DMB said to Arlo, July 22nd 2013: Last Tuesday, Arlo said: 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. DMB then said:
Thanks for doing that, Arlo. It's kinda cool to see it in print form. Flattering and convenient. (I've reproduced the dialog below for easy reference.) Ant McWatt comments: Dave, Arlo, Firstly, many thanks to both of you for sharing this (partially abstracted) transcript from Dave's Partially Examined Life discussion about ZMM. >From the transcribed portion of this discussion, "Mark" said: "Which [Pirsig] 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." Ant comments: I just think the valuation of whether the four essays in question were GOOD or BAD is the critical issue here. Of course, Pirsig's students had experience of essays before they came to his class but it was the techniques that helped produce the higher quality essays which they wouldn't have been (largely) aware of. There's one thing knowing what an essay looks like; it's another thing knowing what a GOOD essay looks like. Just because you are aware that something is good (such as Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa"), it doesn't mean you're going to know how to produce an art work of equal quality. So, for instance, though I realised from the age of eight that the illustrations of Alan Aldridge (famous for 1973's "Butterfly Ball" and 1977's "The Ship's Cat") are some of the best you're likely to see from a contemporary fine artist, it is only relatively recently that I've discovered the (static) techniques that Aldridge learnt and then employed for his craft. In other words, just because there are always analogues/static patterns that we always take with us onto the next experience, it doesn't entail an absence of Dynamic Quality! In fact, recently re-reading the correspondence between Paul Turner and Robert Pirsig about the tetralemma, I noticed at the end of his debate with Paul, Pirsig states this: "I think I finally see your point and agree that pre-static is better than pre-intellectual because all patterns, not just intellectual patterns, discover Dynamic Quality. But from the perspective of the Buddha's world Dynamic Quality is not just pre-static. It has been there all along coexistent with the patterns that are discovering it. The Dynamic Quality is the envelope that contains both the discovered and the discoverer. That is why, In the few diagrams I have made of the evolutionary structure of the MOQ, Dynamic Quality is not part of the diagram. Dynamic Quality is represented by the paper the diagram is written on. I like that device because there is no diagram in the world that can contain the paper it is written on. It's a good analogy, I think." From: Pirsig Sent: 2 September 2005 To: Paul Turner Subject: Re: Two theses of the MOQ (http://robertpirsig.org/Tetralemma.htm) So, firstly, we see a replacement of the term "pre-intellectual" with the term "pre-static" and, secondly (from the perspective of the Buddha's world at least), Dynamic Quality is always "coexistent with the [static] patterns that are discovering it". Hope that helps! Best wishes, Ant ------------------------------------------------------------------ DMB said to Arlo, July 22nd 2013 (continued): Arlo said: ... 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. It's 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". > > > dmb says: > > Yea, as Pirsig says, the point of meditation is bring yourself closer to > reality, to get more in touch with the actual living experience. One can get > this from Wikipedia, even. It's an attentive awareness of the reality of the > moment. "This faculty becomes a power in particular when it is coupled with > clear comprehension of whatever is taking place." Pirsig's artful mechanic > certainly understood the meaning of the screw with the torn slot. Since no > repairs could even begin without first getting that cover plate off, that > damaged little screw meant the motorcycle was totally useless and worthless. > That trivial little hangup, a fastener worth just a few cents, completely > shut him down. The solution is going to come out of a very careful inspection > of that particular, individual detail of reality, not just a general > understanding of screws. The solution will involve an exploration of the > available tools, the available options or even the invention of a new option > or tool. What the solution will not entail is some evacuation of the mind, an > empty-headed staring off into space, and I doubt if candles or chanting would > help much either. An artful mechanic brings knowledge and experience to the > immediate task and very much cares about doing it right. > > > Arlo said: > > 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). > > > dmb says: > > Right, these patterns are not only moving along right behind the cutting edge > of experience as in the train analogy, according to the migrating forest > analogy in LILA we ARE these patterns. Those boxcars contain all the products > of our collective history and we are a product of that same history. On > either scale, further advances in growth or evolution depend on the already > preserved advances. You know, we stand on the shoulders of giants - some of > whom were cavemen. > > Arlo said: > > 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 underscores 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. > > > dmb says: > > Right, aren't we going to be better off bringing a wide variety of analogies > along with us so that we have more options as we "seek to find, in the > Quality event, analogues to our previous experiences". If we simply eliminate > static patterns, "we'd be unable to act" but the capacity to choose from a > wide range of analogs means a greater range of freedom to act. And that's > what not being stuck is all about. > > Thanks again for your transcription efforts and for the kind words. > > > > > --------------------------- 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, but 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 pre-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. ========== . 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