Dave to DMB:
There is no such thing as a static pattern. Another case of RMP privileging
rhetoric. Stable patterns, sure, but static in the sense of never changing,
fixed, eternal there are none. Frankly you keep getting all over Marsha for
using "ever changing" in regard to static patterns when I for the life of me
cannot think of one static pattern that does not change.
dmb says:
I think you've made two points here and they're both bogus. Pirsig never
describes static patterns as eternally fixed or never changing. In fact, those
are the very words he uses to condemn Plato's attempt to encapsulate the Good.
Within the context of the MOQ, which is a kind of process philosophy that
frames everything in terms of evolutionary development, static only means
stable, a temporary equilibrium, if you will. The need for preservation is
balanced out with the need for growth. In the MOQ, excessive rigidity is
considered to be a form of evil and the moral hierarchy is ranks values
accordingly.
Your second point extends this bogus notion (that Pirsig uses "static" to mean
"never-changing") and pits it against Marsha's opposed use of "static" to mean
"ever-changing". I think both of those are obviously wrong. It's just a weird
way to confuse stability and flux, to confuse the static and dynamic and to
construe the operative terms according to the most extreme meaning of the words
- the last of which requires you to ignore the many qualifications and
explanations contained in Pirsig's books. Long story short, he explains that
you gotta have both. Without dynamic quality nothing can change and without
static quality nothing can last. The MOQ is all about the balance between them.
It's about maintaining enough stability to move forward, to change and evolve.
Your heart is constantly in motion, at least we hope, in an ongoing biological
process. Its job is to keep the blood refreshed and in circulation, which in
turn support countless other processes. Not to mention the intake of air, water
and food that's needed to keep the whole thing running. I think static patterns
are stable in this sense. They are always part of a process and yet there is
certain stability and a steady rhythm that makes it work. Just like you need
your heart to keep beating, we want social and intellectual static patterns to
be healthy and steady. These are different species of good and so this is just
a bit more than just an analogy. Health and wealth and truth are static goods.
People can get obsessed and rigid about any of those things but does anyone
think health, wealth or truth is bad or meaningless or somehow not good?
Andre quoted Pirsig via McWatt:
'According to the Metaphysics of Quality all objects, whether they move or not,
are physical patterns of value and are therefore static patterns of quality.
Static and Dynamic Quality patterns are not properties of objects. Objects are
a property of static quality'. 'A proposed modification therefore is the term
'stable' which avoids this ambiguity but retains the essential meaning of
'static' that the MOQ requires'. (p76)
Then Andre said:
There is stability in the patterns as they denote repeated arrangements.
Marsha, by using the 'ever changing' rhetoric makes a 'stable' discussion
impossible by arguing for a relativism based on this 'ever changing'. This
makes any discussion, any walk down the street, any talk of a tree ridiculous
as from the first moment to the next the discussion, the walk (my body, my
shoes), the street, the tree has changed. ... To reduce everything to 'ever
changing' stuff,and ,by implication, TOTALLY different, to the point of not
being able to say anything meaningful about it is to reduce our 'conventional
world' to a nonsense. It is nihilism, a cul-de-sac a dead end street.
dmb says:
Right. The basic idea is that we need the stability of static patterns AND the
flexibility of the dynamic equally. By defining the stable part as the
ever-changing part, the balance is completely lost and all stability is gone.
Somehow, that's even worse than relativism. Then all of reality becomes one big
undifferentiated blur in which everything is everything and nothing matters.
But I think this philosophy business is very much like motorcycle repair. You
gotta care. There are precision parts that will shut you down if not handled
properly. You need to have a feel for the tools and the materials. There's more
than one way to get it right and there's plenty of room to be inventive but
that doesn't mean there aren't a million ways to go wrong. It's an art but this
art involves dealing with some vital structures and subsystems that you better
understand if you want the thing to work.
On this analogy, putting the "ever-changing" where the "static" belongs is like
using oil and gasoline for nuts and bolts. It's like putting rubber where the
steel ought to go. This will certainly ruin your ride and I don't think this
analogy exaggerates the severity of the error. Describing static patterns as
ever-changing is like describing hot as cold or tall as short. It's just
meaningless nonsense and it confuses nothing less than the MOQ's first and most
basic distinction. How can a MOQer fail to object? It's such an outrageously
bad idea! It really takes the cake, you know?
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