dmb said:
.., there is no such thing as changelessness. Static patterns are relatively
stable, but even stars are born and die and the big bang was a very big change.
These are the inorganic level of patterns, the most stable of all, and still
the whole story is a drama of unfolding and collapse.
Krimel replied:
So Static Quality is undefinable as well?
dmb says
No, I'm just saying static quality is not eternal or changeless. Truth, for
example, is provisional. That doesn't mean it's so slippery that we can't make
a point or assert the "facts" as they presently exist but in terms of
historical time we fully expect tomorrow's static intellectual patterns to be
different from today's. The idea that societies and organisms evolve is just
par for the course, of course, and like I said, the inorganic patterns are far
from changeless. Stars and rocks and the ground under foot used to be the
images of eternity but now the scientific imagination can employ a sort of
time-laspe photography. And we can literally see the birth and death of stars.
We know that mountain ranges are born of shifting continents and that in time
they melt away. If anything in this universe is eternal, it's change. Static
means stable, not forever frozen.
dmb said:
DQ can't be rightly thought of as "patterns that do change" because DQ is not
patterned at all. It's likened to a stream, a flux, to the cutting edge of an
ongoing event, etc..
Krimel replied:
So DQ is "...likened to a stream, a flux, to the cutting edge of an ongoing
event, etc.."; but it is not like change?
dmb says:
It's not patterned. The analogies certainly portray DQ as constantly in flux
and in motion, but they are just analogies. I mean, velocity and motion are
physical properties that can be calculated and predicted and all that. DQ is
LIKE that, by analogy, but remember we are talking about experience, not a
thing. Even when we're talking physics, which involves static patterns both
inorganic and intellectual, there is lots and lots of change. And so it doesn't
help much to distinguish static from dynamic in terms of change and
changelessness, because both sides change and neither side is changeless.
Krimel said:
Pirsig does more or less create the problem in Lila by failing to distinguish
between Quality and Dynamic Quality. He uses them interchangeably and as a
result often incorrectly. I don't think it is hard to read past these errors
and to forgive him for his enthusiastic applications of the ideas represented
but a literal reading without this filter produces weird effects.
dmb says:
I just don't believe that and I'll bet all my cattle that you can't come up
with a single example. Show me one passage where the meaning of the terms in
question is unclear or ambiguous. What the heck, I'll bet my horses too.
Krimel axed:
What is the point of the modifier in Lila?
dmb says:
The modifiers are a result of the first cut. His analytic knife produced
"static" and "dynamic", replacing the classic-romantic split. The replacement
became necessary because he realized that romantic quality and dynamic quality
aren't the same.
dmb said:
What Pirsig and James are saying is that we have ignored one of these elements
and that this ignorance causes personal, cultural and philosophical problems.
Krimel replied:
Which is why in ZMM the split is characterized as romantic - classic. The
romantic style prefers to be guided by the passions. The classic style prefers
to be guided by reason. Jung called these two styles intuitive and intellectual.
dmb says:
That's about right but it's also true that the romantic style is a style of
thought. He characterizes Plato and Aristotle as romantic and classic, for
example. The romantic style in not any less intellectual and so we're talking
about static patterns either way. That's why DQ and romantic quality are not
the same.
Thanks. This conversation seems for real. I sincerely appreciate that.
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