(Excerpts from my paper)
"My intention is not to up Pirsig's exposition of his own ideas. ZMM has been a bestseller for more than twenty years, and LILA out on the market since 1991. He is also referred to by thousands on the Internet, but I feel that certain aspects of his ideas are misunderstood, even by Pirsig fans, so perhaps an outsiders approach to his Metaphysics of Quality may be useful. That is my hope at least."
"At times I’m awe-struck by Pirsig’s enormous achievement; the next instance I see that the enormity is the very problem. You are supposed to solve the problems on the Subject-Object-premises; not do away with the whole edifice (re. the Greek Paradoxes analogy). The medieval cardinals refused to look into the telescopes that Galileo offered them. Their rigidity has been endlessly discussed; whether it was piousness, or simply fear for loss of prestige. To compare with the present, I do not know if the deafening silence that Pirsig is met with, is because anyone believes he’s wrong, or simply from fear of what effect a Quality breakthrough may have on our “crystal circles”.
"Quality delivers the answer to its own hardship. Celebrity (prestige) is a huge social value. The medieval Church’s investments in its dogma were huge and its fall from power still reverberates through history, but it pales compared to the prestige invested in the Subject/Object thinking. Parting with such assets would be a Wall Street crash without precedence in history."
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"The Quality Event" (part 1)
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