Hi Arlo What Pirsig says about life and death is interesting. But this idea of 'pattern' needs unpacking. Is a person a pattern? A pattern is a repeat, a form of SQ. And there is SQ embedded in SQ. So yes the SQ of a person is changed by and changes all the other SQ it comes into contact with. But a person is also dynamic. But what do we mean by dynamic? Does not the capacity to perform individual human behaviours mean that a collection of lower level inorganic and organic patterns have an extra set of potentials that non-humanised collections of the same patterns do not possess. I see the notion of dynamic as intimately tied up with some sort of capacity to expand our access to new and enriched possibilities. To be dynamic is to bring something new into the actual, emerging, in-venting it, and sometimes creating new SQ.
David M > > "I tend to become taken with philosophic questions, going over them > and over them and over them again in loops that go round and round > and round until they either produce an answer or become so > repetitively locked on they become psychiatrically dangerous, and now > the question became obsessive: "Where did he go?" > > Where did Chris go? He had bought an airplane ticket that morning. He > had a bank account, drawers full of clothes, and shelves full of > books. He was a real, live person, occupying time and space on this > planet, and now suddenly where was he gone to? Did he go up the stack > at the crematorium? Was he in the little box of bones they handed > back? Was he strumming a harp of gold on some overhead cloud? None of > these answers made any sense. > > It had to be asked: What was it I was so attached to? Is it just > something in the imagination? When you have done time in a mental > hospital, that is never a trivial question. If he wasn't just > imaginary, then where did he go? Do real things just disappear like > that? If they do, then the conservation laws of physics are in > trouble. But if we stay with the laws of physics, then the Chris that > disappeared was unreal. Round and round and round. He used to run off > like that just to make me mad. Sooner or later he would always > appear, but where would he appear now? After all, really, where did he go? > > The loops eventually stopped at the realization that before it could > be asked "Where did he go?" it must be asked "What is the 'he' that > is gone?" There is an old cultural habit of thinking of people as > primarily something material, as flesh and blood. As long as this > idea held, there was no solution. The oxides of Chris's flesh and > blood did, of course, go up the stack at the crematorium. But they > weren't Chris. > > What had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an > object but a pattern, and that although the pattern included the > flesh and blood of Chris, that was not all there was to it. The > pattern was larger than Chris and myself, and related us in ways that > neither of us understood completely and neither of us was in complete > control of. > > Now Chris's body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. > But the larger pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the > center of it, and that was what caused all the heartache. The pattern > was looking for something to attach to and couldn't find anything. > That's probably why grieving people feel such attachment to cemetery > headstones and any material property or representation of the > deceased. The pattern is trying to hang on to its own existence by > finding some new material thing to center itself upon." (Pirsig, ZMM > Afterward) > > Arlo > > 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
