[Arlo said to David Harding] ...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.
[DMB] Yes, I think we see a version of this idea in ZAMM's train analogy. [Arlo] I took the opportunity on a train ride this past weekend to revisit the Partially Examined Life podcast about Pirsig's ZMM. I wanted to take the opportunity to (1) re-encourage those who may have missed this to give this a listen, and (2) use the dialogue (below) from the podcast to draw the above point out explicitly. ========== Partial Podcast Transcript [approximately 34:10 - 37:28] [Dylan] There's experience embedded in there, in some way, your experience with literature. On the face of it, while I understand the notion that 'well these students, they know what Quality is, they know what the Quality of these essays are', and they can judge it by pointing out to it. And you see the evidence of it because there's a kind of general ascension about it. Okay, I can buy that. But if I ask them all to go judge whether or not, well let's just say a motorcycle is operating correctly, they're not going to be able to do that unless they get some experience with that. They're going to have to go take it for a ride. They're going to have to do all kinds of things and gather experience with it and then maybe based upon that they're going to formualte a judgement about that Quality. But it seems to be there's got to be something happening and its not clear to me that its exactly pre-intellectual about processing that experience and maybe that's what he means by the Quality, b ut its not clear to me that its as simple as it being manifest in 'oh any freshman can judge whether its good writing or not' because that has along with it a whole bunch of baggage about their own experience with writing... [Mark] ...Which he admits, but yeah I have trouble also reconciling that with the notion that these judgements are pre-intellectual. You have to recognize that it is an essay in order to judge that its a good essay. You have to understand the language. There's so many things, intellectually, that are going into, before this judgement comes up, that to say this has anything to do with the pre-intellectual just seems strange to me. [DMB] This is an excellent point. I've heard this objection many times, and I don't know if I've really come up with a very good reply to it. But there's a point where he uses a train as an analogy for the difference between theoretic knowledge, the things that you know, conceptual ideas and all that stuff, and then this pre-intellectual cutting edge experience. He asks us to image a huge freight train moving across the landscape, and this thing is like a mile long, and all the box cars are filled with all the concepts that we've inherited from the past, that we inherit from the language, you know the context of our culture. And that freight, that's got a lot of momentum, there's a lot of weight behind it. But at the cutting edge of that train, that's the pre-intellectual experience, and there's something about that whole train behind the front edge that informs the way you take the present moment. In other words, the present moment, that dynamic cutting edge of experience, that pr e-intellectual experience, is well-funded, not only by your own personal experience, but also by the collective experience of the culture in which you learn to think and speak. So you have a mile long train full of freight, and that always comes to bear on the present moment. Like you say, you know, a motorcycle mechanic, he's got to know how to use the tools, he's gotta know what the shape of this machine is, what it can do on the road, he's gotta have a lot of experience with motorcycles and machines to be a good enough motorcycle repairman to be considered an artist. ========== [Arlo] I really like the use of 'momentum' here, as it captures a movement that I think is missed sometimes in the 'static/dynamic' cleave, where all this static stuff is just sitting there doing nothing (or even inhibits activity). A Zen monk (who, say, has never repaired or fixed or even ridden a motorcycle) is not going to be able to figure out what the problem is with a motorcycle by just 'killing static patterns'. There has to be this oscillation (to build off your use of 'momentum') between acquiring static knowledge and being open to Dynamic Quality. The present moment is this center point being 'push' and 'pull', between where the train has been and where the train is headed. This is why a caveman could not have written ZMM, his train did not have sufficient 'momentum' to allow for that possibility. Its also why I am unsure about the use of meditation (quieting static patterns) without any discernible post-meditative improvement (to yourself or to the world). In every case I see in ZMM/LILA, the purpose of clearing the mind, of meditating, of habituated ritual, is to foster some 'bettering' of either one's abilities or one's insights. You're stuck, and you can't see a way out, so you clear your mind, you quiet the static patterns that have you blocked, and that moment of Dynamic Quality provides the way out. You habituated your repair activity so that you are open to little hints about problems you may not have otherwise seen. You respond to the materials better. The end result is a "well-maintained motorcycle". I think 'momentum' also brings out one of the things I don't like about the term 'static'. In fact, I'm pretty sure you can just say 'patterns' without any need for the qualifier 'static'. But, these patterns are not just sitting there, they are going somewhere. Or, maybe more accurately, they are carrying us somewhere, and without them, and without the evolution built into the model, all the meditating and 'killing patterns' in the world won't make you a better mechanic (any more than being stuck in patterns that have brought the train to a stop will make you a better mechanic). The passage Mark alludes to, I think, is important. "The names, the shapes and forms we give Quality depend only partly on the Quality. They also depend partly on the a priori images we have accumulated in our memory. We constantly seek to find, in the Quality event, analogues to our previous experiences. If we didn't we'd be unable to act. ... The reason people see Quality differently, he said, is because they come to it with different sets of analogues." I think this underscore the importance of intellectual patterns (not to mention the social, biological, and inorganic patterns that inform our analogues). It is why the train is not 'dead weight' holding back the engine, but is the weight that provides the momentum that moves the train forward, as I said above it is what makes possible the forms that emerge in the wake of that present moment. In any event, if I haven't stated this already, very nicely done podcast, Dave. I think you continue to be a great ambassador for Pirsig's ideas. (As I mentioned to Marsha, I think the Partially Examined Life folk also did a great job with the Foucault podcast, the guest contributor Kate was extremely articulate and informative.) 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