Hello everyone On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 7:55 AM, X Acto <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > Dan comments: > > I offer this rather long quote in an effort to explain how I felt when > you > > suggested I am saying that Robert Pirsig is "buttering up" the readers. I > > think it is as insulting being told I am pandering to my readers by > making > > an effort to better my writings by offering them a firm grounding in the > > background of my stories. You are basically saying by writing down to a > > reader an artful author is pandering to them. I disagree. > > > > [Ron sez] > > > > Now an artful author ceratianly DOES pander to a reader the question is > > for what aim. The art of persuasion is noble when its aims are noble. > > > > Dan: > Really! So you see Robert Pirsig as a pimp? You believe all the great > artists are nothing but pimps and panderers? Motorcycle maintenance is just > pandering to the machine? Wow. That explains a lot about you. > > [Ron replies] > Thanks. > A good artist plays to an audience to get a message accross. And when we > are talking about the art of rhetoric, the art of persuasion, there is a > form > of pandering employed in order to change opinions and deliver high quality > ideas. > You connect on a base level and play to base desire to capture an audience. > > Pirsig is indeed a pimp, he lured me in with motorcycle trips across the > country, > boat trips and drunken sex with strangers, then he laid philosophy on me. > He wove it into the narrative and hooked me. > Dan: I guess that is one way of putting it. So like Phaedrus sees Plato doing, you see Robert Pirsig subordinating Quality to the truth. You see him as a kind of finesse pimp using trickery and psychological techniques to prostitute his readers into his web of philosophical deceit. By pandering the story side of the narrative he ensnares those who would otherwise have no interest in his writings. Maybe that's why you made the comment about me shamelessly self-promoting my books. You see an author as nothing more than a sort of artful dodger playing to readers and their base desires in order to promulgate their message. That isn't at all what I mean by writing down to readers. The way I use the term has nothing to do with pandering and taking advantage of others in order to spread a message. Rather, an author starts with the known and leads the readers into the unknown. That is what I see Robert Pirsig doing with his books. He isn't writing from a sense of wanting to instill ideas in others so much as he simply enjoys writing. "'It was a compulsive thing. It [ZMM] started out of a little essay. I wanted to write about motorcycling because I was having such fun doing it, and it grew organically from there.'" [Robert Pirsig interview] That is why I write too. I am compelled to write. It's fun. I enjoy it. I lose myself in the words. If someone reads my stories and gets something from them, all the better. But that isn't why I write. > > > > > > > > Dan: > > I hesitate to say Dynamic Quality "is" anything. We may say what 'it' is > > not and we may use analogies and synonyms to intellectually illuminate > what > > we are on about when we say 'Dynamic Quality' but to say 'it' is reality, > > or this, or that, is to fall further into a trap of naming the > unnameable. > > > > [Ron] > > Right, this important to realize, but it is just as important to realize > > that any and all human > > understanding is the only way we can perceive the immediate now. So it > > would seem > > that there is a distinction between the unnameable of the patternless > and > > the good of > > the immediate now of human experience. > > > Dan: > No, I disagree. If we are going to use such terms as synonyms for Dynamic > Quality it seems better not to intellectually divide them into different > categories. That is what I am saying to Paul here. > > [Ron] > I guess what I am trying to refer to is the supposition that human > experience is > culturally derrived, the mythos. Projected onto all human experience, > through > layers of analogy. I take Pirsig to mean it is all an anolgy, even direct > perception > of the pre-intellectual "now" moment. Seeing a green sun or recognizing > the color > blue. The culture literally teaches how we see and percieve the "now" of > pre-intellect. > > > > > > > Dan: > > > > Why bother with speaking about Dynamic Quality at all? We throw > > > > intellectual terms at 'it' but that is all we may do. In creating > > > synonyms > > > > and analogies we might better delineate what we are on about even if > it > > > > cannot be described. > > > > > > > > > > Dan: > > Why doesn't emergence of static patterns from experience work better > within > > the context of the MOQ? I understand there are many here who insist on > > using qualifiers like 'direct' and 'pure' to describe experience but I > > think it unnecessarily complicates an already complex metaphysics when > we > > begin breaking up 'experience' into all these different terms. > > > > [Ron] > > Because it does not account for human meaning, its explanation neglects > > the good > > it does not answer the "why" or what for. > > > > Dan: > Static quality is human meaning. How does the emergence of static quality > from Dynamic Quality not account for human meaning? > > [Ron] > The immediate now is colored by human meaning, how could it be anything > else? > yet deemed as synonomous with DQ there seems to be a discrepancy in > continuity > of meaning in this explanation. > > If DQ is experience and SQ is human meaning, then > experience is devoid of human meaning. > Dan: Meaning and value are synonymous in the MOQ. Experience is value from which static quality meaning emerges. > > > > > > Dan comments: > > > > It appears to me that the MOQ begins with experience and to postulate > > non-human experience is a materialistic assumption which works within > > limits. To add qualifiers like 'human' and 'non-human' to the term > > 'experience' seems to complicate matters more than to simplify. > > > > [Ron] > > By saying that DQ is value-less you ARE asserting a non-human experience. > > That is the whole point. It is postulating a non-human, abstraction that > > is not > > veifiable in the now human experience. > > > > Dan: > Where did I say that? I am not sure we're discussing the same thing, Ron. > > > [Ron] > I understand you as implying that when you state that static patterns are > not > experienced. > Dan: Ah. What I mean by that is static patterns are not 'out there' waiting for a human being to come along and experience them. Ideas of static patterns emerge from experience, not the other way around. > If DQ is experience and SQ is human meaning, then > experience is devoid of human meaning. > Dan: I hesitate to say Dynamic Quality is experience. It may be just a matter of semantics but I prefer to say in the MOQ, Dynamic Quality becomes synonymous with experience, the value from which static quality patterns emerge. > > > ..or am I mistaken? > Dan: Not necessarily. Once I thought I was mistaken but later I discovered I was wrong. Thank you, Dan http://www.danglover.com 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
