What Makes Things Memorable in The Magus and in This Class

I have been thinking a lot lately about what makes experiences, objects, and different people more memorable than others of similar kind. It seems that almost anything Dr. Sexson speaks is memorable to almost every one of us. How can one person be so influential that we absorb every word he speaks like it's the very mixture of nitrogen and oxygen we breathe in each day? Quite honestly, the only reason I'm in this class is because of a memorable talk he gave to my orientation leader class. He spoke of the very topic that I am writing about. He walked in and said, "How can I come into your class for 50 minutes, and deliver a speech that you will actually remember?" He then proceeded to talk about possibly taking little pieces of our ear lobes just so we would never forget the day Dr. Sexson came to visit us. It certainly would have been memorable, but not the most pleasant of experiences and I probably would not have associated the greatest memories with him as an individual. (Yikes!)

I started thinking about memorable experiences in my life and the main one I can think of that truly relates to The Magus, is my initiation into the Sigma Chi Fraternity. I clearly cannot speak extensively on the content of our initiation process and the details of it, but I can talk about the feelings that come along with it. Our initiation is part of our secret ritual and is not be shared with the general public, although I often question that. If this is such a memorable experience, why wouldn't we want to share it with the world so they can experience what we all get to? It is a full week of activities and events that build character, leadership, and outlines an extensive amount of time for introspection. I often wonder if our society was mapped out in such a manner, if the general population would become essentially a perfect society. Obviously, this is a hyperbole and would never be possible, but nevertheless it would be extraordinary for everybody to delve into this experience. I remember being frustrated, excited, exhausted, vibrant, discouraged, and inspired all at once. You become very comfortable with looking inside yourself and trying to dissect each of your inherent flaws and finding ways to stitch them into the ideal picture of yourself. Some might take this "ideal picture" as sculpting yourself into a perfect person. I take it as molding yourself into the exact person you strive to be, and the exact person that Sigma Chi strives to make you into. Sigma Chi was founded on concrete principles of friendship, justice, and learning. Men of Sigma Chi are not to stray from these principles, and it is hard to forget them after a week of such an immense amount of emotion.

Now, I know this is hard for others to understand because the major stereotype of fraternity men is a group of drunk college students chasing after women. If only we could teach everyone about our fundamentals and initiate them into our prestigious organization. An initiation is something that will never be forgotten. Why? It is simply because they are like nothing else anybody will ever experience and this is the experience that Nicholas had in The Magus. He was put through events that were like nothing he had ever experienced, so it is clear that this was a memorable experience for him. This is the exact way I feel in this class, everyday is a new memorable experience and Sexson and Fowles have discovered the perfect way to do this.

Quality...Can It Be Measured?

The idea of quality is such an ambiguous description of any object, process, or idea. Can we really define anything as quality? It is extremely easy to call something quality, but do we have any reasoning for that? Quality is strictly dependent upon the "quality" that we define other things around us by, so does this mean that quality is our restraint in defining each other's limits. If it were not for the idea of quality, we would have no bounds and hence we would have no limits in our being. We could constantly expand to new, unexplored areas because the greatest lengths to which we could achieve, simply would not exist.

I believe that Robert Pirsig had this exact idea in mind when he took the approach to destroy and cut through conventional answers. I believe that if you are constantly worrying about what others will think of your response to a question, and question its "quality", then you are only inhibiting your imagination. We need to break out of these typical answers that people continue to give to the typical questions and break through the bounds of what is already considered "high quality". One experiment that would be interesting to employ in classes would be to answer all questions by posing another question. It would open up the realm of conversation to an entirely new level, and raise intellectual conversation to a new "quality."

Pirsig was "interested in science as a goal in itself, rather than as a way to establish a career." I think this is how the dynamic of a college education has shifted so drastically in recent years. Why are we giving up four years of our life to simply get from Point A to Point B? Pirsig realized that if he continued to pursue science and explore its depths to a greater extent, the subject of science would essentially explode into a new dimension. Pirsig realized that several scientists limit themselves through their number of hypotheses, and discovered that for any given experiment there are actually an infinite amount of hypotheses. He even became obsessed with the idea to the extent that he was expelled from the University of Minnesota, but was he expelled simply because his idea of quality didn't meet their grasp on quality?

 

 

This plaque is in our library here at MSU, on the first floor at the entrance to the stair case, and I noticed it shortly after reading the wiki page about Pirsig. It has an interesting quote on it that says, "In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty..." Pirsig realized that it may be uncomfortable to walk outside the teachings of conventional thought, but it is quite possible. He described his time teaching here at MSC as an "unpleasant experience," due to the teaching philosophy of the college. Maybe it is the universities in this world that are holding back this concept of quality and now we have trapped ourselves within this figurative box.

 

Even with all these realizations of Pirsig's, is it possible to define quality? I think with the answer to this question, I agree with what Brooke stated in her entry. Quality is simply in the eye of the beholder. Everything contains some amount of quality, but the degree of quality will always depend on the individual judging the quality.