> [DJH] > As per the correction -- all static quality is (mystically) degenerate. > > [Arlo] > Two questions to this point. (1) do you think there is/is not a > contradiction/problem with static patterns of value being both "degenerate" > and "moral" (according to Pirsig)?
[djh] No contradiction/problem with static patterns of value being both mystically degenerate yet statically good as both DQ and sq cannot survive without the other. This is the two perspectives of the MOQ. The perspective of a mystic and the perspective of static quality. They form the Code of Art, and, like all Code's; each side is in opposition… "Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the source of all things, completely simple and always new. It was the moral force that had motivated the brujo in Zuni. It contains no pattern of fixed rewards and punishments. Its only perceived good is freedom and its only perceived evil is static quality itself - any pattern of one-sided fixed values that tries to contain and kill the ongoing free force of life. Static quality, the moral force of the priests, emerges in the wake of Dynamic Quality. It is old and complex. It always contains a component of memory. Good is conformity to an established pattern of fixed values and value objects. Justice and law are identical. Static morality is full of heroes and villains, loves and hatreds, carrots and sticks. Its values don't change by themselves. Unless they are altered by Dynamic Quality they say the same thing year after year. Sometimes they say it more loudly, sometimes more softly, but the message is always the same." In other words the contradiction is part of the structure of the MOQ. > [Arlo] > (2) If all static quality is, by definition, mystically degenerate, then what > would be the point of embracing ANY static pattern, from food to poetry to > painting to language to baseball? [djh] It is precisely *because* static patterns are, by definition, mystically degenerate, that we ought to embrace them... "The only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born — and to whose birth no thought has been given. The rest of us have to settle for being something less pure. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life." We have no real choice in the matter - so let's get these patterns as good as we can. That's the whole message of Lila.. "Good as a noun rather than an adjective is all the Metaphysics of Quality is about. Of course, *the ultimate Quality isn't a noun or an adjective or anything else definable*, but if you had to reduce the whole Metaphysics of Quality to a single sentence, that would be it." > [Arlo] > How is this not an argument for something along the lines of asceticism? [djh] I think your question has it backwards… If we pretended we *didn't* ruin the ulitmately undefined nature of reality by existing then we could head in the direction of some kind of imagined mystic purity like ascesiticm. But don't get me wrong.. Ascesticism or abstaining from biological pleasures isn't all bad.. "What the Metaphysics of Quality concludes is that the old Puritan and Victorian social codes should not be followed blindly, but should not be attacked blindly either. They should be dusted off and re-examined, fairly and impartially, to see what they were trying to accomplish and what they actually did accomplish toward building a stronger society. We must understand that when a society undermines intellectual freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, but when it represses biological freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally good. These moral bads and goods are not just 'customs.' They are as real as rocks and trees. The destructive sympathy by intellectuals toward lawlessness in the sixties and since is derived, no doubt, from what is perceived to be a common enemy, the social system. But the Metaphysics of Quality concludes that this sympathy was really stupid. The decades since the sixties have borne this out." > [DJH] > All things are mystically degenerate; so it's a matter of being as good as > you can be (by living in line with the ultimately undefined nature of the > universe) thus avoiding as much mystic degeneracy as possible.. > > [Arlo] > So cooking food and eating should be avoided as much as possible, as above > along the lines of the ascetic? If it is more "mystically degenerate" to > paint than not paint, then isn't not painting morally superior? Isn't > non-writing, be it poetry, prose, literature, etc. morally superior to > writing (as they are all attempts to 'capture' the ineffable in 'words')? > > And, of course you may see this inevitable question, isn't it more mystically > degenerate for you (for us all) to be here than to be off doing something > more mystically immediate? If so, then why are you (we) here? Should Horse > shut this place down for our own good? [djh] No - non-painting and non-poetry are not morally superior as - to speak from a Zen perspective - they are still doing something! If you're not painting by thinking about not painting then that's doing something! Same goes for not doing poetry - that would involve thinking about doing poetry. So what is doing nothing anyway? Now that's a mystic question! How do you 'do nothing'?! But here's a non-mystic question in response.. if we can do nothing.. If it is at all possible… Can we do nothing forever? The MOQ says that we cannot. The MOQ says that this is impossible.. There isn't a person alive who hasn't defined and ruined this undefined nature of reality. So let's get our defining as good as we can. > [DJH] > Along these lines - if the landscape painting truly is just a static > representation of inorganic patterns then a metaphysics (which best > intellectually represent all patterns and DQ) is higher quality than the > painting. > > [Arlo] > From a semiotics perspective, both are (to simplify) symbolic and cultural > languages for encoding/transmitting meaning. They are forms of communication. > In many ways, like the polar/Cartesian discussion in LILA, I think the value > emerges from the context. > > As I read Pirsig, "art" is a term that refers to "a high-quality endeavor" > and applies to both painting and a metaphysical treatise. As such, I don't > see one as "art" and one as "not art", I see both as artifacts of the > artistic endeavor (to be deliberately redundant). > > So, according to that view, the goal should be in both painting a landscape > and writing a metaphysical treatise to be as "high quality" (or open to > quality, or channeling of quality, or however you want to frame this), but of > course as different semiotic forms what is "high quality" in one may not be > "high quality" in the other. (I think this is one of DMB's central points, > things like coherence, definition, and clarity are all "high quality" tools > for crafting a metaphysics, just as color, depth and focus may be "high > quality" tools for painting a landscape.) [djh] And I agree with all that. However it doesn't change the fact that, in a strict mystic sense, even things which are high quality are not Dynamic Quality and thus the high quality evaluation ruins the ultimately undefined nature of DQ by giving it a fixed metaphysical meaning. "The only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born — and to whose birth no thought has been given." This is degeneracy - unavoidable degeneracy - but degeneracy nonetheless. 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
