Hi Focs:
How long is a New York minute?
The radio station where I work is located very near a college campus.
Presently, I can hear a group of Sorority women singing and clapping in a
ritual of togetherness. (They're Kappa Kappa Zima or some other faux cool.
You know, like Jimmy Buffet fans from Wyoming.) It's a warm Sunday
afternoon, so their windows are open as wide as ours. The radio station is
conducting a pledge drive, asking the community for support. The front page
of today's newspaper tells of a local political scandal - a man had used his
office to provide his friends and family with jobs. And all of this social
level stuff is happening at the same time that I write to a community of
Pirsig ponderers. We're up to our elbows in social level reality, eh?
Speaking of social stuff... I want to thank everyone who wrote and asked me
to stick around, especially those who made a point of letting me know that
they often disagree. Each one deserves to be thanked personally, but please
don't mistake my laziness for insincerity. Anyway, back to business...
It seems the question here is this; What is the nature of Pirsig's "Giant"
and how do we relate to it? (Chapter 17 is well worth re-visiting.)
SOMe TROUBLE
"The metaphysics of substance makes it difficult to see the Giant."
"A metaphysics of substance makes us think that all evolution stops with the
highest evolved substance, the physical body of man. It makes us think that
cities and societies and thought structures are all subordinate creations of
this physical body of man."
"Phaedrus had suddenly seen a tentacle of the Giant reaching out and he was
the only one who could see it."
Isn't Pirsig telling us that our metaphysical assumptions (SOM) are nearly
blind to this level of reality? Even more, this unseen social level is more
evolved than biological man, which has been mistakenly seen as the height of
creation. In this case, it's no wonder that the nature of the Giant is in
dispute.
PUSHED BY A FORCE WITHOUT HANDLES
"It used to fill his dreams, night after night. When he was little it was a
giant octopus that he'd seen in a cartoon movie."
"Later it was a huge, shadowy, faceless giant who was coming to kill him"
"The Giant began to materialize out of Phaedrus' Dynamic dreams when he was
in college."
"In static reality there is no octopus coming to squeeze us to death, no
giant that is going to devour us and digest us and turn us into a part of
its own body so that it can grow stronger and stronger while we are
dissolved and lost into nothingness. But in Dynamic reality?"
COHESIVE FARMER ORGANISM
"The cohesive force that held all these systems together: that was the
Giant."
"People look upon the social patterns of the Giant in the same way cows and
horses look upon a farmer; different from themselves, incomprehensible, but
benevolent and appealing. Yet the social pattern of the city devours their
lives for its own purposes just as surely as farmers devour the flesh of
farm animals."
"When societies and cultures and cities are seen not as inventions of "man"
but as higher organisms that biological man, the phenomena of war and
genocide and all the other forms of human exploitaion become more
intelligible."
SELLING OUT
"That was why he had run that day (He didn't want to "sell out" like his
frat brothers.) through all this traffic - through all these systems and
sub-systems of the island. He was on his way to India, done with this
corporate pseudo-science, still pursuing truth, knowing that to find it he
would have to get free of the Giant first."
"So Phaedrus had been right in running then. But now - funny thought - this
was actually his home. ... He was as much a part of the Giant as anyone
else."
And the chapter ends with, "The Giant could be very good to you, he
thought...
...if it wanted to."
I think chapter 17 shows how the Giant is situated between biology and
intellect. Its higher than biological man, but lower than scientific truth.
And it seems that tells us alot about how we ought to relate to the Giant.
It liberates us from mere physical survival, but the pursuit of truth has to
take place outside of its clutches.
Its the classic hero's journey. Its usually some kind of warrior who slays
dragons, goes beyond the normal boundries and then returns with sacred
secrets and such. Its about getting past the Giant well enough to achieve
some superhuman feat. Myths, like dreams, are not true in any static literal
sense, but Dynamically they describe a push to transcend the Giant, the urge
to get free.
50 miles of elbow room. Give me land, lots of land. Don't fench me in.
GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY
Long before they made "The Graduate" Jesus turned over the money tables and
said it was easier for a camel and all that. The Buddha gave up all his
money, power and celebrity. Of Alexander the Great they asked "what does it
profit a man if he gain the whole world, but lose his soul?" There ain't
nothing new about selling out or knowing the difference between truth and
riches. Unlike the days of Socrates, we don't have to be heroic or divine.
The intellectual level is well established and we have a static place to go
when we want to go beyond the Giant. We've got Goerthe's Faust and Miller's
dead saleman. In other words, there's just no excuse for corporate whores.
What is your personal relationship to the Giant? Does it consume your life?
Does it reward you? Have you found a way to break free?
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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