[David] Just thought it strange that these were the first things he said. And your answers confuse me too. Maybe I'd assumed most would immediately think of intellectual or Dynamic pursuits.
[Arlo] Why strange? Camaraderie, warmth, empathy, kin, love... these are all among the top things I would EXPECT someone to say. If you wanted to know what intellectual pursuits, apart from the MOQ, people here valued, maybe that is something you should have specifically asked? And, I am not sure what a "Dynamic pursuit" would be, apart from say "art as lived experience". Jan-Anders mentioned how Pirsig's ideas inform the way he approaches and understands the crafting of beer, which reflects the way Quality informed Pirsig's approach to motorcycle maintenance in ZMM. Yet you seemed to criticize this, so I get the notion that your category for "Dynamic pursuits" is more along the lines of "culturally-sanctioned art" (theatre, painting, dance, etc.). Nope, happy with the Zen and the Art of Crafting Beer. JA hadn’t mentioned this previously. But, so, to answer your intended question: two intellectual pursuits that i have found most valuable are (broadly) socio-cultural theory (or, cultural-historical psychology) and its direct descendant activity theory. A current project I am working on (which I would argue is a "Dynamic pursuit") involves expanding Artaud's theatrical imperative (his Theatre of Cruelty) to a more general pedagogical imperative. (To tease a relation to Pirsig, you can see this first evident in Pirsig's English classroom in ZMM. ""How are we supposed to know what quality is?" they said. "You're supposed to tell us!"... "I sat there all night long," one said. "I was ready to cry, I was so mad," a girl next to the window said. "You should warn us," a third said. ... But then, below the definition on the blackboard, he wrote, "But even though Quality cannot be defined, you know what Quality is!" and the storm started all over again. "Oh, no, we don't!" "Oh, yes, you do." "Oh, no, we don't!".... Art aud was responding to growing dominance of passive 'theatre', mostly in the form of cinema. Consider the above classroom scene reading Artaud's call to arms, "Our long familiarity with theatre as a form of distraction has led us to forget the idea of a serious theatre, a theatre which will shove aside our representations, and breathe into us the burning magnetism of images and finally will act upon us in such a way that there will take place a therapy of the soul whose effects will not be forgotten.") So is this the sort of answer you had wanted? Absolutely, now we’re talkin’ Arlo. First off your current project reminds me of Joseph Campbell. Anyway from wiki reading it seems sociocultural theory is a response to behaviourism (apologies for my ignorance here). Obviously SOM has issues as explained in Lila dealing with things like anthropology and psychology and it struggles at basic levels to even agree on how to talk about these things. Do you think an acceptance of value as the source of experience would significantly change the field? Just to be clear, though, if you ask me which I value more, working on this project or "Camaraderie, warmth, empathy, kin, love...", I would likely chose the latter. And, by the way, I take objection to the statement that empathy is "very much social". But that's another argument. Another one indeed. 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
