Mfer's
MARK
> The defining of Pirsig’s Giant -et al
3WD
Thank you for finding and intrepreting two of Pirsig's quotes that succinctly capture what my
verbose posts to DMB tried to convey about dealing with Giants. They are worth repeating:
> In ZMM, Pirsig writes:
> “A real understanding of Quality _captures_ the
> system, tames it, and puts it to work for its own
> personal use, while leaving one completely free to
> fulfill his inner destiny.”(Ch.18)
>
> In Lila, Pirsig reformulates this into MoQ terms:
> “You free yourself from static patterns by putting
> them to sleep. That is, you master them with such
> proficiency, that they become an unconscious part of
> your nature. You get so used to them you completely
> forget them and they are gone. There in the center of
> the most monotonous boredom of static ritualistic
> patterns the Dynamic freedom is found.”(Ch.30)
Notice the similarity to D.T. Suzuki's first three points in summarizing "What is Zen?" from "Zen
and the Japanese Culture.":
1. Zen discipline consists in attaining enlightenment (or satori, in Japanese.)
2. Satori [or enlightenment] finds meaning hitherto hidden in our daily concrete particular
experiences, such as eating, drinking, or business of all kinds.
3. The meaning thus revealed is not something added from the outside. It is in being itself, in
becoming itself, in living itself.
DMB
> Your giant just isn't Pirsig's.
3WD
Wrong, They are identical. The patterns of value that contain Pirsig's , contains mine, all Giants,
and even Bob Dylan's. Who almost got it right with, " I'll let you be my dreams, if I can be in
your's"
DMB
>And even in Lila, as he depicts himself in New York City as an aged, famous
> and wealthy writer he says, "SO PHAEDRUS HAD BEEN RIGHT IN RUNNING THEN"
3WD
He was right to run then because: his fear of the Giant was so high and his understanding of it so
low that he in effect had no choice, he had to run or be consumed by terror. This is part of the
normal human experience of growing from adolecence to adult. Some accomplish this in their teens,
most in their 20's, a smaller number in their 30's, a few later, and some never.
DMB
> I'll try to speak your language,
3WD
We agree David all those telephone poles and wires and such, are ugly and distracting . And if we
look at them as a metaphor for corporations, commerce, and captialism our only difference is that I
understand , while acknowledging their ugliness, that if all those wires were to magically disappear
in the next instant the lights would go out in all three buildings.
Your perspective convieniently aligns the Giants of church, state, and commerce in the order of
their rise to power. What it overlooks is that as far as we can tell they all emerged, if not
simultaneously, at least close together a long time ago and not until the last 500 years or so did
the struggle of commerce to free itself from nearly complete domination of church and/or state
begin. This struggle continues even as we speak but I would hope that even you can see that
relenquishing control of commerce back to church or state is both degenerative and immoral. The
MoQ is clear that rise of the intellectual values of democracy and capitalism, even with all their
shortcomings, embodied an increase in freedom and thus was and is a move towards Dynamic Quality.
And this is morally good.
So now instead of one Giant dominating all, we have three leagues of Giants wrestling with each
other on a regular basis. If it makes the matches more entertaining for you to paint commerce as the
bad guys, so be it. But at the end of the show when the costumes come off and they're naked in the
showers; they're all just people.
Understand the Giant.
3WD
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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