Krimel asked: Where does Pirsig say that the pursuit of knowledge takes us away from Dynamic Quality?
dmb says: Pirsig says many times and in many ways that DQ can't be defined intellectually and that reality is fundamentally dynamic. [Krimel] Right, it is Heaclitian not Parmenadian. [dmb] He's not saying that education is evil or that science is naughty. He more or less opens and closes Lila with this intellectual-mystical distinction. Its one of the major themes in both books, even before DQ was invented. In fact, some of the names for DQ describe it in terms of a negative relationship to intellect; pre-intellectual experience, pre-linguistic experience, undifferentiated experience, pure experience, etc.. [Krimel] And in ZMM he says that romantic mystics need to get over themselves and learn to see a barbeque grill as sculture. Good advice, Dave you oughta think about it. [dmb] "Some of the most honored philosophers in history have been mystics: Plotinus, Swedenborg, Loyola, Shankaracharya and many others. They share a common belief that the fundamental nature of reality is outside language: that language splits things up into parts while the true nature of reality is undivided. Zen, which is a mystic religion, argues that the illusion of dividedness can be overcome by meditation" (LILA, page 63). [Krimel] Seriously that list of "most honored philosophers" has to be a joke. Third string bench warmers, does anyone here find it impressive? [dmb] [Snip three long quotes appealing to Pirsig as oracle] [Krimel] I have recently begun to develop some grudging respect for Freud at least with his emphasis on the "unconscious" and his attempt to create a psychology rooted in evolution. I prefer Mitchell Gazzaniga's term non-conscious but never the less. Language, as the mystics point out, more often conceals as much as it reveals. The way that individuals understand each other is linguistic but understanding is not. Language points us toward understanding but understanding is felt. It is colored by emotion it is influence but the specific conjunction of experiences as James might say. Language is objective (inter-subjective) but understanding is personal. Like the demon that Jesus casts out into the Gadarean swine, we are Legion. Each of us has multiple selves, multiple modes of being, multiple modes of sensing the world and multiple way of integrating sensation into the unity of perception. A large portion of who we are as individuals in not linguistic as all. Hunger is a word not a state of being. Gazzaniga's split brain experiments provide astounding demonstrations of this fact. For some period of time after their brain hemispheres have been disconnected to relieve epileptic seizure, these patients have divided selves; two minds in the same bodies. One half has language skills and the other does not. This is almost humorously demonstrated when one such patient tries to get dressed for the day. One hand reaches into the closet and selects of blouse that the verbal half of her self does not want to wear. She finally throws the offensive blouse on the bed and selects the one the "she" wants to wear. Our non-conscious motivations are often hard for our conscious selves to fathom but a truly integrated person learns to incorporate both. [dmb] I'd also point out that this is exactly where mysticism meets radical empiricism... [Snip three more long quotes appealing to Pirsig's authority and draswn from Dave's canon within the canon] [Krimel] Such poignant quotes, its "almost" like you've never used the before. A point that Pirsig glosses over and for all I know misses entirely is that this is a description of the individual's construction of reality not about reality. James surely does not miss this point as I have shown earlier. They are not statements about reality but about how we make sense of our experience. The distinction between self and not self is not one that we come into the world with. It is learned or perhaps it develops as our nervous systems mature. Babies do not understand that objects continue to exist when they are ought of sight. They are egocentric, that is, they can not take the point of view of another person until they are four or five years old. Surely this not what the Buddha advocated that we embrace when we adopt the beginner's mind nor is it what Jesus pointed towards when he said that we should be "born again". The pure value referred to is value imparted by evolution to secure our reproductive success. It is emotional value laid down in the memory of our genes. We do learn to make distinctions. We do learn to see other points of view. We do, some of us, grow up and in the process we build a network of conceptions; a structure of connections between concepts and experiences. We strengthen and weaken that pattern of associations with each new moment and each new experience. To focus on throwing it out is folly. To regard it as fixed, absolute or "true"; or as Pirsig might say, to render it Static, is illusion. [dmb] I'm also fond of the quotes on the difference between mystical experience and the religious clap trap that grows up around it, which makes the same basic point about eating the menu. In any case, it's safe to say that Quality plays a central role in Pirsig's thinking and so you've asked one of the key questions. [Krimel] One man sees snakes, another sees God. One man's mystical experience is another's religious claptrap. It works out nicely if you are the one that gets to decide which is which. Pardon those of us who retain a skeptical position about your judgment. [dmb] There's one more point to add. It's a negative one. I'm pretty sure that Pirsig never said that DQ is the stuff that "wiggles". [Krimel] Excuse my over simplification but I can find no sense of the term Dynamic that suggests mystical goodness. The word means what it means. I thought I was the one dismayed over Pirsig's misuse of terms. Apparently we have found common ground a last. I love you, man. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
