Commentary of Chapter 6 of Lila - An Inquiry into Morals - by Robert M. Pirsig
This chapter is meant describe the experience of someone embedded in a traditional way of thinking, where mystical understanding is irrelevant and imaginary, yet what they perceive as concrete –fixed moral values, are not as concrete as they think. This is going to set us up for a debate concerning morals. that Rigel will represent one side and Phaedrus the other.
It’s a dialectic to get to truth ultimately about What Quality is, the problem is the they have differing understandings of reality to begin with, so a consensus will be difficult. Rigel sees Phaedrus’ Quality as a sinister, pseudo mystical entity, and threatening.
You could say, Dynamic Quality is mystical, but the MOQ includes static patterns, so in Pirsig’s philosophy, a social system has value, but can become stale and rigid. That’s when people like Rigel, who are deeply invested in a system, whose identity is contingent on this system, fight righteously to maintain it. Remember in Zamm, right before Phaedrus has his revelation, he is extremely invested in the Church of Reason. Fanatically so. In chapter 13 of Zamm:
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
And it’s these reactions should remind you of, for example, other attempts to maintain any dying pattern. Practically nobody wants racism, practically everybody wants it to decrease. – Yet look at the desperation to keep racism alive via the groups deeply invested in the idea that it’s still very bad. The book White Fragility is a perfect example. Most of these people have great intentions and are good souls, and are interpreting the threat to the pattern of racism to mean that if the fear and shame of racism goes away, then racism will increase. That’s an understandable fear, but it doesn’t contain any flexibility for a solution. The fear stems from, I think, that there is a zeitgeist that says the pattern is evolving into something much less potent. The solution, I believe in this philosophy in this book would be to let it peter out naturally. Some people may not agree with me, and there is probably a case to be made for that too. The moral question in this book, which is posed in this chapter, is of a similar complexity.
Rigel’s concern is that Quality is “anything you like”, an idea toyed with in ZaMM in order to arrive at the conclusion that it was not just “anything you like”, but what shines forth as relevant
Optimally, What Rigel and Phaedrus could try to do is to come to some consensus about how high quality these social patterns of value are, what should be retained, and what should be discarded. But they are operating at cross purposes. I think Pirsig purposely makes Phaedrus into a “boor” who is actually living in his own system in order to provide contrast. Robert might be able to be a little more forthcoming and conciliatory, but Phaedrus, deeply embedded in working out this system, seems flabbergasted dealing with someone so obtuse about Quality
This chapter starts with Rigel deciding, after being woken up in the middle of the night by the drunken couple stumbling across his deck to get to Phaedrus’ boat, and making a bunch of noise. Plus he’s irritated that Phaedrus boat is moored to his
All night long, in and out, in and out, the wakes from passing boats caused that author’s barge next to him to push his own boat in and out against the dock like a railroad Pullman car. And there was nothing he could do about it.
He could have gotten up and adjusted the author’s lines himself. But that wasn’t his job.
Right there, you and I see that as ridiculous. He’d rather suffer than do something that someone else should have done. He’s angry at Phaedrus’ lack of manners, he calls him a boor, in fact . This is telling us something else about Rigel. Something about his standards. We already know he is pretty concerned about morality and is rather judgmental, like his black and white assessment of the good and bad Canadians in chapter 1. He is also extremely conscientious, and we see this described here as he readies himself to invite Phaedrus to breakfast, and automatically assumes that the “great author” as he refers to him, will likely be sleeping it off.
This is someone, I think, who needs to take a chill pill. But that might be the point. Pirsig is trying to convey a sense of what it’s like to live in a particular moral system and understanding of reality.
The water was steaming hot but there wasn’t much satisfaction in that now. Two years ago it had cost him an arm and a leg to have this hot water system installed. He had to wait a whole summer for it. Now he was selling the boat. Everything changes. Nothing is predictable any more.
In this phrase, note he can’t enjoy his boat because he’s selling it in the near future. Especially after he invested time and money into it. Why can’t he just enjoy it now?? Please think of the Buddhist notion of dukkha. Wanting things to be predictable, to line up with our pre-conceived notions. Preconceived notions are the source of suffering. They are gumption traps when they can’t be transformed. See the pattern?
He thought the Great Author’s respectful readers should have seen him last night dancing with Lila. They probably wouldn’t have minded though. Among his respectful readers drunkenness and whoring were probably considered some form of Quality.
And this is the reaction that conservatives of that era generally had to the other side. You see this now with things like “family values”, God and Country etc. You certainly do not condone drunken dancing with bar girls, like some hippie degenerate.
So how does Rigel see the “great author”?
It was interesting to get a look at someone like him up close. In Oswego he seemed so reserved. They look so fine from a distance but when you see them up close for what they really are then all the cracks and blemishes appear. He wasn’t reserved. He was just boorish.
So listen to this paragraph, to get a real sense of Rigel:
Now clean and shaven Richard Rigel felt a little better. He watched in the mirror as he combed his hair into respectability, then tried on a tie. It didn’t look right. With Gary Grant features like his own it would be inappropriate to be overdressed, particularly in a place like this. He removed the tie, unbuttoned the collar and carefully opened it a little. Much better.
Rigel was first going to meet Phaedrus to ask him to untie his lines mooring his boat to Rigel’s, but his real desire for this meeting comes up, obviously along the lines of Phaedrus’ boorish disregard for maritime manners. It wasn’t the ostensible purpose, but Rigel just can’t help himself.
It’s none of my business whom you select for company, he said. You seemed to pay no attention to me at all last night. But I think I have an obligation to advise you one last time to get Lila off your boat.
Phaedrus mumble she might be better than she looks
Richard Rigel contradicted him. No, Lila is much worse than she looks.
She’s a very unfortunate person of very low quality, he said.
At the word quality, the author looked up as though it was some kind of challenge thrown at him. It was, of course.
That of course starts the whole dialectic where both make a case for their worldviews. Rigel is absolutely sure Lila is of low Quality, using an example that represents what Rigel believes is absolute truth. That Lila, with her degenerate ways, ruined her married lover’s life.
Rigel talks about a moral situation that you might associate with the oppressive 1950’s, or at least oppressive in the way we see it now, that making a moral faux pas with bar lady would cost you’re your job, cause you to be untrustworthy in business. He talks about this banker whose downfall was Lila – kind of like a Victorian novel – of Human Bondage.
But then Phaedrus asks a confounding question, that to Rigel is absolutely nonsensical.
Who was to blame? he said.
What do you mean? Richard Rigel asked.
I mean was it Lila who was to blame for your friend’s misfortune or was it his wife and his so-called friends and his superiors at the bank? Who really did him in?
I don’t follow, Richard Rigel said.
Was it her love or was it their hatred?
I wouldn’t call it love.
Would you call it hatred on their part? What exactly did he do to them that justified their hatred?
Now you’re no longer being naive, Richard Rigel said. Now you’re being deliberately stupid. Are you trying to tell me his wife had no right to be angry?
So you’ve got here the Victorian fallen woman archetype or trope. That’s how Rigel is seeing her. And he has no pity. Someone who has deliberately violated social norms for her own pleasure is the biggest sinner of all.
For Phaedrus, what transpired between the two isn’t necessarily the moral evil that can be pinpointed as the source of the problem. Why is the act immoral? It’s been going on since creatures needed two entities to reproduce. What about the reactions of the bank and the banker’s wife? Why are their responses indicative of morality and the “love” between Lila and the banker are not? It’s a good question.
The funny thing is, most people reading this ARE going to side with the wife. The way this case is being presented is ambiguous as hell, because most People reading the book in the 90’s when it came out are going to be people who probably think Rigel’s morality is outdated and unrealistic, and even oppressive. Yet, it’s very difficult to see Lila in a favorable light. That is what makes this moral investigation of her as a basis for this book so ingenious, it is so messy. Great material for an inquiry into morals.
There’s always been something wrong, logically, the author went on. How can an act of love, that does no injury to anyone, be so evil?… Think about it. Who was injured?
Richard Rigel thought about it. He said, It wasn’t any act of love. Lila Blewitt doesn’t know what love means. It was an act of deceit.
He said, Let me try another word: "Honor." The person we are talking about dishonored his wife and he dishonored his children and he dishonored everyone who put trust in him…
The violation of social norms, especially sexual ones, is dishonor. The use of the word “honor” gives us a sense of an archaic value system. Who cares about that anymore? And let me insert here a bit of an opinion, it was the complete jettisoning of things like honor, and respect, and loyalty and that kind of higher social principle that it seems we are really starting to crave amidst this chaos. So what Rigel is talking about is not all bad. The hippies rejected this value system outright, and now that this movement is winding up in violent protests, but what the purported desire of this group is to be honored and respected. There’s a pattern underneath this that still has some traction.
This is what is working out well about reading the chapter first, then doing the commentary. The comments in the reading help me with this, because I get such good input as people react to the actual chapter.
IN the comments on the reading of this video, viewers Paul Go and Van pointed out that what we are seeing is a trial. Rigel is defending social norms, Phaedrus is defending the ambiguity of Lila’s Quality (because we don’t know yet what it is), as he calls it, and Capella is standing by listening. He is the jury, a neutral observer of the arguments for and against stepping outside this moral system. And Phaedrus has a point.
But who did she hurt? Capella asked.
Rigel looked at Bill with surprise. Him too? He thought Capella was more sensible. It was a sign of the times.
Well, there are some of us left, he said, returning to the author, who are still holding out against your hedonistic "Quality" philosophy or whatever it is.
So Rigel thinks Quality can be spooned and forked up. He thinks there are different kinds of quality He is not seeing that Quality is the mechanism not the manifestation. This is what makes Pirsig’s philosophy so important right now. Amidst this chaotic fragmentation, we need something directing us towards what’s good, because the facts were are getting cannot provide it. We don’t need someone to tell us what’s good – too many people have too many opinions – we need to be able to figure out what is good for ourselves.
So there’s something to be said for people wanting to maintain systems. If we throw everything out, like the hippies did, like the postmodern types did, we have no uniting agreement as to what is moral. Pirsig has pointed out that the hippies were too destructive, too dynamic. WE have that understanding of freedom plus cultural relativism, plus technology and no consensus of what’s good. What do you do in that case? You develop a system for figuring out what’s good. And Pirsig provides that system.
You made a statement in your book that everyone knows and agrees to what "Quality" is. Obviously, everyone does not!
…My exact statement was that people do disagree as to what Quality is, but their disagreement is only on the objects in which they think Quality inheres.
What’s the difference?
Quality, on which there is complete agreement, is a universal source of things. The objects about which people disagree are merely transitory.
Remember that the reason Phaedrus opposed the dialectic in the Phaedrus dialog was that it was motivated. It wasn’t an unfolding of truth, the presumptive goal of the dialog, but instead dead-set on proving the superiority of dialectic over rhetoric, sneakily using rhetoric against the rhetorician. Here Rigel is doing a similar thing. He is caught in a value trap
Also, I think we ought to look at the word “conservative” and what it actually means. Conservatives in general tend to value social standards over liberals, and be tribal. (I don’t know what the words liberal and conservative mean today, and it seems none of us really do any more. It’s a topsy turvy world.)Anyway, Rigel is one of those conservatives who don’t like the cultural revolution of the 60’s one bit, and associates Pirsig’s work with the denizens of that culture. It’s funny, because many people do the same. They see the title ‘Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance” and they hear it’s about Quality, so the decision people make about this book is that it’s a hippie manifesto. To top it off, “the great author” says Quality is the universal source of things, and as it turns out, since we discovered what Quality is in Zamm, the way Phaedrus frames this isn’t cosmic, or mystical, or airy fairy. Its reality. When you finish reading Zamm, you ask yourself how you didn’t see this earlier.
How Pirsig’s philosophy is understood here, and what it actually means is a demonstration of two entirely different world views. Again, Phaedrus is presented as less aware of Rigel’s position than he actually is, to embody the POV of the Metaphysics of Quality. Obviously, it’s really frustrating for Phaedrus and for us to see someone trapped like that. Phaedrus knows that by updating ones’ perception of reality, you come to a much more fruitful place of being able to get in touch with that seminal experience of Quality, and to express it in the best possible way depending on your own
In terms of the MOQ, Rigel cannot see anything good coming out of the mystical “universal source of things” to him this is a communication from the devil to overthrow society, and the “great author’s” book is a call to do so.
You are in contact with this "universal source of things," aren’t you?
Yes, said the author. You are too, if only you’d understand it.
Well, I’m trying, said Richard Rigel, but you’re just going to have to help me a little. This "universal source of things" moreover tells you what’s good and what’s not good, doesn’t it? Isn’t that, right?
. Did God tell you that Miss Lila M. Blewitt of Rochester, New York, with whom you stumbled across my deck at two this morning, has Quality?
What god?
Forget God. Do you personally think Miss Lila M. Blewitt is a Woman of Quality?
Yes.
Richard Rigel stopped. He hadn’t expected this answer.
Which of course proves that the notion of Quality is bunk. Lila is so obviously low Quality, how the hell can Phaedrus give that answer. And actually, this is a very difficult question. Because it’s hard for those of us on Phaedrus’ side to see this Quality. Lila is really objectionable on every level as far as we can tell, so like I said, we don’t know where he’s going with this right yet at this juncture in the book.
…Please will you, in future days, consider the possibility that the "Great Source of All Things," that speaks only to you and not to me, is, like so many of your ideas, just a figment of your own fertile imagination, a figment that allows you to justify any act of your own immorality as somehow God-given…
When the old woman came to take their dishes the author finally asked, Do you get along entirely without Quality?
He can’t defend himself, Richard Rigel thought, and now he wants to cross-examine me. He looked at his watch. There was enough time. No, I don’t get along without Quality entirely, he said.
Then how do you define it?
Richard Rigel settled back in his chair. To begin with, he said, quality that is independent of experience doesn’t exist. I’ve done very well without it all these years and I’m sure I will continue without any difficulty whatsoever.
The author interrupted, I didn’t say Quality was independent of experience.
They agree on this, this agreement should be the beginning of a shared understanding of Quality, but in fact, the underlying metaphysics of their respective belief systems are not going to allow for any agreement. All they agree on is that Quality has to be experienced, but that’s where it ends.
So when Rigel defines Quality, he first says that it is the experience of specific things, of objects, but then he goes on to say that in general, it’s found in values. Now, the contradiction pointed out by Paul Go, And I think the reason for this contradiction is to set Rigel up as someone who is seeing things through the worldview that sees subjects and objects, so just by intuition he’s going to say “specific things”. But the truth of what is valuable to him is the social mores he lives in. He’s absolutely meticulous about what’s appropriate. What’s most important to him is a certitude of what’s right and wrong. It’s wrong to allow your boat to slam into another boat all night (I think most of us would agree with this) but with Rigel, he’s so offended by the “great author’s” boorishness, he’s rather be bothered by it all night that absolve the great author of his duty. He carefully washes, shaves, dresses, folds, etc.
Rigel is familiar with people who do not share what he believes to be a universal morality. He calls them criminals, and what really sets him off about the author, is that he believes people who got in to ZAMM are immoral hippies, draft dodgers etc.
You talked for chapter after chapter about how to preserve the underlying form of a motorcycle, but you didn’t say a single word about how to preserve the underlying form of society
Of course, since the philosophy is universal, preserving underlying form is transferable. As we are going to see coming up here, Phaedrus does value social patterns. But they have to have enough flexibility to update. Rigel is caught in that social immune system, so he has to defend his social values a die-hard, rigid approach. Change is too threatening.
But For Rigel, the whole purpose of Zamm again, is promoting the belief that Quality is anything you like. This means, morality is irrelevant, and that in Zamm, Phaedrus is doing the devil’s work.
It’s not the devil’s work I’m doing, said the author.
You’re trying to do what has "quality," isn’t that right?
Yes, the author said.
Well, do you see what happens when you get all involved in fine-sounding words that nobody can define? That’s why we have laws, to define what quality is. These definitions may not be as perfect as you’d like them but I can promise you they’re a whole lot better than having everybody run around doing as he pleases. We’ve seen the results of that.
…Maybe he should write a book about quality and what it really was.
Then comes the big Question: Does Lila Blewitt have Quality? He thinks he has Phaedrus now. How can Phaedrus possibly say yes…and much to his surprise the great author answers “yes”. But since the metaphysical structure of how they see the world is completely passing like 2 ships in the night, there is no way Phaedrus can explain why. It would be too difficult because it would require Rigel to step outside of his moral system – and that is just not going to happen. He’s fanatically wedded to it, and is deeply embedded in a lifelong value trap.
All he can do is point out to the author how Phaedrus’ isolation might be why he doesn’t see communal values. And to some extent, even we see a grain of truth in that, which demonstrates that Rigel probably is a good lawyer.
The author agrees he is isolated, but we know it’s that detachment that allows him to see what’s going on, to understand that Lila’s quality is not in the domain that Rigel would consider Quality, and in fact, Rigel’s entire system is to guard against that kind of Quality. but the author’s insight, genius and detachment does isolate him from society. So he not to have an effective way to counter Rigel’s claims. For all his genius, he is socially inept. Something he has pointed out regularly.
All he has is his book, which Rigel didn’t understand. And in fact a lot of people didn’t understand it, which is why he’s going to spell it out in this book. Which is also why this book is less popular and less entertaining. But I heard from many viewers say that it is the superior book. I guess it depends on what’s valuable to you.
Again, if you have the sense that Quality is some kind of fixed code of aesthetics, or of ethics, you are missing the point. Value is subjective and objective at the same time. But it is really going to depend on which context, or mythos, or biology that the entity detecting Quality is embedded in. And, by the way, is a hint that to truly understand other people, you have to understand their values. This means you have to suspend belief in any fixed system when you are assessing someone else’s values. You have to suspend judgment to understand. Whether their system works very well , whether it is heading towards improvement is another story…but that doesn’t have anything to do with what is being detected as Quality. That has to do with traps.
I’m surprised that you listened to me just now, Richard Rigel said as they walked toward their boats at the dock. I didn’t really think you were capable of that.
Little does he know that listening is at the core of Phaedrus’ applied philosophy. Something that Rigel only does in a motivated way, waiting to something he can latch onto to bolster his case to emerge…like Socrates does with Greek Phaedrus. For our Phaedrus, it’s at the basis of understanding.
Earlier, Rigel waved his hand to quiet Phaedrus’ objection when Rigel said that those who aren’t in this system are criminals, and of course he’s equating the hippy draft-dodgers with criminality…and you know he puts Lila in that category. Yes, it’s right and proper in our code of ethics to allow others to have their opinion whether we agree or not, but change is only possible within the system. We can change the law within the law, not outside of it.
As the boats came into view they saw Lila standing on the deck of his boat. She waved to them. They all waved back.
Rigel has just berated Lila behind her back, but when he sees her, he gives her a friendly wave. That’s good manners, after all.