Hullo Diana and All,
You may have noticed I did not participate in this month's topic, partly because I have had ongoing computer problems, but mainly because I felt quite negative about the possibility of achieving what David and others thought might occur. It seems I have been both right and wrong.
After reading with interest all the contributions, I finally got around to reading Chapters 1 to 3 a few nights ago. I found this reading was deepened by the forgoing discussion, and so I must acknowledge some benefit from the exercise.
What is obvious to me is that we each bring our own freight train of previous experiences to our reading of Pirsig, and as the reading of any novel is an encounter between our freight and the author's words, which are already one remove from his freight, we each inevitably read a different book. The same seemingly intractable issues will arise in a structured reading as in the other forums, only they will be pushed into finer and finer details which ultimately will be unresolvable by any 'just reading' of the text.
The dynamic quality of the book is caught, rather than inculcated. What strikes me is the variety of MOQs that we have discovered. The attempt to consolidate these into one 'authorised version' is a mistake, in my view. The attempt to really debate our differences, to philosophise, making clear what freight we bring perhaps uncritically to the discussion, is fine in theory. I just don't see too many people changing their views significantly, especially on core issues such as the place of mysticism in all this.
Perhaps we need to do some careful thinking about what we are hoping to achieve in a group such as this, though I fear we would end up with seventeen different goals, each defended to the death by one or more participants.
One of the great frustrations of this type of communication for me has been the lack of closure. Posts bring up numerous issues, only a few of which are pursued. So while a few red herrings are actually laid to rest each time, most input suffers the indignity of apparent 'ignore'. If there is to be a restructuring of the rules around a chapter by chapter reading of Lila, I would ask for a more involved moderation that records actual progress (for example, whether "Which comes first" refers to chronology or a metaphysical primacy - which for me was resolved this month). Obvious red herrings would need to be weeded out, though this would take the wisdom of a saint, but most importantly, disagreements would be held open until there was either some form of closure or clearly incompatable options were identified and listed. I doubt that most issues can be constrained within the actual chapter, though. All in all, I'd give this suggestion little chance of success. However, it might !
force some response to ideas which all too often sink without trace, with later accusations of the type "I gave you chapter and verse, and you have just ignored it all."
One problem with this approach would be the likelihood that the outcome, rather than offering clarity, would end up very like Pirsig's tray of slips.
I would agree with the general concensus so far that any chapter by chapter reading be either a separate moderated forum, or just left as part of the MD forum.
I'm going away looking for galleries soon and probably won't be around to respond to possible topics for April. Can I suggest a topic, though. "If good is a noun, what does this mean, and how does it differ from the Indian use of good as an adjective in 'That's a good dog'?"
John Beasley
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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