Firstly, I'd like to say that I'm new to this list so
if this is all newbie drivel feel free to tell me :)
I'd also like to say I take a very hit and miss
approach to phylosophy / science / education / life.
I have little formal training and just read/study
diverse stuff.
Anyway onwards:
Reading the Pirsig books and the various other MOQ
related stuff thats floating around, the thing that
struck me is that quality is really the structure of
reality and the way things build (DQ building SQ). At
various stages Pirsig defines levels of things eg,
inorganic, organic, soical, intellectual and the way
that one comes after another. I feel that although
these levels can be defined it is really just
definition by ruling a line across a continuim at
various levels.
Ie, there is a continuous build-up of static quality
in the path from a lump of elements to modern day man,
at various points on this build-up there are
percievable points where a major change appears to
have happened which you can draw a line through and
say, "hey look, it's gone from inorganic to organic"
(probably the clearest one) or "hey look, intellectual
patterns are overcome social paterns" (much harder to
draw a clear line. But these levels make the whole
thing a bit clouded. I start looking at them and
saying, well how did we manage to build up enough
static quality to leap from social to intellectual?
But we didn't those patterns had been slowly building
in that direction all along. 100 years ago it was
much more about the social patterns than the
intellectual ones but both were there and were
important. Now a days intellectual has stepped very
to the fore but social is also still there and affects
many aspects of the whole deal.
So. From there we're back to the build up of static
patterns from dynamic quality (reality). I'm gonna
try for a grand unifying theory in a mo but first I'd
like my 2 cents on the word quality. In some ways
quality is a good word because the system try's to
build up quality so that the new static patterns are
better than the old but the problem with the word is
the value judgement part of it. It makes it too easy
to confuse with human value judgements. Human value
judgements are primarily due to the static patterns
that have built up which is part of the game but are
not the important aspect.
So anyway, Dave's grand unifying theory of quality
(Theres nothing new under the sun so I imagine many
have said this before)
You have your dynamic quality (which is reality) if we
take a newborn child we could say that this child has
the least static quality possible for a human. Now
during that childs life we keep it in a purely
wilderness environment with no human contact. The
child will very quickly begin to develop SQ patterns
based on the dynamic quality it experiences. By the
end of it’s lifetime it will have a very large SQ
structure built up and will less judge the world by
straight perceptions (DQ) and more by it’s history
(SQ). Now if this child managed to breed but it’s
children were taken away and put in a wilderness
environment with no human contact the process would
continue. However every generation would have no
increase in static quality (I deliberately ignore
organic evolution here to simplify the case example).
So within a lifetime the child builds up SQ and
becomes more successful at dealing with his world, but
in the long run for the species in this test
environment there is no build up of static quality so
the world would ultimately remain very much the same.
So how does this compare to real human society? We
live our lives in much the same way, a child is born
with no static quality. During it’s life time it
experiences dynamic quality and builds up static
quality. But for the sake of improving the species
and the evolution of social and intellectual patterns
we have a tool. Education. Our child can rapidly
pick up a spoken language, not by experiencing true
dynamic quality and finding that English is just a
good and natural thing, but by having the SQ pattern
of language passed to it by a previous generation. We
write books and the major task of all scientists is to
take in as much SQ that has previously been created as
possible and only after doing this can they start
searching dynamic quality for new things. Without
mechanisms for handing SQ to the next generation there
would be no innovation beyond that which is achievable
in a single human lifespan.
So, for anything to be learnt there must be a build up
of static quality. A physicist can watch two steel
balls hit each other and all he can tell you from this
dynamic quality is that they moved towards each other
in this way and moved away from each other in that
way. He can make no further conclusions about the
world. But if he watches those balls collide several
times he will start to build up SQ patterns that
describe how balls collide and bounce. Before you
know it he’ll have enough SQ that he can even provide
you with a mathematical formula to describe it. (Of
course that assumes someone has given him the SQ
patterns of mathematics unless he had to spend time
inventing these himself)
Ok, I think I’ve rambled enough about SQ build up in
humans. But we haven’t unified anything yet… It’s
the same for everything else. In the inorganic world
you can drop a grain of sand on the ground and you’ll
have a grain of sand. If you drop more sand in the
same place you will slowly build a hill. The Dynamic
sand has come together into a Static pattern of sand
that we will call a hill (this is maybe a bit silly).
So, you get a heap of elements rushing around bashing
into each other. Sooner or later some start joining
together into molecules, thus building static quality
from the dynamic individual atoms. Once you’ve got
molecules of this first level of complexity (and not
before) they can collide and you will get molecules of
a second level of complexity. Yes, some molecules
will break back down but some will be strong and go on
to create more and more complex molecules. These are
building up static quality. Eventually molecules
don’t just become more complex on there own but become
more complex by finding convenient communities to
travel in (we are still talking inorganic here). The
proteins that choose to hang around with the ammonia
might find it easier to exist and build their static
quality than the proteins that choose to hang around
with sodium. At some point in time you end up with a
heap of molecules that decide to be in a very complex
community all wound together in various layers and
parts that work together and have, compared to good
old fashioned water a huge amount of static quality
and the human observer decides that these communities
of molecules are life. They are a microbe. Pirsig
would say that the biological SQ has overcome the
inorganic SQ. But only because of the label that
we’ve chosen to slap on it at this point. What if we
decided to define that life started with proteins or
maybe that life started with multi-cell organisms, we
could say the same things it would just be at a
different time.
So there really aren’t any levels everything just
exists on a continuum at various positions, building
up SQ and passing it onto the next generation,
building from where they are. The problem that comes
up is when items (I won’t say people because I imagine
this is true of any thing that contains SQ) start to
see SQ as reality rather than seeing SQ as a tool with
which to better experience dynamic quality and build
new and better SQ. Close minded views, racism etc is
all an example of this, ie: I have lived the my life
in a society that is predominantly white so I have a
strong SQ pattern in relation to skin colour. I would
guess the next stranger I would meet would be white
from my SQ patterns. However if I suddenly meet
someone who is brown I can either say “ah I need to
modify my SQ patterns to realise that brown people
exist and fit in with my SQ world” or “this brown
person does not fit in with my SQ therefore this brown
person should not be part of the world”.
So that’s it boys and girls, don’t try to seek dynamic
quality in life and avoid static quality, static
quality is a vital and necessary part of all existence
from the simplest molecule to the most complicated
grey alien, but instead realise that SQ is your tool
to better experience and understand DQ and all we need
to do is not mistake SQ for DQ along the way.
Hope that wasn’t too much of a waste of time for y’all
Cheers
Dave Moller
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