Steve said: To the extent we follow static patterns we are not free, to the extent we are acting in response to DQ, we are free.
But to exactly what extent IS that? What is interesting to me is that what we seem to have here is a whole new MOQ Platypus after the SOM Platypi have been dissolved. Because Pirsig says we cannot distinguish degeneracy from DQ until long after the fact we just can't say to what extent we are free. Matt: Pirsig's a true disciple of Emerson in this regard, who says in "The American Scholar" that we must have self-trust in our instincts. But how do you tell if an instinct has had its essence voided of the "courtly muses of Europe," in whose conceptual place Pirsig puts "static patterns"? Emerson says he grounds his hope for the self-reliant American in the "doctrine of one mind," the same thing Descartes posited in articulating his notion of reason as being the same for all. (As it happens, I discussed "psychic unity" a long time ago in "Mechanistic Philosophy" in the moq.org Forum.) Likewise, one can see the MoQ as Pirsig's articulation of a doctrine to ground his hope in the Dynamic Individual. In the narrative terms of the novel, the MoQ is developed as a response to Rigel's question, "Is Lila good?" Pirsig says yes, but he and Rigel are puzzled why. Enter the MoQ. Does the MoQ succeed in grounding that hope? (With help from Rick Budd, I give what amounts to a negative answer, and illustrate how the indeterminacy of DQ/degeneracy reappears at the close of Lila, here: http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/04/prospectus-for-idiosyncratic-and.html) Emerson was labeled "optimistic" by Santayana, which wasn't good by his lights. The reason is that Emerson seemed to Santayana to have a groundless hope in the individual's ability to be self-reliant. Emerson "grounds" it in the doctrine of psychic unity, but no one, hardly Emerson himself, took it that seriously, for Emerson wasn't a metaphysician who cared for the systematic elaboration of theoretical positions. To care in this way would require one to be more honest about the reality of our human situation. Santayana, in this sense, thought Emerson lacked the honesty to face up to how tragic life often is and hence was badly optimistic. We might say that Emerson understood this about his writings, but also understood that there was nothing systematization was going to do to solve the problem of grounding hope. Emerson understood that hope is both necessary and groundless. So he optimistically hoped, patterned his writings to hold themselves up without a consistent grounding, and made fun of systematic consistency as the "bugbear of little minds." However, if one comes to appreciate what Emerson means by "power," you will come to see how subtle Emerson's understanding of the human condition was. On the other side of this is Pirsig, who unlike Emerson has the systematizing bug. Pirsig, to be honest and systematic, cannot avoid the problem of hope. The system is meant to articulate a grounding, but not for the hope itself. (The real hole in the pattern that mirrors the system itself.) This honest recognition is constituted by the indeterminacy of DQ/degeneracy thesis. Pirsig has no answer for the individual, facing the moment of choice, wondering about whether their instincts really _are_ DQ or debasing of hard-fought for evolutionary gains. Pirsig's _hope_ is that if more people followed their instincts, that culture would not only keep progressively evolving, but evolve _further_. And the only sociological explanation of how this would work is the dynamics of competition: that the cultural immune system would cure us of the incurred ills of accidental degeneracy while true Dynamic movements would rise and transcend the immune system itself. Understanding what this transcendence is is to understand what Emerson meant by "power." Matt 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
