[djh] Mental illness is when someone rejects the reality created by the values of a culture in favour of their own and not simply pursuing Dynamic Quality..
[Arlo] Hi David, I appreciate the quotes, but I don't think they address my question. I'll add some clarification and context. We can agree that both the Hippies and Lila rejected intellectual and social quality (although I'd argue that the Hippies were very communal and were only anti-social in their rejection of *specific* social patterns). At this point Pirsig seems to treat the Hippies and Lila differently, saying that the Hippies moved towards biological quality but Lila moved towards Dynamic Quality. In this context, the only (so far) difference you've suggested (to account for Pirsig's differentiation) is that Lila was "going insane". That is, "mental illness" is evidence of "someone pursuing Dynamic Quality"? If we hold Lila up as our exemplar of someone 'pursuing Dynamic Quality', and the only evidence of this we have is that she was "going insane", then we are, in effect, championing mental illness as a 'better' trajectory than, say, Phaedrus' pursuit of intellectual quality. However, in the above quote you differentiate "mental illness" and "pursuing Dynamic Quality". As you previously held "mental illness" as the determinant factor in arguing Lila was "pursuing Dynamic Quality", can you elaborate here? What is the difference between "in favour of their own" and "pursuing Dynamic Quality"? Can you use this distinction to contrast the difference between Phaedrus' breakdown and Lila's breakdown? Wasn't Phaedrus rejecting cultural value "in favour of [his] own"? Back to what you were saying... [djh] Mental illness is when someone rejects the reality created by the values of a culture in favour of their own and not simply pursuing Dynamic Quality... As RMP explains - Lila ran away from the cultures patterns (and towards DQ) as a way of emptying out the junk of her life.. That's okay. That movement was moral. But the problem was that she settled into some new patterns that were in conflict with the patterns of the culture and this is what made her insane. [Arlo] This is very confusing to me. You begin saying that mental illness is a rejection of cultural value (this is conflict), then end saying that it was conflict with cultural values that "made her insane". In other words, you move from a definitional to a causal, and I don't understand the point you're trying to make. My underlying point in this is to question the use of Lila as a 'mystic' of some sort, or to offer her as an example of what someone who is pursuing Dynamic Quality looks like (and this may put me at odds with Pirsig's descriptions of Lila in LILA, I get that). At the very least, it seems to reduce Dynamic Quality to chaos, which is much more appropriate description of Lila; chaotic. In other words, I would agree with your follow up point, that there is more to 'pursuing Dynamic Quality' than simply 'rejecting patterns' or 'destroying patterns'. But I do not see that in Lila, despite the elaborations of Pirsig's Phaedrus in the narrative. [djh] Hopefully I have already made this distinction clear above but Lila is "driven mostly by Dynamic Quality" because she wants to escape the pain of the patterns of the culture with which she is in. [Arlo] Would this not apply to every barfly and drug addict in the world? How do they differ from Lila? [djh] That movement away from static patterns is a moral movement but the problem is that to relieve the pain she settles into crazy patterns which are in stark juxtaposition with the patterns of the culture. [Arlo] So, if I understand, both the drug addicts and Lila begin with a moral movement to 'relieve pain', but settle into patterns that contrast cultural patterns, and this make them 'crazy'? As above, this is the same jump of definitional to causal, but here I think you directly contradict yourself. If "moving away from static patterns" is moral, one is, by definition, always in 'stark contrast with the patterns of culture'. One doesn't suddenly find oneself in conflict with cultural patterns only after re-adopting alternative social patterns, and even so, if the moral movement was to reject cultural patterns in the first place, why would we expect anything but conflict with 'the patterns of culture'? 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
