John B. and Foci
Ever since your post of 7 Feb. I have been writing on a response (I
had hoped that Diana would answer - you addressed her) but it
grew to such proportions that it would give you a chance to pick
some irelevant matter and stay there. So I deleted it all and leave
only the following point that hopefully will solve (my) John B. riddle.
You wrote:
> So while I generally
> concur with Diana that in promoting quality Pirsig was doing us a
> favour, I would also argue that his metaphysics is seriously flawed.
> Insofar as his appeal is to the primacy of value in lived
> experience, he deserves our congratulations.
Finally, something tangible. You find his metaphysics seriously
flawed! OK, let's have more of this. I don't find it the least strange if
you do, but as above: if it is seriously flawed it can't be of "some
value". If you don't find it worth while to answer anything else,
please concentrate on this single point.
Value, quality or morals, are "good" designations, but Pirsig could
have called it "God" for that matter, his stroke of genius is the
dynamic/static division and the open-ended static pattern
sequence whereby the mind/matter dualism is removed Without
understanding the basics it becomes just some strange system
superimposed upon subject-object reality: .....complicating and
unnecessary as Struan Hellier once so aptly once said.
> What worries me is when Pirsig becomes the saviour, the giver of the
> new paradigm, who must be believed rather than understood, debated
> and used as a resource.
Please, dont give us that!
> Which is one reason I seldom use the capital
> Q for quality. It's simply reifying something good, and turning it
> into an idol. If Pirsig is correct, there is nothing to fear from
> open and even irreverent discussion of his ideas; some of the
> attempts to defend the purity of his MOQ in this forum are
> therefore, I suggest, misguided and even harmful. I didn't join a
> cult, but a discussion group, or at least that's what I thought.
Point taken, but as our discussion is Pirsig's MOQ you have to
understand before criticizing it.
Bo
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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