Erin,
J. Keats and Ani Defranco??? I've got an ex-girlfriend you'd probably get
along with famously (no such luck on the Star Trek though). You've got a
lot in here... so let's take it a step at a time.......
(1)-------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
> MARCO "Good is not an adjective".
>
> RICK: then 'good' has lost its meaning as it can be equally applied to
anyone
> from Hitler and Bin Laden to Gandhi and Martin Luther King."
>
> MARCO: Indeed. A thing that has no value does not exist.
>
> ERIN: To quote Star Trek- let us be men and let history judge whether we
were
> good or not.
>
[I lifted this from my reply to Marco, hope you don't mind].
(Rick:) Marco has here hit on one of the more difficult consequences of
'Pirsig's Law' that a thing that has no value does not exist. That
consequence being of course that if a thing that has no value does not
exist, then anything that exists must have value. And since
Value=Good=Quality everything that exists not only has value, but is
Good/Quality (does anyone else see flashes of Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss in
this?). As for Captain Kirk... history judges in
adjectives, not nouns.
(2)-------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------
>
> Again the hierarchy- Quality
>
> Quality
> Animate (good)- Inanimate(bad)
> animal
> dog
> cockerspaniel
>
> When quality is broken down it is good and bad but when there is no
division
> there is a third element.
(Rick:) There are lots of ways to break down Quality... good/bad may be one
(although if Quality=Good than this chart doesn't seem to make much sense as
the concept appears twice, in different places, under both names). ZMM
dealt with Quality as broken down into Romantic/Classic. LILA chose
Static/Dynamic as the primary split (Pirsig once alluded to a high-Q/low-Q
split in a letter to someone... maybe Ant). I don't know if that applies to
what you're getting at, but I'm not quite sure what you mean by "a third
element" here....(more on this later).
In MoQ terms, shouldn't it be more like:
Quality
Dynamic Q - Static Q
Inorganic
Biological -
animal....
dog......
cockerspaniel........
(3)-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------
>
> J. Keats statement helps here
> "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
> Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
(Rick:) "But the truth can be painful and disturbing, cadet!!! How can that
be considered beautiful???" --- Lisa's military school poetry drill
sergeant from 'The Simpsons'.
(4)-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------->
>
> ERIN: I was wondering if you could help me figure this out. I think the
> levels are important (for me) to think about this because everytime you go
> down a level the previous level is broken down to more specific terms. So
> this third element, truth beauty (good bad) really is not just a
combination
> of two lower words (not good + bad) it is a relationship more like the
> resulting compound in a chemical reaction- it is a discrete third entity
that
> is more than just a mixture of the other two.
(Rick:) I'm still not sure about this "third element" stuff. But....
(5)-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>
> ERIN: ...But what I am hung up on is
> that you really need a word that doesn't have an opposite. There are
words
> that are the opposite of Quality. So is it that we don't have a word that
> doesn't have an opposite?
(Rick:) Talk about a homerun, over the fences. You've really hit it
here....
ERIN:Arete is the really undefinable that we are all trying to define
> right. I think Marco put it best. Good as he thinks that these terms are
> closer to the big "?". A person who seeks good (truth, beauty) is no
different
> from someone who seeks evil (lies, uglines) because they are both really
> seeking that level above but can not name because every word you use to
> describe it seems to have an opposite.
(Rick:) It has been suggested before that there is no compelling reason why
the 'Quality' in MoQ couldn't be replaced with 'X' (signifying the unknown).
The Metaphysics of X. Dynamic and Static X. Inorganic X,
Biolgical, Social, and Intellectual X. As we've discussed quite a bit
already, Pirsig's 'good/quality' is in all things whether or not they could
be conventionally described as "good" or "quality" (once again, in Pirsig's
usage, Hitler was as much an incarnation of 'good' as Martin Luther King
was). Since the word 'good' has been so divorced from its traditional
meaning, it can be questioned why it is essential at all. If 'Quality' is
really unnameable, than why name it? Why not just 'X' it and proceed from
there? This can be argued quite convincingly from both sides though, I
waiver on my own opinion.
(6)-------------------------------------------------------------------------
---- > > ERIN: What if Pirsig had put Lila is a noun. If every word has an opposite does a name also have an opposite? Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? (Rick:) "Not if they called them stenchblossoms." --- Simpsons again. > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- > > ERIN: I looked up up what Valence met. It was very intersting to learn the > psychological, linguistic, and chemical definitions of it. It sheds a whole > other light on this. > (Rick:) I first took note of the word in the context of chemistry (valence bonds). I was always surprised that Pirsig never made use of this word when discussing the 'preference' shown by inorganic particles.... Think about it, the name of the bonds that hold Inorganic things together comes from the same root as "value". How could he miss that???thanks for your thoughts, rick
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