[Arlo] Well, creation builds off existing patterns, the impetus to create, the pre-intellectual source of the creation, is Dynamic Quality, but the forms that emerge in its wake are made possible by the existing static patterns. It would not have been possible, for example, for a caveman to write ZMM. Phaedrus' insights, inspired by Dynamic Quality, built upon the existing strata of patterns of his experience.
[djh] Right, that is how it appears on reflection. But that is not how things actually are... [Arlo] "Our scientific description of nature is always culturally derived. Nature tells us only what our culture predisposes us to hear. The selection of which inorganic patterns to observe and which to ignore is made on the basis of social patterns of value, or when it is not, on the basis of biological patterns of value." (LILA) "How things actually are" is such an objectivist statement. I think the MOQ's ability to explain why ZMM could not have been written by a cavemen is part of its overall explanatory strength. "How things really are", well, good luck with that. [djh] On reflection it might seem like there are certain limitations to Dynamic Quality but these are imagined. Dynamic Quality creates static quality - not the other way around. [Arlo] No, but static quality constrains the forms DQ is able to produce. That's what "evolutionary" means, and its why we have the inorganic-> biological-> social-> intellectual levels. [djh] If you think enlightenment will make you a better person then you will never be enlightened.. [Arlo] If the purpose to Zen mediation is simply to go to sleep, then I'm not impressed as I do that every night. [djh] Better patterns *are* created as a result of killing of patterns. That is how they're created. When patterns are killed there is nowhere left to go but towards *undefined* betterness. [Arlo] Absolutely no! As we just talked about with the Hippies and Lila, there can be devolution as well as evolution. There can be destruction without creation. There can be killing without rebirth. This is why your focus is so one-sided, so out of balance. You seem to think that simply "going to sleep" is the end-all of end-alls. Why you see the killing but not the creation. Its so out of whack, I just don't know how we can proceed. As I said, David, no one is stopping you or anyone else from killing your social and intellectual patterns. No one. Go meditate them away, do all the tea ceremonies it takes to free your mind. Go do all that. Be free. [djh] I don't deny that the monks may well be 'better' before they were monks but this is not their goal. We can only say this after the fact. Before the fact enlightenment is some kind of death experience because it requires killing patterns which we identify as 'us'. The focus is not ego boosting 'better' but a death of the ego. After a death of the ego through mastery, a new Dynamic insight can be found. [Arlo] No one tied "better" to "ego", David, that's just your hangup. That "new Dynamic insight" is the betterness that the experience is for. If Point B is not better in any way at all from Point A, if you are no better at fixing your motorcycle afterwards, then just go to sleep, same thing. [djh] But you can kill patterns doing intellectual things such as Motorcycle Maintenance and Philosophical discussion.. [Arlo] This really demonstrates a grave misunderstanding. The ritualized activity of the tea ceremony (your example) was to make them so habitualized they were performed without the need of thought. What activity do you propose we 'ritualize' away in a philosophy discussion? What behaviors do you propose we habitualize so that we don't need to attend to them at all any longer? Memorize the text of LILA to the point where no longer need to cite it? How can this be achieved in a group where people of various levels of familiarity flow in and out of the discussion? The tea ceremony only works because ALL the monks have the ceremony ritualized. [djh] "The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower." [Arlo] Which is, of course, an argument for why 'killing' those patterns is ipso facto the only thing we should be doing. There is a time to kill, to free, to open oneself, and a time to come down off the mountaintop, to build, to create, to paint, to fix motorcycles and write philosophies. [djh] I disagree. I think that in order to build we must kill patterns.. [Arlo] Never said otherwise. As Pirsig has said, identifying stuckness and moving forward is the key thing that recognizing Quality enables. [djh] We are here to kill intellectual patterns. [Arlo] Again, David, this is so profoundly wrong, I just don't know how to respond. If you come to a philosophy forum to kill your intellectual patterns, then you need to really stop and sit and figure out what killing and philosophy are. [djh] That is, we are here to master them which such proficiency that they are gone. There in the most monotonous boredom of going over and over these questions the DQ and resulting new insights can be found.. [Arlo] I'd say the new insights found here are not the result of "monotonous boredom", but of people opening their minds 'out there' and then coming here with the insights they gain. Life is much larger than 'here', we all have full lives (I hope) that evidence a wide oscillation between moments of meditation and moments of creation. Attributing insights created here to just the monotonizing of repeating quotes or repeating arguments over and over is probably too anemic to merit much consideration. So, I think this dialogue has probably ran its course. Unless you think we have something further to discuss, I think we're only going to begin repeating ourselves, and that's not a tea ceremony for me. 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