Squad,
A really beautiful post was emitted by the
Roger-unit's-intellectual-patterning-aparatus. Thank you - your clarity and
insight are very valuable. (And of course the humour! If you can't laugh,
you don't understand the Dynamic aspect of Quality...)
Risking 'risky' static repetition, I'd like to bring this back to the
center of our attention:
>BALANCED SELF
>A central theme of Pirsig's is BALANCE. David B. explained that in the MOQ
>that regardless what the self is, that a *high quality* self involves
>balance. I agree strongly, and will try to keep this concept in mind
>throughout. Intellect AND mysticism. Static AND dynamic, Classical and
>Romantic, Biological AND Social, Confucian AND Taoist, West AND East,
>Conceptual AND Grounded, Introspective AND Fatherly, Illusory AND Real..
Ah-ha! Eureka! A middle way, eh? Of course the East has been teaching us
all along how to re-unify (yoga - to link/yoke) our daily dual (conceptual)
experience with our "original face".
What ZMM tries to show is that without an immediately experienced
recognition of the Dynamic aesthetic continuum from which all transitory
physical and mental manifestations come and go, an individual's life is
likely to be dull and unsatisfying, incomplete and restless, sorrowful and
in chains...
And if the strictly intellectual/theoretical aspect of human knowledge and
experience, that is, the logical, law-abiding character which we apply to
reality, is the guiding Value of a culture, such as has been since Socrates
(the good is a subset of the true) in the West, we have at the end of 2600
years or so come to the point at which an individual has been taught he is a
mental entity with a physical body, eternally disconnected, separate and
alone, save the commands and demands of a logical God who is Other.
And this gives us the ugliness seen in the static, classical values and
creations of the Victorians...the utter disregard for aesthetics in the
design and building of technological appliances...the subject of the
Chautaqua in ZMM...
The Orientals teach us: (through P through Rog...)
>But the MOQ does not lead to a limitation of the SELF, it leads to a
broadening of the SELF. By going beyond the illusory, secondary reality of
the autonomous SELF to the infinite unity of experience. Why be the wave
when we can expand ourselves to the entire ocean? Why be the little editor
behind a pair of eyeballs, when you can be the entire experienced universe?
Even grander, why not just be the entire universe of pure experience?
We should be...we are... What the Orient missed, however, is that aside
from this truly beautiful, illuminating *knowledge* of the Dynamic aesthetic
continuum in which we have and ARE our being, there is also an equally
valuable method of gaining *knowledge* of our constitution - past, present
and future. This method of course, is the scientific one. Science is founded
on logic. And logic, we all know, is the method of seeing/understanding
reality which is so highly venerated by the Church of Reason.
It is ONLY due to this very Church, however, that I am able to read books
which seek to improve it (Gutenberg-printing press), calculate the precise
movements of celestial objects and visit our moon (Galileo, math...), live
until a ripe old age (empirically verified medicine)... all of which are
really good things, I believe.
This Pirsig fully realizes. He even notes his previous romantic prejudice
against classic knowledge.
So, let's balance:
The 'straight' Western scholarly pickle up the butt logical classically
minded objective valuefree conceptual nit-picker needs a very loud, Dynamic
slap of aesthetic knowledge/experience. Plastic and metal monsters haunt my
dreams...
The 'hip' Eastern sagely pickle-denying purely unspoiled intuitive
aesthetically minded irrational seeker needs a good concrete dose of solidly
constructed logical theory. Hiroshima and dualities confront my mind...
...which should focus on other things right now.
Bye!
Rich
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