The Aphorism: One doesn't _have_ static patterns, one _is_ static patterns.
dmb said to Matt:
You're only working with the static half of the aphorism... DQ is the other
half, of course. If you're going to subscribe to Pirsig's pithy description of
the self, I think it's only fair to include the whole idea.
Matt replied:
...I also am assuming for the sake of time, energy, and space that leaving
pieces of a systematic philosophy out is reasonable and expected so long as one
doesn't get what one leaves in or out wrong.
dmb says:
Well, it's certainly reasonable to focus on the particulars and it would be
impractical to include all the pieces of a systematic philosophy every time you
discuss any part of it. But in this case the problem is not leaving out pieces
of a systematic philosophy. The complaint is about using only half of that
aphorisms, only half of the description of the self. It's a matter of chopping
a single idea in half. I think there is no way to do that without distorting
the idea. (I was always bothered by the way the NRA does this to the second
amendment, in fact. The facade of their headquarters quotes only their favorite
half of the relevant sentence from the Constitution. To me, that always seemed
like cheating.)
Matt continued:
.., say we use the analogy of DQ with a blank piece of paper: it seems to
reinforce the point I'm making that it is a misnomer to say there's a process
going on before there are words (static patterns) on the page. ..it seems
equally valid to say that thinking is done with static patterns. "What about
before the thinking?" This seems to me a more appropriate response--the staring
at the blank canvass that scares so many with the endless possibilities. DQ, on
this picture, is what happens before one is kicked into the motion that is the
process. (It's fair to say here, I think, that the words don't _begin_ the
process, the blank page does, but what kind of beginning that is I would like
to move further toward.)
dmb says:
I don't think that analogy is intended to depict DQ as a kind of blankness. How
did Pirsig put it? The analogy shows that DQ both exceeds and permeates static
quality. This analogy can be very well illuminated, I think, by seeing how it's
parallel to the sand sorting analogy. Remember that? The world as it's known
intellectually is a handful of sand taken from the endless landscape of
awareness. The white sheet of paper is that endless landscape and what's
written on it is just a small handful of these infinite surroundings. DQ is
"blank" only in the sense that it's not static, not yet written or sorted or
classified or standardized. That endless landscape is elsewhere described as an
aesthetic continuum, as the flux of life, as the primary empirical reality. In
that sense, it is not at all blank but rather rich and thick and overflowing so
that static concepts are just thin outlines by comparison, like the blueprint
of a skyscraper as compared to the actual building.
Matt said:
I think it is further illustrative of my point to consider.. what Pirsig
suggests to the girl in his composition class in ZMM: "start with the upper
left-hand brick." (Ch. 16) His point, as to the girl, is that the background
whole of reality is too big to start with--you start with a little chunk: a
static pattern. That begins _the process_, from which one can expand in any
direction to include as much as one wants. And it happens _on_ the page and
always in relationship to it. But to say, as you were, that one begins with
DQ/process and then moves to static-pattern/standards seems to me to
misunderstand the nature of the process.
dmb says:
Well, yes, he described that girl as a dull drudge and he kept telling her to
narrow her topic. But she never intended to write a 500-word essay on the whole
of reality or DQ or anything like that. Her problem was that there were fewer
things to imitate as she got increasingly narrow. She was stuck because she
always relied on repeating things she's heard before. Starting with the upper
left hand brick precluded that parroting option and forced her to see with her
own eyes, apparently for the first time in her life. Once Phaedrus realized
that this fresh seeing was the key, he used the same principle on all his
students. Remember that? He gave them in-class writing assignments on very
specific topic that were seemingly trivial but they forced the students to be
original in the same way; an essay about your own thumb, a single coin. At one
point a student even asked, "Do we have to write about BOTH sides of the coin?"
This specificity doesn't just mean smaller or more limited
so much as it means more concretely felt and lived and immediate. I think of
this as a parallel to the poet who wants to write about bamboo. One approach
would be to learn the rules of writing good poetry and then read a lot of
bamboo poets. The other approach would be to sit in the bamboo forest until you
have something to say. The rules and models of good writing serve the goal and
the process, they're part of it of course, but the fresh seeing comes first.
Without that, his students really couldn't think of anything to say. That's why
the blank pages struck that girl with terror and made her cry. She just didn't
realize that she could see for herself, didn't know she could paint without the
numbers. By getting her to focus on one brick, he took those numbers away and
thereby forced her to notice the landscape of her own awareness.
Matt said:
As you say, "the question of WHAT you ARE and the question of HOW you should
ACT are two different questions." I agree for the most part, but I hope this
makes more sense of why I wish to reformulate your practical answer of where to
start the creative process by reflecting on the theoretical question of what
the creative process is.
dmb says:
But his central point in those classroom scenes is that the theoretical
approach to creativity is fundamentally wrong. If we look at the opening of
chapter 18, for example, we can see this in both the content and the tone. He
has just wrapped up those classroom scenes at the end of chapter 17, where he
says:
"He was pointing to no principle, no rule of good writing, no theory - but he
was pointing to something, nevertheless, that was very real, whose reality they
couldn't deny. ..The whole Quality concept was beautiful. It worked. It was
that mysterious, individual, internal goal of each creative person, on the
blackboard at last." (ZAMM 209).
Then, in the first pages of chapter 18, he says:
"It wasn't any particular point of view that outraged him so much as the idea
that Quality should be subordinated to ANY point of view. The intellectual
process was forcing Quality into is servitude, prostituting it. I think that
was the source of his anger." (ZAMM 212, emphasis is Pirsig's.)
"By refusing to define Quality he had placed it entirely outside the analytic
process. If you can't define Quality, there's no way you can subordinate it to
any intellectual rule. ..The thought of this completely thrilled him. It was
like discovering a cancer cure. No more explanations of what art is. No more
wonderful critical schools of experts to determine rationally where each
composer had succeeded or failed. All of them, every last one of those
know-it-alls, would finally have to shut up. This was no longer just an
interesting idea. It was a dream." (ZAMM 213)
At this point he's shifting from teaching methods to philosophy. He's moving
into the next phase and what happens is that he turns "the method of
rationality against itself". Quality is just fine, he says. Now it's
rationality that is on the examining table and he is going to trace this
subordination of Quality from the aestheticians who think their topic is
"something to be devoured; something to be intellectually knifed and forked and
spooned up bit by bit" all the way back to Plato and his denigration of the
poets and rhetoricians. In other words, his insistence on the primacy of
undefined quality OVER theories and standards on this particular point is
consistent with his over all project. The whole aphorism is consistent with the
whole system of thought.
>From Mark Edmundson's book, "Literature against Philosophy, Plato to Derrida",
>as quoted in Granger's book on Dewey and Pirsig:
"Literary criticism in the West begins with the wish that literature disappear.
Plato's chief objection to Homer is that he exists. For to Plato poetry is a
deception: it proffers imitations of imitations when life's purpose is to seek
eternal truth; poetry stirs up refractory emotions, challenges reason's rule,
making men womanish; it induces us to manipulate language for effect rather
than strives for accuracy. The poets deliver many fine speeches, but when you
question them about what they've said, their answer are puerile; they don't
know what they're talking about. Though Plato can be eloquent about the appeal
of literary art, to him poetry has no real place in creating the well-balanced
soul or just state. When he conceives his Utopia, Plato banishes the poets
outside its walls."
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