> [David previously] > The 'Cosmic' Lila described here, like the Lila in the book clearly do not > value 'staticness'. To them static is evil. They all follow another kind > of good which is completely different to static good.. > > [Arlo] > In LILA, Pirsig points out the Hippie movement failed because: The Hippie > rejection of social and intellectual patterns left just two directions to go: > toward biological quality and toward Dynamic Quality. The revolutionaries of > the sixties thought that since both are anti-social, and since both are > anti-intellectual, why then they must both be the same. That was the mistake. > > Lila, the character, also rejects static patterns, but how do you see her > trajectory as being different than the hippies? How do you see her pursuit as > avoid the mistake of the hippies? How do you see Lila, the character, pursing > Dynamic Quality but the Hippies pursuing biological quality? Can you offer me > reasons to support your implied position that Lila was a mystic of some sort, > and not, like the hippies, confusing biological and Dynamic Quality.
[David] First off Arlo - every time you ask these questions I immediately think about how I really appreciate them and the clarity which they bring both to my understanding. Anyway, at the start of Lila there is a conflict between the socially minded Rigel, the intellectual Phaedrus and the biological Lila. Rigel accuses Phaedrus of being degenerate by valuing biological quality over social quality. This creates the Koan around which the remainder of the book is written 'Does Lila have Quality?'. By continually asking this question, Phaedrus goes into a deeper and deeper understanding of the issue and the Metaphysical assumptions which underly such a question. About midway through the book after outlining the MOQ in Chapter 13 Phaedrus says.. "..Biologically she's fine, socially she's pretty far down the scale, intellectually she's nowhere. But Dynamically ... Ah! That's the one to watch. There's something ferociously Dynamic going on with her. All that aggression, that tough talk, those strange bewildered blue eyes. Like sitting next to a hill that's rumbling and letting off steam here and there ... It would be interesting to talk to her more." It is this final question mark 'What is it about Lila Dynamically?' that continues for the second half of the book into a discussion of Dynamic forces which are creating Lila's insanity. So I see Lila's trajectory different than the Hippies because while both value DQ and biological quality - Lila(unlike the Hippies) is going crazy. It is this insanity which is the big Dynamic question mark over Lila that Pirsig continually questions and as he questions it we go into a deeper and deeper understanding of these Dynamic forces.. Specifically Lila is going crazy by settling into her own imagined patterns because she can no longer handle the pain brought about by all the cultural patterns she has taken on board. Apologies for the big text dump but this section pretty much sums it all up beautifully.. "When you see Lila that way it's possible to interpret her current situation as much more significant than psychology would suggest. If she seems to be running from something, that could be the static patterns of her own life she's running from. But a Metaphysics of Quality adds the possibility that she's running toward something too. It allows a hypothesis that if this running is stopped, if any static patterns claim her - if either her own insane patterns claim her or the static cultural patterns she is shutting out and running from claim her — then she loses. What he thought was that in addition to the usual solutions to insanity - stay locked up or learn to conform - there was a third one, to reject all movies, private and cultural, and head for Dynamic Quality itself, which is no movie at all. If you compare the levels of static patterns that compose a human being to the ecology of a forest, and if you see the different patterns sometimes in competition with each other, sometimes in symbiotic support of each other, but always in a kind of tension that will shift one way or the other, depending on evolving circumstances, then you can also see that evolution doesn't take place only within societies, it takes place within individuals too. It's possible to see Lila as something much greater than a customary sociological or anthropological description would have her be. Lila then becomes a complex ecology of patterns moving toward Dynamic Quality. Lila individually, herself, is in an evolutionary battle against the static patterns of her own life. That's why the absence of suffering last night seemed so ominous and her change to what looked like suffering today gave Phaedrus a feeling she was getting better. If you eliminate suffering from this world you eliminate life. There's no evolution. Those species that don't suffer don't survive. Suffering is the negative face of the Quality that drives the whole process. All these battles between patterns of evolution go on within suffering individuals like Lila. And Lila's battle is everybody's battle, you know? Sometimes the insane and the contrarians and the ones who are the closest to suicide are the most valuable people society has. They may be precursors of social change. They've taken the burdens of the culture onto themselves, and in their struggle to solve their own problems they're solving problems for the culture as well. So the third possibility that Phaedrus was hoping for was that by some miracle of understanding Lila could avoid all the patterns, her own and the culture's, see the Dynamic Quality she's working toward and then come back and handle all this mess without being destroyed by it. The question is whether she's going to work through whatever it is that makes the defence necessary or whether she is going to work around it. If she works through it she'll come out at a Dynamic solution. If she works around it she'll just head back to the old karmic cycles of pain and temporary relief." In other words - it is Lila's settling into patterns of her own that makes her different from a mystic. If, as RMP suggests here, Lila rejects both her own patterns and the patterns of the culture then she'll end up with a Dynamic, Mystic solution.. "The Metaphysics of Quality identifies religious mysticism with Dynamic Quality. It says the subject-object people are almost right when they identify religious mysticism with insanity. The two are almost the same. Both lunatics and mystics have freed themselves from the conventional static intellectual patterns of their culture. The only difference is that the lunatic has shifted over to a private static pattern of his own, whereas the mystic has abandoned all static patterns in favor of pure Dynamic Quality." > [David previously] > This Dynamic Quality - good and evil - is supported by the Code of Art in the > MOQ. > > [Arlo] > Can you give me examples in LILA where Lila pursues a "Code of Art"? [David] The "Code of Art" isn't something to be pursued. But I don't think that's what you're asking. The Code of Art simply states that all else being equal - given the choice between two things - it is better to follow Dynamic Quality rather than static quality. The key here, as with all codes is the 'all else being equal'. Things can be out of kilter one way or the other.. In Lila's case she's followed Dynamic Quality to the detriment of the cultures static patterns.. "Lila's problem wasn't that she was suffering from lack of Dynamic freedom. It's hard to see how she could possibly have any more freedom. What she needed now were stable patterns to encase that freedom. She needed some way of being reintegrated into the rituals of everyday living." > [David previously] > "This last, the Dynamic-static code, says what's good in life isn't defined > by society or intellect or biology. What's good is freedom from domination by > any static pattern, but that freedom doesn't have to be obtained by the > destruction of the patterns themselves." > > [Arlo] > Doesn't this apply to the Hippies as well? Why would Pirsig characterize > their 'freedom from domination by any static pattern' as a mistake, and if it > was a mistake, how does Lila avoid that mistake? [David] Yes it does apply to the Hippies. Specifically, the Hippies reject intellectual and social quality and confuse biological quality with DQ. It's hard to say that Lila confuses biological quality with DQ. She does have sex with Rigel and Phaedrus but it's not clear that she does so because of the same confusion of the Hippies. In my reading - Lila appears to be driven mostly by Dynamic Quality… "All that aggression, that tough talk, those strange bewildered blue eyes. Like sitting next to a hill that's rumbling and letting off steam here and there … " So what I think mostly defines Lila is her struggles with insanity due to these Dynamic values.. If she didn't settle into her own insane patterns later in the book and rejected both them and those of the culture - she would then painfully *work through* both these patterns and her solution would be a mystic one.. 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
