary to weasel out of tight spots in arguments
    about
    >the metaphysics. If you want to justify breaking a moral pattern,
    just
    >cite "DQ" and you're all set. If something is contradictory or
    >tautological, just cite "DQ" and your all set. I do see a role for
    >something that can be called DQ in the creation of new patterns
    when
    >existing patterns cross paths, but I see it as completely
    deterministic,
    >its creations entirely the necessary result of other static
    patterns.)
    >

            Hi Johnny- sounds interesting. One thing that struck me reading
    'Lila' is
            that from the point of view of the static, social level of
    'Quality',
            disruption can come from either above or below; from 'Dynamic
    Quality' or
            'the biological level.' It seems to me that an old Western (at
    least)
            paradigm is to associate DQ and bQ; they are seen as one force,
    creative and
            destructive, which exists in uneasy dialectic with the SQ of
    society. The
            Freudian and post-Freudian id, for example. 'Lila' is apparently DQ,
    but it
            is also the dance, the symbol of the bodily and erotic life.
            Deterministic dynamism sounds more Stephen Wolfram-like to me.
            By the way, are 'static' and 'dynamic' taken from Bergson?

            LQ

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