Ron / dmb, Agreed. "Killing" the intellect - I always read as "switching it off" temporarily - completely, but not permanently was Pirsig's emphasis, at moments when it gets in the way of other considerations - the openness to other new possibilities as dmb put it. But you always need to be able to switch it back on in the right contexts.
;-p Pity dmb, like James, can't decide if his right leg is better than his left - so wishy-washy to look for the alternative exclude middles or maybe choose both in some dynamic combination. ;-) Ian What's so funny 'bout ... On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 3:50 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Ron said to dmb: > ...He or she understands the rational relationships between all the parts, > even some unconsidered at the time. But thats not killing the intellect, > thats aligning the intellect, it is a rational understanding. Quieting the > mind, engageing in the moment is a useful method to free the intellect. If > there is a consistency in ideas with an MoQ , it must then follow that if the > intellectual level is the highest good, Pirsig must not then be pointing away > from it as Dan seems to suggest. ...what I thought Dan and I had agreed upon > previously, is that intellect should be harmonized and aligned with dynamic > quality, then the quote above and your comments are continuous with the > concept of the expansion of rationality. > > > dmb says: > Right, I don't think of it as killing the intellect. That's what's so useful > about the bike repair metaphor, I think. You can't be an artful mechanic > without some level of mastery. Following DQ is not some kind of magic where > you get to skip the hard work. You gotta learn the static stuff first and > then you can let it flow. On this point, James asks a rhetorical question: > Does a man walk on his right leg more essentially than his left? No, he says. > The whole point and purpose of concepts and abstractions is bring them to the > task of living. They're supposed to function by being put to work in > experience and if they only ever remain aloft among other abstractions and > never come back to the earth of things, like fixing a bike, then they are > useless and empty at best. > This is another sense in which static patterns are secondary; they are the > mutable servants of life, not the final answer to the riddle of the universe. > They are supposed to be subservient. But killing them? I don't think we ought > to take that literally. How intellectual is the book that says intellectual > patterns are only the highest static good? Very. I think the idea is to > loosen up our theories and cultivate an openness to novel possibilities but > that doesn't mean we can forget the difference between a wrench and > screwdriver or hammer nails with a stick of butter. > > 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 > 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
