David H said:
My understanding is that Quality is fundamental in both ZMM and the MOQ. In
ZMM - Quality is split up into classical and romantic quality. In fact, it is
this division which enabled Pirsig to arrive at the conclusion that everything
was indeed quality. At the end of ZMM Pirsig decides it is best to leave
Quality undefined. In Lila, Pirsig decides to define that thing which ought
to be left undefined and he did this by placing the 'undefined' quality aside
in a definition of DQ. Once he did this he was then able to delve into the sq
- defined - aspect of quality and not feel (as much) guilt about doing so. The
MOQ will, one day, be replaced by something better.
dmb says:
Well, remember that even in ZAMM classic and romantic are two different styles
of thought. i.e. Aristotle's love of the many and the Platonic love of the one.
This fits well with Pirsig's description of the two different ways to look at
the handful sand, either by sorting into categories and taxonomies or as one
whole pile of sand. But even back in ZAMM he was explaining that "Phaedrus was
clearly a Platonist by temperament". "His Quality and Plato's Good were so
similar that if it hadn't been for some notes Phaedrus left I might have
thought they were identical. But he denied it. And in time I came to see how
important this denial was." Some pages later...
"The difference was that Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving
Idea, whereas for the rhetorician it was not and Idea at all. The Good was not
a FORM of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable
in any kind of fixed, rigid way." You can see the static/Dynamic distinction
here even though he's not using those particular terms. He's pitting his own
"ever changing" Good against Plato's Good as a "fixed and rigid Idea". This
passage makes it pretty clear, by the way, why Andre and I are always objecting
to Marsha's description of static patterns as "ever changing". "Ever changing"
is what we want to say about DQ, about the primary empirical reality, which is
not to be confused with static patterns.
David H:
Now from this perspective, I think that the awareness mentioned in ZMM is
Pirsig still talking from a SOM perspective whereby "We" are always objects
going through a certain space and time and that our intellects only capture a
certain amount of this sensory experience. The MOQ contradicted this and said
that is a good idea but not actual reality.
dmb says:
I disagree. To say that reality is a just small handful of sand is to present
an alternative and a challenge to SOM. The explanation wherein Quality is the
continuing stimulus that causes us to create the world of analogy upon analogy
all the way down is part of this same challenge to SOM, even though it was
dished up in a way that a Behaviorist (SOMish psychology) could understand. In
both cases, Pirsig is saying something radical about the world as we understand
it, namely that it's not objective, that we have selected it and built it,
analogy by analogy. The sand piles and the piles of analogies are both are warm
up acts for the idea that "man is a participant in the creation of all things".
See what I mean?
David H said:
Further to your [Andre's] point about MOQ's Quality being the same as other
stuff - I think we can draw these comparisons and claim they all really mean
the same thing, but what value is there in doing so? Northrop and James and
Zen Buddhism and Christianity all screw up what the other person is trying to
say. You 'know' if they are talking about the same thing. But what we're
doing now is nothing other than intellectual tricks with no other goal than the
fact that they are intellectual tricks... What's the point in comparing them?
dmb says:
I think it's like shining light on the idea from different directions. It helps
to eliminate misconceptions when you get lots of different kinds of
explanations. "Nothingness" could easily be mistaken to mean the absence of
everything, like something less than black empty space. But when you put it
next to "undivided" and "undifferentiated" you can see more clearly that the
term refers to an absence of distinctions, by which we understand "things". So
the term mean "no things" or "no thingness". There's nothing black or empty
about the immediate of flux of life. This no-thingness is a stream of full of
rich and overflowing experience. This no-thingness is reality itself and it's
definitely not nothing. It's quite something.
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