Topics Addressed:
7.1 Pirsig doesn't explain how an individual being, a self, fits into the
MOQ.
7.4 Since all conceptions, beliefs and their counters are aspects of
perception can "static patterns of value" have any existence outside
perception?
6.1 Pirsig's explanation of free will is flawed because in order to have
free will you must have a subject, or else who's "will" is it that is free?
One Perspective:
My understanding of the MOQ is that DQ is the primary "aether" or
"plenum" of existence, that which pervades everything and changes the
universe from moment to moment. DQ is always first, and it is only through
DQ that we ever access or interact with SQ. Static quality therefore exists
specifically as a postlude to dynamic quality. For me, this is the primary
epiphany illustrated by the MOQ, that change creates objects, rather than
the other way around.
The colloquial understanding of the universe seems (to me) to contradict
this, however. If one asked people to comment on the phrase "change creates
objects, objects don't create change," most people would find some
discrepancy with personal experience, and reply with the rebuttal "how can
you change something which doesn't exist yet?" Excuse my philosophology for
a moment in pointing out that a philosopher would then have an ironically
difficult time explaining the MOQ to this person.
I think both positions are valid. It makes sense that something must
first have a static context in order to have its context "changed."
Simultaneously, it makes sense that we can only perceive context through the
process of our changing existence. Therefore what came first, the dynamic
quality chicken, or the static quality egg?
Perhaps in a higher dimension these paradoxes will disappear, but until
"then," it might be wise to purify the paradox down to the most crucial
elements. Notice that dynamic quality, the all-pervasive medium through
which the MOQ argues we access the world of static context, is defined by
Persig to be undefinable, to be chaotic, to be ever changing. In order for
DQ to be a complete anything, then, doesn't it have to have both pure change
and lack of change? In order for it to be pure chaos, doesn't the pattern
of chaos have to also be chaotic, thus inducing partial order? In order for
even the philosophically contextual idea of DQ to exist, it must be defined
as undefinable. It seems that the entity which we have defined to be the
omnipresent force in the universe must, in order to gaurantee its
omnipotance, have both being and anti-being. In my personal opinion, I
think these paradoxes are direct stems of the mythos that Lao Tzu started
with the Tao te Ching, as illustrated in ZMM; "Under heaven all can see
beauty only because there is ugliness./All can know good as good only
because there is evil." (TWO, trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English)
I provide this perspective and its subsequent paradoxes to give a context
to the free will question. I remember sometime in Lila reading a poignant
phrase whose gist was 'we can't control the extent to which we are
influenced by static patterns, but we can control the extent to which we are
dynamic.' It seems to me that free will is contained in a similar fugue. I
believe that since DQ is the primal reality of the world, we all are born
with a manifest free will; in MOQ terms this is essentially an ability for
the DQ/SQ dichotomy that is reality to follow the universal tide that goes
from static to dynamic. Intention is essentially a hitch on the train of
evolution, a static pattern surrendering to a more fluid state. This free
will is so manifest, however, that we can also chose not to have free will.
Initially, this is the most anoying thing about complete dynamasticity.
Enlightenment through meditation is so hard and such a long, arderous
process only because it is the easiest thing to do.
This in mind, the answer to the question "can 'static patterns of value'
have any existence outside perception?" is that eternal yes-no, the mu.
Just as it is impossible to create a function from a differential equation
without an initial condition, so too is it impossible to determine the
quanta that came first in the chain of consciousness-existence, the dynamic
or the static. I think this is *truly* what Pirsig was trying to get at
with all that DQ undefinability stuff. The same thing that keeps physicists
from the perfect classical model in subatomic physics is also the same thing
that keeps philosophers from creating a perfect MOQ, which to me is
essentially the whole point of Lila. If you find high quality in the MOQ,
keep fine-tuning it until you trancend and it evaporates its context. The
static patterns of your history that combine the present changes to form the
gestalt experience that is your self, and if your self wants to go this
direction, do it. If not, do it elsewhere. The whole point is, evolve,
use your free will.
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
