John the Idealist said: In summation: Is the "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" the source of everything, or is the source of everything a DIFFERENTIATED aesthetic continuum? Differentiated or Undifferentiated? I say, differentiated. Otherwise entropy and chaos would be the rule and we wouldn't be. Pirsig makes it pretty plain which way he leans on the question. But I don't even take HIS word for everything. I want consensus here. Give it to me now.
dmb says: You're right to think we disagree on this point. As I understand it, "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" is Northrop's phrase and "Dynamic Quality" is Pirsig's equivalent. The world of differentiation is what Pirsig means by static quality, but I wouldn't call the static reality an "differentiated aesthetic continuum" since "continuum" itself suggests a lack of differentiation. Northrop's phrase is almost redundant in that sense. So basically, the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum is the source of everything and the static reality we live in is the "everything". Put another way, the static patterns of quality are the defined, known world. It's everything you'd find in a perfectly exhaustive encyclopedia and Dynamic Quality is the source of all that. This helps to explain why we can't really say that DQ is exclusively "Good". Terms like good and bad, good and evil, right and wrong all belong to the world of differentiated concepts and judgments. Distinguishing good from bad is exactly what we mean by a "differentiation". But it's also true that DQ has a general tendency toward an undefined betterness. It remains undefined because better and worse mean different things at different levels and it'll mean different things within levels depending on the particular situation. On the biological level, it might mean faster or stronger and on the intellectual level it might mean greater clarity, precision or explanatory power. And then there is Pirsig's brand of radical empiricism. By adding Quality to what William James had said, the cutting edge of each moment in experience is undifferentiated and yet we are endowed with a sort of sixth sense that tells us about the quality, positive or negative, of the overall situation. Following this sense would mean being so spontaneous that there is no room for deliberation or judgement, at least not in the usual sense. This is where freedom and creativity live, where one follows DQ rather than the written rules. It's Dharma, the unwritten law. This doesn't mean we can abandon static patterns. It's more like they recede into the background. To the extent that they are mastered, they become invisible, as in the case of every craftsman and mechanic and artist who ever lived. They're like your surf board and you use them to ride the wave of DQ. It's like developing an intuitive skill. I suppose that why sailing and motorcycle riding are the central metaphors. You learn the stuff you need to know and then forget it in favor of flying along by the seat of your pants. You might say it takes a lot of discipline to be free. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ SkyDrive™: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 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/
