Hullo Bo,
I was interested in your summary of your ideas, which was
"May I just express my "idé fix" again? I see the MOQ as something beyond
Intellect and as each higher level has an affinity for the next lower (my
enemy's enemy is my friend) it follows that the MOQ will be sympathetic to
the Social reality (called "magic" in a derogated sense by Intellect) and
long
for miracles and wonders."
It seems that when you speak about the MOQ you are not talking about the
metaphysics, but quality itself. Is this so?
My view is that the MOQ is an intellectual structure, therefore at the
'intellectual' level. Pirsig argues, (not very convincingly in my view),
that all static patterns of quality fall into the four levels. They are
discrete, (not discreet, as in the book), in his view, so I find it hard to
place a metaphysics anywhere else. But as you are well aware, his refusal to
define quality puts it in a different category, which in terms of the
categories in his metaphysics leaves the dynamic. Perhaps it is possible to
conceive of a 'super-category' of 'what is', which includes both static and
dynamic, in which case quality comfortably fits there.
The problem with all this is that the intellect can only 'point' to the
'moon'. A metaphysics is words about reality, not reality itself. If I have
an 'idee fixe', it is that of reification. However liberating the ideas in
the MOQ, they are ideas, not reality itself. Or put differently, ideas are a
subset of reality, and can be more or less useful or 'true', whereas it
makes no sense to say that reality is more or less true. It just is, as it
is. I seem to run up against this tendency in your thinking repeatedly;
putting the dynamic into a verbal formula and worshipping that. As Pirsig
sees it, dynamic quality is experienced, in the moment, and anything that
crystallises out of that, including the MOQ, is static.
I'm off for a few days fossicking at Agate Creek, so must leave it there.
I'll be interested in your response when I get back.
John B
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