[David] But sadly, if you feel that this discussion has ran its course then so be it but I have found it very rewarding. I enjoy the challenge of explaining myself and I can't say enough how much I've appreciated your openness towards what I've been saying.
[Arlo] See, David, you say this, but all you've done is exactly restate the exact points I've already responded to. All you've done is simply say "you're speaking statically" over and over, as if this makes sense. First, it confuses Paul's point into "static and Dynamic". So let's go back there first and clear that up. The "two contexts" Paul spoke of are related to experience. In one, maybe the "ZMM context" although even this is a little simplistic, patterns emanate from the experiential moment. There is no evolutionary timeline where inorganic patterns precede biological patterns. Both emerge simultaneously from the moment of experience. In the second, maybe the "LILA context", we have the evolutionary trajectory of Quality, wherein it makes sense to say "inorganic patterns preceded biological patterns. As I've said, this is a bit simplistic, but the conflation you've made to "static context" and "Dynamic context" makes no sense. Second, you continue to use "killing patterns" as the purpose for engagement in a philosophy forum, suggesting again that its just that I don't understand you mean "quieting". Of course I do. Let's use the example you brought up, the tea ceremony. In this, the patterns that are "put to sleep" are the habituated activity of the ceremony. During the ceremony, the participants are on such auto-pilot that they have NO CONSCIOUS AWARENESS of their activity. Even the mechanic in Pirsig's example has hit a state of mastery where he is performing actions without being consciously aware of them. Is this what you're suggesting, that we master these ideas so well we can participate here without being consciously aware we are doing so? A few weeks ago, out for a ride, I was actually mulling over some ideas I am working on regarding Vygotsky's writings. At one point, about 30 minutes later, I stopped for gas and realized I had no mental recollection of the last 30 minutes. I navigated down a ravine into the little town of Sinnemahoning, my mind undistracted by attending to the riding, it became a 'ceremony' and left me free to follow Dynamic Quality. When was the last time you participated here and later realized you had no recollection of it, you know you did it, but you did it on such a mastery-habituated level that you paid it no conscious awareness at all? And, the tea ceremony works in this abstract "non-evolutionary" sense because it is such a controlled experience. There is no 'broken cup' that needs to be fixed, or 'something wrong' with the tea leaves that needs to be figured out. This is, to me, precisely the sort of artificial and detached activity that takes 'everyday living' out of the equation. If your misunderstood 'dynamic context' has at its goal the state of perpetual and ongoing meditation, the quieting of patterns as an end in and of itself, where (as you said) the monks have lived for hundreds of years without any evolution or improvement or betterness, then you can count me out. In BOTH contexts Paul describes, there is an unalienable 'betterness' at the heart of the experiential moment. In ZMM, the first context, there is an even greater emphasis played on how listening to, and responding to, that betterness makes us better mechanics, better welders, better riders, better teachers, better students, better fathers and better sculptors. We are 'artists' because the oscillation between experiential moment and the analogues we have evolves those analogues. The mechanic does not become artisinal simply by meditating or quieting his analogues, he becomes artisinal through the ongoing, lived, experiential oscillation between openness and (re)creation. In some ways I think you're trying to map the "two contexts" onto a "Western" and "Eastern" context. But what you fail to see is that Pirsig's ideas are not about casting off that "static West" for the "Dynamic East", but about a resolution that really brings the best of both together into harmony. The "tea ceremony" is replaced with the "repair shop", and in doing so Pirsig's ideas become about the everyday real experience and how both traditionally West and traditionally East perspectives, when integrated, can IMPROVE that everyday real experience. 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
