Hi Jonathan and all,
I've spent some time wondering which was the most proper thread for what I have to
say... anyway, Jonathan's reference to "man is the measure of all things" and to
the concept of a "living being" seem to provide the best basis for my thoughts.
IMO, there's at least one thing in the world perceived by each of us that could
not be forced into the "static pattern" category. Jonathan and Pirsig talk about
"living beings". Nevertheless, the boundaries of life are of course blurred (think
of amoebas and the like) and as Jonathan points out, Pirsig is probably talking
about man (let's write it Man): Man is the measure of all things.
I think the root of everything is that the most important thing that you perceive
and that exhibits high dynamism is *yourself*. Generally speaking, you can have a
good intellectual model for amoebas, bacteria, beetles, dogs and cats, and this
models will most often be satisfying, that is, your perception will be in
accordance with your mental model and you won't be surprised. On the other hand, I
think none of us has a satisfying mental model of him/herself. Our self always
looks only partially (very partially) explored and understood even by ourselves.
>From the depth of our consciousness we expect the unknown to come up (and we
expect it because it usually does come up). New ideas, new music, new words, new
feelings, and even new behaviors. While we can look at the whole world and have a
partial feeling of "flatfland" (a predictable, vastly mechanistic, understandable
environment), there's nothing that looks (to us) less flat and more deep than our
selves.
I think it is not unreasonable to believe that Pirsig more or less thought of DQ,
amongst other things, as the unknowable, deep source of novelty that lies in the
unknown recesses of our selves (which is also related of course to mystic concepts
of various sorts).
When confronted with another human being, we "feel" that behind the 3D body before
us lies the same unknowable source of novelty that lies deep within us. Love and
friendship are relationships that escape any rational or linguistic description,
because they are made of the entanglement of our unknown and unknowable and
unspeakable deep "beings". It's two apparently infinitely complex "things" that
fit to one another (and misfit one another) in ways that are far beyond any
wording. The best novel about love will never extinguish the subject. Each and
every love story as well as each and every real friendship has that taste of
"magic" that makes it impossible to think it is less worth or less "sacred" than
any other, and that makes us engage in "forever" commitments - because we are
bowing our heads to something that is "higher" or "deeper" than anything else we
know. Explorations of this deeper self is probably what everybody (?) feels as the
"true meaning" or "true purpose" of life (or at least, I think I feel this way).
On the other hand, when we are confronted with a beetle, we don't feel anything
like that. If you have beetles in your kitchen you will probably feel they are all
expendable for your better living; after all, all they'd do if you didn't kill
them is do their same old "beetle things" over and over, just as all other beetles
will do anyway. There's no way to decide if this is, objectively, a correct moral
positions, simply because there's no "objective" moral; morals and SOM do not fit
with one another. (Of course, you could also feel that it is immoral to kill
beetles if you can avoid it, and I would be with you - I was planning to become an
entomologist when I was a child). The moral imperative of respecting other people
is related to the fact that you feel they are the source of everything - they
share with you the unknown source from which anything can be generated - any
beautiful thing, any great idea, any astouding behavior.
So "man is the measure of all things" is because man is the "black hole" of our
perception and understanding of the world, the only thing that appears beyond
understanding and measure itself. It is easy to equate this non-understandability,
non-measurability, etc., with the idea of "sacred". Man is the measure of all
things because you cannot really judge or evaluate man. In other terms one could
say, there's God in Man. So the idea of having some non-human measure (including
purely social, purely biological, purely intellectual, ... static measure) to
apply to me makes us simply shiver. (Or that should be the case, in my opinion.
Yes, this also relates to things like death penalty etc. Unfortunately, there is
someone, although probably not in this forum, that thinks that death penalty is a
"just vengeance"... so unfortunately I know someone will not agree with what I had
to say).
I hope this is one of Jonathan's "good recipes" to cook "man is the measure of all
thing"...
Andrea
P.S. Thanks Jonathan for your words, which I definitely didn't deserve :)
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