Dan to Matt: I'd have to go back and see exactly what point I was making to Steve and Ron. At the time it seemed pertinent that Dynamic Quality is better understood as not this, not that. Ron seemed to be making a point that Dynamic Quality is always Good while Steve countered with a quote from LC that it is unwise to state Dynamic Quality is always affirmative. I'm not sure either of them are mistaken, however. The point I was attempting to make has to do with RMP's statement that when we raise any static ideas about Dynamic Quality someone else can take those ideas and oppose them.
Andre: Hello Dan, Matt, Ron, dmb, Steve, All: I have said before that I am very reluctant to assign any definition or adjective to (Quality) DQ. The reason is indicated by this discussion: call it "good" and you get the objection that sitting on a hot stove is not so good, or "betterness" and lots of examples/reasons are given that question the betterness of DQ. In this sense I agree with Pirsig as stated through Dan that it is better to leave all static ideas about DQ out of it. For me DQ (Quality) simply is. I try to make sense of Pirsig's statement that Quality (DQ) is "Good" or 'affirmative' by placing it in the total DQ/sq context...the "World" context if you like. Some examples in mind are Pirsig's reductio ad absurdum in ZMM, a world without qualiy, values. "The world can function without it, (i.e. Quality)[strictly speaking this is questionable of course] but life would be so dull as to hardly worth living". (ZMM, p 211) It reminds me of William James'story about his visit to a town on Chautauqua Lake which describes it's (i.e. Quality) 'absence' from the opposite perspective. The town was 'beautifully laid out...equipped with means for satisfying all the necessary lower and most of the superfluous higher wants of men...first class college...perpetually running soda-water fountains..."etc etc. All wonderful and lovely. An Eden almost. James says: "I went in curiosity for a day. I stayed for a week, held spell-bound by the charm and ease of everything, by the middle-class paradise, without a sin, without a victim, without a blot, without a tear. "And yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging into the dark and wicked world again, to catch myself quite unexpectedly and involuntarily saying:"Ouf! What a relief! Now for something primordial and savage, even though it were as bad as an Armenian massacre, to set the balance straight again". (In, "What Makes a Life Significant"). Getting back to the hot stove example: it is not DQ that causes the low quality environment (DQ is not part of a cause and effect system). It is DQ/sq. Getting back to the questioning of the DQ being "Good" or "affirmative" statements: I tend to place these in the context of Annotation 56 and in this example (just to make it clear) liken DQ to life: "All we can say is that these static patterns emerged [from DQ]and that they are better than physical nothingness...But if these patterns had not emerged there would be no life. And if life is not better than death..." we'd sit in Sylvia's funeral procession, Phaedrus' square, dull world, in James' Chautauqua town and on Lila's Jungle Queen. It is in this context that I go along with the statement that DQ is "Good" and can therefore be used affirmatively. DQ is the "Quality of freedom" which has created the world in which we live (sq). I'd say it's a very beautiful place. DQ is. It is the Nothingness within which there is great working. (Katagiri Roshi in Anthony's PhD, p 35) For what it's worth. 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
