Marsha, Krimel, Platt responded to,
[Marsha]
Pirsig has stated clearly that Quality cannot be defined. If Quality is
defined as "betterness", how would you explain/dismiss the following:
If everything is betterness, and there is nothing that is not betterness, then
there is no meaning to betterness, for there is no way of distinguishing a
difference between betterness and nonbetterness.
[Arlo]
Why do you consider "betterness" a definition, but "Quality" not one? Isn't the
mere act of labeling something "defining"? I can't imagine any way to use the
term "Quality" that does not connote or imply "betterness". Indeed, this was
the central drive to ZMM.
"But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality...
Obviously some things are better than others...but what's the "betterness"? ...
What the hell is Quality? What is it?" (ZMM).
For me, equating "Quality" and "betterness" ("And what is Good, and what is not
Good...") is at the root of Pirsig's entire thesis.
[Krimel]
I have been pretty straight forward from the gitgo that I see the MoQ from a
Taoist ZMM point of view. I think Pirsig erred in calling the Tao Quality,
precisely because it emphasizes one understanding of the Tao at the expense of
another. The Tao is The Way. It is a journey, a process. I might go so far as
to say the Tao is a verb not a noun. A process either continues or it stops.
When it becomes a noun it dies.
[Arlo]
I know you've been vocal about where you and Pirsig part ways, but I see
nothing in the above that I disagree with. What is The Tao a way TO? My
answer... "betterness".
[Krimel]
Any definition of "betterness" that includes the earth getting smacked by
asteroids makes no sense at all. Betterness is this sense is no better that
chaos. And at least chance does not lull you into a false sense of security.
[Arlo]
Again, this is only problematic from a S/O dualistic position, and one that
tries to equate the phrase "better" with a socio-intellectual "human" valuation
of events. Of course, few humans would conclude that asteroid demolishing our
biosphere is "better" than "not", but those inorganic patterns of the asteroid
are moment-by-moment responding to what is inorganically "better" for them to
do so.
You say you don't artificially separate out "man" from "the world", but I see
this an an unavoidable outcome of placing man as different not in degree but in
form from the cosmos. In this case positing that man is uniquely "moral" in an
"amoral" cosmos.
[Platt]
You must be [having a bad day] because I couldn't agree with you more.
[Arlo]
If only I could make you see that this response to "betterness" is the response
to the DQ of Lila. When your cat plops down in the rays of the sun, it does so
because of DQ, because "it's better here". Positing that only humans respond to
DQ is as S/O divisive as positing that only morals are only human inventions.
While you cat is, one on level of focus, a "static biological pattern", its
biological response to DQ drives to the heart of what Quality as "it's better
here" is all about.
In that moment, a highly contextual, situational, level-dependent moment to be
sure, the "it's better here" is underscores the Dynamic, evolutionary movement
of everything in the cosmos from atoms to people.
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