Platt,
with a little delay I offer my comment on your post about art and
beauty.
> ART 1 (a) The conscious production or arrangement of sounds,
> colors, forms, movement, or other element in a manner that
> affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the
> beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium. (b) The study of these
> activities. (c) The product of these activities; human works of
> beauty considered as a group. 2. High quality of conception or
> execution, as found in works of beauty, aesthetic value.
Good definitions for art. More generally, according to Pirsig, I'm using
RT as the term indicating all what's "well done", just to distinguish
Einstein from Picasso. Both "RTists", but only the latter is, according
to the common term, an artist. As the whole discussion is about whether
Picasso was an intellectual, I must use two different terms.
However, the definitions you offer seem to be perfect for Picasso. I
remark especially the first one, in which art is a "conscious" activity.
> Now it seems to me that because beauty can be found in all four
> levels, just as DQ can be found everywhere, beauty must be (as
> DQ is) a separate category of its own above all levels.
>
> Some have argued that beauty and DQ are synonymous. Perhaps
> so. But in Chap. 30 of "Lila" Pirsig writes, "Static social and
> intellectual patterns are only an intermediate level of evolution." If
> we take him at his word, then there are new levels, above the
> intellectual, to come. And the next new level, as Pirsig suggested,
> might be called a "code of art."
>
IMO beauty is not equivalent to DQ. Of course it depends on our
agreement about the terms we use....
Of course we can find beauty everywhere. But it's hard to say that the
carbon atoms created DNA for its beauty. Or that the ancient humans
decided to live in tribes 'cause it was beautiful. To describe the input
for those evolutions we have the term DQ and it's enough. DNA and tribes
were created as it was "better".
If I look at the Niagara falls, I find the beauty of nature... but this
"me" finding beauty is a person, and is behaving according to a four
level logic. In facts, if I fall down into the water, and the stream
leads me towards the falls, my biological self will have the high
priority, and the falls will be not so beautiful....
And also socially it's hard to recognize the value of such a beauty. The
contemplation of nature is a nonsense, according to the social logic of
success, celebrity, usefulness.
Intellectually... this is the point. From a scientific point of view,
beauty remains a nonsense, so it could be another level, above. But,
tell me. If it is another level, where is beauty now? Now that the
levels are four? I don't deny the possibility to have a fifth level of
beauty in the future... but as long as it is not a level of its own, IMO
art, carrier of beauty, is the dynamic side of intellect. Just like
philosophy, carrier of knowledge, has been for centuries the dynamic
side of society.
In few words, I do prefer to use the term DQ to point to the necessity
of
excellence which is pertinent at all levels. IMO the capacity to
appreciate beauty is a very high quality pattern, maybe proper only of
humans, surely active when the biological and social selves are left in
a secondary position... and when intellect abandons for a while its
static positions in order to grasp DQ.
Yes, beauty is the name intellect uses when talks about DQ. Beauty is
the "better" of intellect.
Actually, as you suggest, art is a "conscious" activity. When the RTist
performs his/her own skill, is consciously and intellectually trying to
translate DQ into sQ. He/she is an intellectual knocking on heaven's
door.
Let me know your thoughts.
Marco.
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