Pirsig Pondering
I’ve just spent time this evening reading more of Pirsig’s sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, called Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals, and came across a couple of passages that trigger many of my recent religion-related thoughts.
In one of these passages Pirsig is reflecting on the ways any society collectively works to uphold its ways of understanding reality. A collective worldview becomes a standard that trumps any individual’s experiences that challenge that worldview. Pirsig describes what has happened when a “student of scientific objectivity,” for example, has come across data that challenges the scientific assumptions he’s been making: “Wherever the chart disagreed with his observations he rejected the observation and followed the chart. Because of what his mind thought it knew, it had built up a static filter, an immune system, that was shutting out all information that did not fit. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing.”
Pirsig continues: “If this were just an individual phenomenon it would not be so serious. But it is a huge cultural phenomenon too and it is very serious. We build up whole cultural intellectual patterns based on past ‘facts’ which are extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern, we don’t throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact. A contradictory fact has to keep hammering and hammering, sometimes for centuries, before maybe one or two people will see it. And then these one or two have to start hammering on others for a long time before they see it too."
Here’s his most pithy next line:
“Just as the biological immune system will destroy a life-saving skin graft with the same vigor with which it fights pneumonia, so will a cultural immune system fight off a beneficial new kind of understanding…with the same kind of vigor it uses to destroy crime.”
It isn’t hard to see the ways religion is one of the “cultural intellectual patterns” Pirsig is describing here. I’m not familiar with the entire range of religious histories, but surely there have been Galileos and Copernicuses and “Salem witches” and Anabaptists and Jesus Christs, for that matter, getting persecuted and/or destroyed across the religious spectrum. Heretics don’t tend to be well-liked.
And this is an issue I spend lots of time thinking about. If, by chance, one find’s oneself in such a marginal space and category, how is one to live healthfully? How can such a person…okay I (might as well say what I’m thinking) stay true to my thoughts and experiences and intuitions without becoming embittered in the face of all that pushes against my doing so, or isolated from relationships with those more comfortably standing on dominant lines, or full of condescension and ego (which is usually more of a defense mechanism than anything)? Pirsig calls these latter options “degenerative negativism.” I don’t want to get stuck there.
Pirsig helpfully talks about all of this in this next passage:
“Everyone gets on these negative contrarian streaks from time to time, where no matter what it is they’re supposed to be doing [believing, etc.], that’s the one thing they least want to do. Sometimes it’s a degenerative negativism, where biological forces are driving it. Sometimes it’s an ego pattern that says, ‘I’m too important to be doing all this dumb static stuff.’ [static is Pirsig’s shorthand for status quo.]
“Sometimes the contrary anti-static drive becomes a static pattern of its own. This contrary stuff can become a tiger-ride where you can’t get off and you have to keep riding and riding until the tiger finally throws you and devours you. The degenerative contrarian stuff usually goes that way. Drugs, illicit sex, alcohol and the like.
“But sometimes it’s Dynamic, where your whole being senses that the static situation is an enemy of life itself. That’s what drives the really creative people – the artists, composers, revolutionaries and the like – the feeling that if they don’t break out of this jailhouse somebody has built around them, they’re going to die.
“But they’re not being contrary in a way that is just decadent.” And this is the category I hope to find myself in! “They’re way too energetic and aggressive to be decadent. They’re fighting for some kind of Dynamic freedom from the static patterns. But the Dynamic freedom they’re fighting for is a kind of morality too. And it’s a highly important part of the overall moral process. It’s often confused with degeneracy but it’s actually a form of moral regeneration. Without its continual refreshment, static patterns would simply die of old age.”
My mind goes to all the men and women who have given life and limb for issues like slavery and civil rights, women’s suffrage, gay rights, and many other issues integrally made issues by assumptions propped up by dominant religious lines. People on all of these margins – heretics of all of these stripes – have fallen into the variety of categories Pirsig outlines. There are those who get stuck being anti-static just for anti-static’s sake. There are those whose resistance has mostly to do with ego. Those who get stuck on anti-static campaigns that, like that tiger ride, make it impossible to disembark well and survive.
I don’t want to be degenerate in the ways I express and live out my “heresies.” (…And I’ll admit, I don’t want to be persecuted either.) Do I have the courage to live like so many who have gone before me (like the kind West described in his talk on Thursday), standing for the Light that I think I’ve seen in such a way that Light, rather than Darkness, is shone by my stance (or steps, or words, or actions)? And…is it possible to be a truly vocalized marginal voice and not have to face angry, defensive, argumentative people? I’m thinking probably not. But how to keep my light from dimming, so, in such encounters…
Bigger questions than I can get my mind around at this time of night. Sheesh – I need to sleep. For those who have gotten this far, thanks for listening. I’d love to hear any thoughts on all of this.
October 3rd, 2004 at 6:01 am
You’re asking a foundational question: How can a person who swims against the tide keep going? How do you stand up against the status quo and not get beaten down? I found personally that the only way to do this and stay sane is to find other people who either are standing up against the status quo with you, or who validate and support you in doing so. A lonely heretic is destined for bitterness. A heretic with company, however, might change the world.
Books and magazines gave me my first “company of heretics” — including “My Name Is Asher Lev,” which I’m glad to see on your sidebar — but the more lasting connections came for me when I found a church where people loved asking questions. Some people find circles of friends or coworkers or political activists that provide something like this sense of community, but I think an open-minded and caring religious community does it much better because people aren’t startled when you start asking really fundamental questions of faith.
October 3rd, 2004 at 10:26 pm
I agree with Philoccrites that you need to seek company, although I think that for some of us, the heretical “facts” we are discovering wouldn’t be accepted in many churches because they threaten the very foundations of organized religious belief.
I think that you are already beginning to vocalize and to find your sympathetic company in (un)veilings.
October 5th, 2004 at 4:32 pm
Philocrites - I love that line: “A lonely heretic is destined for bitterness. A heretic with company, however, might change the world.” Verrry nicely put. Thanks for your words. And for being part of my company.
Roger, you’re right, too. Unveilings has become a wonderful place for me to exercise and find my voice. And very true, many churches can’t tolerate Others - well, or even at all. I’m trying to figure out how to respond to that…
October 6th, 2004 at 11:02 am
(I’ve only just found this site. It’s beautifull, from your writing, to your story, to your message.)
I’d like to say that, from my perspective, those who are fighting for Dynamic freedom are not doing it so much because they’ve found a supportive community, or because they’ve found validation. They’re fighting because they’ve come to realize - deeply - the danger and oppression of the static status quo. For them - for whatever reason - it’s become intolerable, and there is nothing for them to do but fight. Certainly, communities of individuals who’ve felt the same impulse do arise, but I do think that the driving power is one of near-desperation. Struggling to turn over something as vast and powerful as “the static stuff” takes more than like minds. It takes a life-or-death commitment. I think this commitment would get nods of recognition from anyone involved in any civil liberties movement. Yes, the community is important, but the real movement has to be personal, and has to come from within. The challenge, then, is a personal one: you have to be strong enough to stay in touch with your truer self, and to listen to your own inner morality rather than that ringing from the crowds. (There is a nice side effect from this, though, in that staying in touch with you demands a strong degree of inner peace, and having the incentive to hold to this place of calm, in order that you might listen to yourself, means that there is little chance that your actions will be wrong.)
Anyway, thanks again. I read Lila when it first came out, and wasn’t nearly as impressed by it as I was by ZMM. Now I’m thinking I’m due for a re-read.
October 8th, 2004 at 10:14 am
Good words, Siona. They sound like they’ve come from deep, personal experience. Here’s something I’m wondering: can community and trueness to the inner self work together, somehow - even helping one another in ways that both really need (the self, and the collective)? Surely isolated inner work and soul searching are essential for some of us, and integral to the drive toward Dynamic freedom. But can there come a time when that individual work can, and maybe NEEDS, to move toward more connection - not in ways that compromise the inner compass, but ways that actually help its north be even more true? Chris puts some of this idea to words in his comment on Inside Outside. What do you think of it all?
October 13th, 2004 at 12:29 pm
Oh, I absolutely agree! The human connection is essential. What else is there? Why else would there be incentive to heal, if not to connect with and heal others? I think this is the crux of it: that as one fights one’s own personal battle (I don’t much care for this war-like analogy, but I’m using it for now), one comes to realize that ’success’ is meaningless unless one works to show/help/serve/empower others in the same way. Again, if it weren’t for this, there would be no real point.
I hope my eariler post didn’t come across as being too isolationist - I just meant to say that the impetus for the drive must come from within, not the enactment of the change.
Wonderful questions, though, and again, I’m falling in love with this blog.
October 14th, 2004 at 4:04 pm
St. Anselm’s famous dictum comes to mind that contrasts Pirsig’s definition of belief as something that silences the facts:
“Credo ut intelligum: I believe and therefore I understand.”
The Latin Credo comes from Cor(heart) do(give): to give your heart into. Until I put my heart into something, I will not/cannot understand. I think this is what Siona is suggesting. So perhaps belief is actually crucial for living in the Dynamic and resisting the static? For me if our hearts are not driving us were of little use, and become obnoxious…
October 14th, 2004 at 4:42 pm
Bigbird, I think there’s really something to the “credo ut intelligum” - something good and full of life. But I have to admit to feeling cautious when I hear it, too. In that first paragraph I quote of Pirsig, Pirsig writes at the end, “Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing” as a way to summarize the way we see what we’re looking for. While this can be a wonderful thing (i.e. looking for the holy, looking for good in people, etc.), it can also be a blinder that actually keeps us from seeing what we’re NOT looking for…but what may nevertheless be there, and be important.
I’m thinking a tension must be held between giving one’s heart to something (like you describe), and trying to stay honest about and aware of the fact that a different heart-stance would probably turn up an alternative set of (maybe equally) important observations and convictions to one’s own.
October 14th, 2004 at 4:49 pm
Siona, thank you! :)
October 29th, 2004 at 11:44 am
Very very good post Kristin.