David Harding said to Dan:
...The first thing is that when Pirsig claims that 'freedom doesn't mean
anything' I think that he is merely pointing to the fact that it isn't what
'light's people's eyes up' when they talk about it. To support this in the
next sentence he writes… "The real reason it's so hallowed is that when people
talk about it they mean Dynamic Quality." So Pirsig is not claiming that
people in the West don't experience Freedom. Or that literally freedom isn't
anything. He is saying that in the West we don't always experience the DQ that
*can* go with freedom. In other words he is pointing out that freedom and DQ
are not the same.
Dan replied to David Harding:
Interesting. I get the opposite impression. While I am sure Robert Pirsig
doesn't mean to pigeon-hole Dynamic Quality as freedom reading Lila I get the
impression they are analogous. Here are but two quotes:
"Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this world in which
we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order, preserve our
world. Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without the other."
"What the Dynamic force had to invent in order to move up the molecular level
and stay there was a carbon molecule that would preserve its limited Dynamic
freedom from inorganic laws and at the same time resist deterioration back to
simple compounds of carbon again."
dmb says:
Excuse me for butting in, gents. I realize that your conversation has been
going on for quite a while but I want to comment on this particular part of
your exchange because it seems so crucial. It's a very key point, I think.
I think it might be useful to think about the distinction between negative and
positive political freedom. John Dewey, who is a pragmatist and a radical
empiricist like Pirsig, employed this distinction but it's widely used.
Negative freedom is basically just freedom from restraint, where you are "free"
to do those things that are not prohibited. You are free in the sense that
nobody will try to stop you. Positive freedom goes well beyond this and says
that real freedom is being the author of your life, of exercising real options
and this is not only an achievement, something hard-won by the person who
achieves it, it also requires a complex social infrastructure. Positive freedom
can only be achieved where there is safety, health, education, and all the
other things that it takes for a person to be prepared for freedom.
Nobody is stopping me from writing a novel, for example. There are not laws
that would prohibit me. But am I really free to do so if I don't learn how to
read and write? And realistically, won't I need some higher education well
beyond that? If I were a rare genius with loads of innate talent, maybe I could
write something worthy of the name "novel" without years of training but, one
way or another, it takes a lot of hard work and discipline to be free in this
sense.
And I think Pirsig (and Dewey) is saying that positive freedom is the kind
that's really worth having. On this view, we don't want freedom FROM static
patterns because they "preserve our world" and had to be invented "in order to
move up". "Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without the other,"
Pirsig says. If Dynamic advances are not latched, preserved as static patterns,
that advance will be lost. If static patterns are so rigid as to preclude
further advances through Dynamic Quality, nothing can change or grow or evolve
further. To reject static patterns as a prison, as something that ought to be
"killed", is to embrace chaos and degeneracy.
"Zen monks' daily life is nothing but on ritual after another. Hour after hour,
day after day, all his life. They don't tell him to shatter those static
patterns to discover the unwritten Dharma, they want him to get those patterns
perfect. The explanation for this contradiction is the belief that you don't
free yourself from static patterns by fighting them with other contrary static
patterns, that is called bad Karma chasing its tail. You free yourself from
static patterns by putting them to sleep. That is you master them with such
proficiency, that they become an unconscious part of your nature. You get so
used to them you completely forget them and they are gone. There at the center
of the most monotonous boredom of static ritualistic patterns, the dynamic
freedom is found." (LILA 385)
Basically, real freedom or positive freedom entails mastery and proficiency,
like the artful motorcycle mechanic. A creative solution is going to be found
by the ones who've mastered the machine, the tools and the materials, not by
some careless hack with no experience.
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
