QUOTES FROM PIRSIG that I take as evidence for the claim that static patterns
are a necessary ingredient for dynamic freedom and the art of rationality. I
take this as evidence against relativism and nihilism, which has infected a few
MOQers.
"Contrarians sometimes just seem to savagely attack every kind of static moral
pattern they can find. It seems as though they're trying to destroy morality as
a kind of revenge. ...That *brujo *in Zuni was a contrarian. ...we have our
contrarian societies too. The "Bohemians" of the Victorian era were
contrarians. So, to some extent, were the Hippies of the sixties.
Anyway it seemed to him that when you add a concept of "Dynamic Quality" to a
rational understanding of the world, you can add a lot to an understanding of
contrarians. Some of them aren't just being negative toward static moral
patterns, they are actively pursuing a Dynamic goal.
Everybody gets on these negative contrarian streaks from time to time, where no
matter what it is they're supposed to be doing, that's the one thing they least
want to do. Sometimes it's a degenerative negativism, where biological forces
are driving it. Sometimes it's an ego pattern that says, "I'm too important to
be doing all this dumb static stuff."
Sometimes the contrary anti-static drive becomes a static pattern of its own.
This contrary stuff can become a tiger-ride where you can't get off and you
have to keep riding and riding until the tiger finally throws you and devours
you. The degenerative contrarian stuff usually goes that way. Drugs, illicit
sex, alcohol and the like.
But sometimes it's Dynamic, where your whole being senses that the static
situation is an enemy of life itself. That's what drives the really creative
people-the artists, composers, revolutionaries and the like-the feeling that if
they don't break out of this jailhouse somebody has built around them, they're
going to die.
But they're not being contrary in a way that is just decadent. They're way too
energetic and aggressive to be decadent. They're fighting for some kind of
Dynamic freedom from the static patterns. But the Dynamic freedom they're
fighting for is a kind of morality too. And it's a highly important part of the
overall moral process. It's often confused with degeneracy but it's actually a
form of moral regeneration. Without its continual refreshment static patterns
would simply die of old age."
"It seems as though a society [or a philosophy discussion group] that is
intolerant of all forms of degeneracy shuts off its own Dynamic growth and
becomes static. But a society that tolerate all forms of degeneracy
degenerates. Either direction can be dangerous."
"That's the whole thing: to obtain static AND Dynamic Quality SIMULTANEOUSLY."
The whole trick is to "create a stable static situation where Dynamic Quality
can flourish".
"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."
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