"I'm with Socrates and his disdain for the Sophists and their love of rhetoric, persuasion and winning arguments."
It was interesting to read this reference to Socrates...the entire piece up to this point gave me vibes of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I haven't read in close to 30 years, and here you are talking about Socrates. From my memory, Pirsig was talking about the ghost of reason, and trying to rehabilitate (in a way) the old Sophists of having some value beyond Socrates' criticism of them, that wisdom isn't necessarily purely a product of facts and definitions. Ultimately, you could consider Pirsig to be a criticism of the dominance of Socratic thinking across philosophy. My impression was that Socrates very much liked to win arguments but win them with "the truth," or at least to evaluate arguments using a process more reliable than rhetoric (e.g., syllogistic logic, for one). Now, I haven't read any Plato in about the same number of years as I did Pirsig, so I don't have a reliable memory of that either (I should really go back and read both again).
This is my long-winded way of saying I found your points about caring less about winning arguments and what is "true" and caring more about the experience an idea with which I agree and would like to practice more myself.
I'm in sympathy with what you have written. Re sidelining external reality, the same applies to claiming illnesses are always psychosomatic. Albeit there's a correlation between soul and physicality, the latter is just as likely to affect the former as the other way round (sometimes both). Cancer, for example, has its own life, likewise hormones and so on.
And your comment about you and the ivy being one and the same thing is something like a painting in which on the flat plane colours and shapes are perceived to come forward and back.
"I'm with Socrates and his disdain for the Sophists and their love of rhetoric, persuasion and winning arguments."
It was interesting to read this reference to Socrates...the entire piece up to this point gave me vibes of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I haven't read in close to 30 years, and here you are talking about Socrates. From my memory, Pirsig was talking about the ghost of reason, and trying to rehabilitate (in a way) the old Sophists of having some value beyond Socrates' criticism of them, that wisdom isn't necessarily purely a product of facts and definitions. Ultimately, you could consider Pirsig to be a criticism of the dominance of Socratic thinking across philosophy. My impression was that Socrates very much liked to win arguments but win them with "the truth," or at least to evaluate arguments using a process more reliable than rhetoric (e.g., syllogistic logic, for one). Now, I haven't read any Plato in about the same number of years as I did Pirsig, so I don't have a reliable memory of that either (I should really go back and read both again).
This is my long-winded way of saying I found your points about caring less about winning arguments and what is "true" and caring more about the experience an idea with which I agree and would like to practice more myself.
I'm in sympathy with what you have written. Re sidelining external reality, the same applies to claiming illnesses are always psychosomatic. Albeit there's a correlation between soul and physicality, the latter is just as likely to affect the former as the other way round (sometimes both). Cancer, for example, has its own life, likewise hormones and so on.
And your comment about you and the ivy being one and the same thing is something like a painting in which on the flat plane colours and shapes are perceived to come forward and back.
You might like to look into the concept of Ikigai - if you haven't come across it already.