The idea of sudden realization of truth, known as 'insight', is an important concept which I believe ties in to 'How to get DQ in your life'
There is a book coming out soon by a Kounios and Beeman, 'The Eureka Factor' (I've already reserved it at the Worcester Public Library). I stumbled upon their research a couple years ago via a book excerpt by a guy who got in some trouble for faking Bob Dylan quotes. In any case, that 'AHA moment' is a product of the way our two brain hemispheres work. The past couple years I have been delving deep into the subject of lateral brain functions. It is my belief, having been clued into this thread by Pirsig's letters posted on the moq website, that this lateral function has ALOT to do with many things often discussed here. It is my opinion that the two hemispheres function in a complimentary way, which makes alot of sense evolutionarily. The right side / left side concept was capitalized on in the '60's and '70's after Sperry and Gazzaniga did their split-brain patient work, but popular culture skewed the idea enough to cause it to fall into disrepair. I intend to rekindle it, and I'm not the only one. (There are some, ie., Kosslyn and Miller, who swear up and down against the idea. However, their theory simply goes with top brain / bottom brain instead and they even made fancy tests to determine your type. One even went on Oprah to promote their theories. Although they have every right to do so, it really bothers me the way they attack the theory only to replace it with something that is the same but different.) Anyway, the best way I can describe it (It's a work in progress), the right side of our brains is more unconscious, more chunky on a neural level, and thus incoming information is parsed more globally. The RH takes the job of a silent monitor of the environment for inconsistencies according to, as well as the maintenance of, our individual global knowledge-construct. The neural connections, for the RH, tend to favor between hemisphere interaction while the Left Hemisphere favors within hemisphere connections. The LH is, much like the old dual-side theory, more finely grained neurally and is well known (at least among most right handers, when it comes to left-handedness the genetics gets fuzzy) as the 'logical/analytical' side; or more correctly, it is the side that speaks languages (be they math, language, computer code, or any system of symbols we can define as the intellectual level). The conscious recognition of objects is its task, along with the meaning of those systems' symbols, and it is our conscious attention-beam focusing mechanism. So, as Pirsig has led me toward my current position, as he has done for us all (or we wouldn't be in this group), my bottom line is that these couple paragraphs have guided my mission to proof for a few years now " As you know there is something about quality that makes it impossible for many to understand what you are talking about. A lot of it is persistence of the materialistic, objective, historic tradition that hopefully will be overcome in time. But also we are seeing a kind of quality blindness that musicians call a "tin ear" of singers who keep sharping and flattening notes without knowing they are doing it. Many people just do not "see" quality at the same time they are obviously seeing it, in the same way that tin- eared people do not "hear" harmony at the same time they are obviously hearing it. I think this was what you were trying to tell Hellier at the end of the Great Shoot-Out when you told him to learn more about reality. It seems that all he could see was quality as a concept, something with about the same scientific reality as hippogriffs and Jesus in Heaven and other empirically unverifiable entities. He just did not directly see what you were talking about. Anthony McWatt attended a class on ZMM where the teacher actually had the same problem. She had no grasp of what value was, only what a value judgement was. I had always assumed that this blockage of direct quality perception was social, but in Mexico a few years ago I talked to a neurologist who argued that it was physiological. She said that recent experiments are showing that the right side of the brain, the "artistic" side, filters all experience before it reaches the left "rational" side of the brain. this would concur with the MOQ assertion that value precedes concepts in human understanding. I have read elsewhere that the left rational side of the brain can never perceive the right brain as an object, but only receive messages from it. This would explain why everyone knows that something is better than other things but no one can define what this betterness is. All they get are the quality messages but they don't know where the quality messages are coming from. This is not to say that the right brain creates the quality, only that it filters it before passing it along to the left brain for conceptualizing. The neurologist's explanation also explains the finding that left- handed people, in whom the value side of the brain dominates the rational side, are more commonly found in the arts than are the general population and have a higher rate of insanity. It could even explain the excessive hostility we are seeing toward the MOQ from the academic philosophers like Strawson and Hellier who are above all "rational" in the static sense of the term. I once read a book called "Death and the Right Hand" which showed that one of the few anthropological constants found in cultures throughout the world has been fear and hatred of left-handedness. The word "sinister" originally meant left-handed. Only our modern scientific rational culture abandons this social hatred. But at deeper subliminal levels it may still be there, creating the illusion in some people that Dynamic Quality is somehow "gauche" and sinister. So I know I go on about this every time, and it must be getting old, I truly believe I have found enough evidence to show that the RH is our Fluid Dynamic Quality filtering mechanism, and the LH is our conscious recognition based on that 'knowledge' which has been Crystallized from the R side. The L does not 'see' that it gets all its info from the R, and that's where I come back to this post ..... when you have been working on that novel, math problem, social issue, or any other snag you can't get past - you walk away from the problem, then as soon as you relax you free up resources for the RH to search, unconsciously as it does, for the answer. When it gets a match it lets the LH know, and the LH takes all the credit. This is "insight". I believe that if you look into it as I have, that Pirsig is correct in saying that Western culture favors the LH. The RH (perhaps having to do with the left hand, as he mentioned) is more often associated with out-of-the-box thinking common to artists, poets, dreamers, philosophers, and all social thought fringes. I hope that someday soon I can take the pages and pages I've written and taken notes on about this subject to the mat, but until then I will just sound a little eccentric .... The most important part of all this is that I feel I figured out why our first gut-instinct is always correct! Before that one little voice tells you the right answer (no pun intended), you must have been working on finding a solution - you must have all the pieces to play with. Sometimes the RH gives you the answer in a brilliant revelation, but sometimes it is just a nagging feeling that someone is lying, or which decision to make. Often times when we face a problem we must solve we ignore that little voice, we overthink everything, and then the crystal-clear truth coming with that RH 'first gut-instinct' get completely drowned out by the analyzing eyes of the LH. In my humble opinion, I think I'm onto something here and am always finding new evidence to incorporate. That is the point, the LH creates and operates according to a model of reality consisting of routinized behavior and systematic symbols and rules of the game; a model which the RH updates when novel situations arise, or when it suddenly makes a paradigm shift in our understanding of a problem in order to accomodate the solution to that problem which it has found, usually when its 3am and you're half asleep ..... On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 1:27 PM, ngriffis <[email protected]> wrote: > Ron wrote: "... The passions are rejected. Pirsig, on the other hand, seems > to place more importance on emotion and feeling as a guiding principle > toward intellect." > > To shift Ron's meaning a bit, I wonder if the forum members would > agree that Pirsig places importance on emotion and feeling as a guiding > principle toward Dynamic Quality? Further, I would like to broach the > subject of how one goes about seeking Dynamic Quality (DQ) in one's life. > Let us hope that there are easier paths than insanity to reach DQ insights > :) > > I must say that I have benefitted, not from my own cutting edge > thoughts, but have only been able to add quality to my life through the > work > of others. I have gained most of my insights into the static and DQs of the > world through reading. There is so much great knowledge in the world, but > so > few instruction books on how to effectively apply it to one's life. As a > teacher, I see so much missing in this regard.... OK, I know I want more DQ > in my life, but how do I go about getting it? > > So, I hope that other members of the MOQ Forum will share any of > the > methods they have developed which allow them access to DQ insights that > have > bettered their lives. > > My best contribution comes from, I think, Warren Buffet, who is > said > to be one of the greatest investors of our time. One could call him a > philosopher of investing. He and his partner, Charlie Munger have some good > insights in to Life, as well. Buffet talked about his "intuition", the > source of that "intuition", and those feelings that led him to his great > successes. He said, to paraphrase, "that intuition without great and > hard-won experience is guessing and, more than not, runs you upon the > rocks. > Intuition becomes the leap of insight that is of value (DQ?) only after > great study and experience." Why? I think it touches upon the idea that > genius, in one form, is the ability to rearrange what is known and with a > leap of insight, create a new and better form, something not imagined > before. One's mind has nothing to work with unless it has been filled with > the wisdom and insights that have come before. Additionally, Charlie Munger > added that, in this day of specialization, the more fields one accomplishes > oneself in, perhaps the greater possibility of a synergy resulting in a new > and better transmutation...a transformative insight moving us from static > to > DQ. > > I would offer meditation as a path to DQ, but I have terrible > discipline when it comes to sitting and also believe that Attention Deficit > Disorder keeps my meditations down to about a minute and a half. Has anyone > had better luck with any of the Eastern disciplines to attain increased DQ > in their lives, a path, I think, Pirsig alludes to. > > > > > > 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 > 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
