And back to Zen...

I had good thoughts last night. I was liking the book more... and now I've lost them.

One thing I'm slowly remembering is the conversation in which the narrator attempts to determine the difference between objective and subjective "Quality." Whereas, previously, he was using "Quality" to divide perceptions into "Romantic" and "Classical" he began to see Romantic and Classical instead as dividing Quality into two different ideas. The problem being that Quality should have been an absolute. The solution to this problem was simply that Romantic and Classical interpretations of Quality were just two different ways of looking at the same Quality inherent in an object. Your definition and reaction to Quality is based on the sum of your life experiences. I'm saying that poorly and, honestly, it's not really an idea that is THAT amazing. In fact, it's been fairly commonplace for me. What was really great, however, was the way in which he described it. For much of the book, I've found the language tedious and pretentious (as I've said), but this section really started to turn around and come off as more concerned, if anything.

I still don't really give a damn about the story itself, however. I suppose that the "real life" things going on are supposed to be a metaphor for the philosophical journey... not that they necessarily match chronologically... but I can see where it's going, I think. I find it particularly interesting that they didn't climb to the top of the mountain. As they were coming down, the narrator seemed to reach the pinnacle of Phaedrus's thought... which, it turns out, didn't go quite far enough. So I think I caught that metaphor. And I think it's where I let myself try to see the narrative more as an illustration of the philosophical discussion. Not something I was ready or willing to do at first.

The bits about non-Euclidean geometry were kind of neat but also kind of passe, as we were talking about that in high school physics. Not that we were supposed to be, but we did. Where I'm at, right now, is believing that the point of these past 250 pages was simply to illustrate Einstein's point that everything is relative. If this ends up being a treatise on relativity in philosophy, I'm not sure I'm going to be too stoked about it. I suppose that, instead of just saying that everything is relative, Pirsig is probably saying that the Taoist relative point-of-view is the most valid. And one to which we should aspire. Which is certainly a better and more definable position. But also one which I'm not sure I can get behind. We'll see... It's getting better.