Hello all,
My name is Charles. I am new to the list, and this
is my first post. I am currently a student at
college. The source of my desire to sign up for this
list and the subject of this post came to me as I was
running today.
Over the past couple of months, I have been going
through what I guess is considered the normal period
of stress during a collegiate existence. I have been
working very hard, but I have also actively tried to
maintain a social life. This has led me into contact
with many people. Unfortunately, many of them are
shallow and unthinking, and have arrived at an
apparently arbitrary definition of what they see as
quality.
What do I mean by this? Pirsig divides quality into
static and dynamic, as we all know. He divides static
into 4 parts, inorganic, biological, social, and
intellectual (I am doing this from memory and don't
have a copy of Lila with me, so excuse me if the names
are off), but he leaves Dynamic Quality alone as the
pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, again which
is standard information. What has happened to these
fellow students and friends of mine, all of whom are
very intelligent, is that they follow the path of
Dynamic Quality until it leads to degeneracy. This
brings up a host of questions. How does one define
degeneracy? Why does Dynamic Quality lead to it? I
remember a passage in Lila where Pirsig discusses the
1960's, and paraphrasing here I remember him saying
that the 1960's were an overthrow of all the static
qualities of the previous generations, and a pursuit
of Dynamic Quality. However, this pursuit lead to a
lot of degeneracy, more specifically the drugs and sex
and following of crazes, both social and intellectual.
At school, I find myself attempting to maintain a
very high level of static qualities, but my friends,
who are capable of maintaining the same level, often
pursue Dynamic Quality and drop into degeneracy, and
by that I mean heavy drinking, not doing work, playing
games, and in general engaging in all the forms of
entertainment that society has to offer. Out of
frustration, this lead me to pick up a copy of The
Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, again. I am fascinated by
her depiction of the ideal man, and although she uses
the philosophy of the ancient greeks as her
justification, the appeal of her description of the
ideal is undeniable to me. (For anyone familiar with
The Fountainhead, Rand's use of the ancient greeks for
justification is akin to the passage where Ralston
Halcombe decries classical architecture, saying the
"new" style is renaissance. Rand decries classical
ways of thinking, saying the "new" style is a
philosophy attributable to the greeks.)
This led me to a couple of points. I live a life of
high static quality. However, I am often confronted
by the temptations of dynamic quality that I know will
lead to degeneracy, such as not doing work in order to
play video games. What does the MOQ have to say about
this?
Is there a threshold of static quality, or more
simply put, as static quality attains higher and
higher levels, what happens to the implications of
Dynamic Quality? Does the level of desire for dynamic
quality drop off as higher levels of static quality
are achieved, that is, are we trying to approach an
ideal level of static quality where dynamic quality
will no longer become important because it will lead
to degeneracy, such as the ideal presented in The
Fountainhead? Or, does the level of desire for
Dynamic Quality remain constant as higher and higher
levels of static quality are achieved, meaning that
the higher levels of static quality we achieve, the
more we tend to devolve into a degenerative state?
More needs to be said about dynamic quality and its
implications for all of us, so that we may figure out
the implications of avoiding degeneracy.
By the way, I am assuming that it is desirable to
avoid degeneracy, because by definition it leads to
lower levels of static quality. Unless of course
someone is willing to take the position that people
are willing to accept lower levels of static quality
for whatever reasons. Either way, I invite discussion
into this topic.
Thanks,
Charles
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