Oh large grey one,
More and more I find myself wincing whenever I hear a phrase like
"because the static patterns are just that:STATIC." (my emphasis) I
think Pirsig's self admitted bias against "static" ("static patterns are
dead") can lead to a misunderstanding of the nature of static patterns
and particularly their relationship to dynamic. I call on your
familiarity with James as broach this metaphoric hypothesis.
Your computer in logged on to the Internet with your network browser
e-mail window open on the monitor screen. If you just sit and stare at
the the desktop it lies there just as you last left it. A static pattern
of values. But is it really static? Not really, the "I" bar might be
blinking someplace, if you have a menu clock its ticking off the
seconds, maybe a network log on indicater is blinking. Your direct every
instant experience is dynamic. Only as your thoughts kick in and you
know a little bit about electronics do you conjure up the static
patterns of ac power wiggling up from the wall plug, monitor refresh
rate, processor megahertz, all static patterns of value dynamically
changing instant by instant while presentling an apparently static image
on the screen.
I've said before that James concept/percept split is very similar to
Pirsig's static/dynamic split. Percepts/dynamic being experience prior
to intellectualization, concepts/static after. But James then goes on to
discuss in detail the relationship between concepts and percepts
concluding that they are in fact experience as a union and that a
direct back and forth interrelationship exists where concepts are
changed by percepts and,more importantly, the reverse. Pirsig is less
clear on these issues which might lead one to conclude that static does
not and cannot change the dynamic flux. I believe this is a mistaken
interpretation. Or to use a James catch phrase, your "Will to
Believe",the static patterns of your beliefs, your concepts, can and do
change your reality and not just your static patterns but ultimately to
some degree your dynamic reality.
If we carry on with the computer metaphor, as you possibly respond to
this you dynamically interact with the stable (static) patterns on your
desktop composing an appropriate response, type, click, bong, send,
sent, packets split, converge, arrive. I then dynamically experience the
static patterns of startup, logon, download, double click, open, read,
laugh, cry, snort. So a whole bunch of very static patterns of value
somehow changed my direct, dynamic, everyday experience. And though we
may not be able to trace all these static steps and say just how it
dynamically happened, we can empircally verify this by doing it over and
over again until we believe the concepts of "type" "click" etc. to be
useful, and therefore good and true.
3WD
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