djh said to Arlo:
I agree that we cannot say whether something is or isn't categorically better
unless there is a creation of something better. But privileging DQ is a
mistake? The statement "rejecting static patterns is moral" - is wrong? The
Code of Art claims that DQ is above sq. Is the Code of Art a mistake?
Arlo replied:
I do not think the Code of Art is simply "reject static patterns". I think the
Code of Art is "create better static patterns".
dmb says:
Yea, there is nothing artful about simply rejecting static patterns. And how
could it be moral to reject values? To reject static patterns of value or
static patterns of quality is to reject morals and the mythos. Given the
meaning of these terms, the claim is an absurd contradiction. You might as well
say that it's moral to reject morals or it's healthy to reject health.
I'm watching this conversation in horror, you know? Where does this idea come
from? Why do so many MOQers hate static values so much? That is way, way off
the mark. It turns Pirsig's work upside down and guts it. It just kills me to
constantly watch this intellectual vandalism going on.
DQ is presented as a way out of insanity for Lila. Like shock therapy, it can
clean her slate, so to speak. Her problem is clinging to her own private
patterns. She's a culture of one, a religion of one and it doesn't stand a
chance as a culture or religion, of course, because its only purpose is to
relieve her own personal suffering.
Pirsig's trip, by contrast, spoke to the culture at large. It was a
culture-bearing book and in Lila he explains how the contrarians play a vital
role in the evolution of cultures. Please, let us NOT glorify mental illness as
such. It's usually just sickness and suffering and there is nothing holy about
it. Lila's illness is a conflict of ordinary values; mother or whore. And
apparently she has failed at both. Can't go forward, can't go back. Totally
stuck. Rather than get locked up forever or become the reformed sinner (with
Rigel as her self-righteous guide), she could go to a quiet retreat and empty
herself out of all the patterns, private and public. This is where a Zen-like
mysticism could help her get "better than cured". This is the situation wherein
it makes sense to become a dead man, to kill all intellectual patterns, i.e.
when those patterns are killing you.
"This solution is to dissolve ALL static pattens, both sane and insane, and
find the base of reality, Dynamic Quality, that is independent of all of them."
(LILA 374)
AS WITH SHOCK TREATMENT
"..But sometime the patient, in a moment of Zen wisdom, sees the superficiality
of both his own contrary pattens and the cultural patterns, sees that the one
gets him electrically clubbed day after day and the other set him free from the
institution, and thereupon makes a wise mystic decision to get the hell out the
there by whatever avenues is available." (LILA 375)
"That's what Lila's involved in now, a huge vacation, an emptying out of the
junk of here life. She's clinging to some new pattern [baby/doll] because she
thinks it holds back the old pattern. But what she has to do is take a vacation
from ALL patterns, old and new, and just settle into a kind of emptiness for a
while. And if she does, the culture has a moral obligation not to bother her.
The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move on."
(LILA 376)
Chapters 30 and 32 really brings these questions into focus. And he's wrapping
up the whole book too. I think it's safe to say that it's important to
understand the title character.
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