Jon said: Pirsig favors dynamic quality, just as the I Ching with its two fundamental principles, favors yin, or the change principles.... Moq favors the dynamic reality over the static. And this sabotages its rational element even though it is often unseen.
dmb says: Okay, now I'm beginning to think you haven't read Pirsig's books. In ZAMM, he says Taoism is an exact match and in Lila he says that static and dynamic quality are are both necessary. His emphasis on the dynamic is part of an effort to restore a proper balance because that's what's been missing from our age of scientific objectivity. That's the blind spot that keeps us out of whack, alienated, isolated and divided against ourselves. How does it put it? Without dynamic quality nothing can change and without static quality nothing can last. It's about having stability without having rigidity. It's about having creativity and novelty without having chaos or degeneration. Jon said: ...Furthermore, the Enlightenment was not as influential in America's formative years. So I'd like to see you present some evidence dmb, for your and Pirsig's claim (and Campbell would agree with you) that human rights, democracy, were grounded in Enlightenment thought. dmb says: There is a mountain of evidence. For starters, plug "Thomas Jefferson" and "John Locke" into a search engine and you'll see what I mean. Jefferson's most famous phrase from the Declaration of Independence, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", is a modification of Locke's "life, liberty and property", for example. I think it would even be fair to say that the founding fathers lived at the height of the Enlightenment and their political philosophy epitomizes the Enlightenment. One can say many things about this period, but I think the outstanding feature is the differentiation of art, science and religion. (This results in things like the separation of church and state and the development of autonomy for each area or domain.) This is not something we want to undo, but the problem is that these domains are not just distinct and autonomous, they've become hostile to each other. So part of what Pirsig is doing with "DQ" is to reunite and reconnect them on a real basic lev el. We want beautiful science, intelligent art and a religion that isn't threatened by either. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail is redefining busy with tools for the New Busy. Get more from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_2 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/md/archives.html
