Hullo Rick, Bo,
I agree with the general direction of your response to Bo, Rick, but I think
you do not go far enough. You are right to point to the implications of what
Bo has said, when you respond
"Your scheme would cast Intellect as the ONLY dynamic level. I believe
Pirsig would probably describe Intellect as the "most dynamic" and the
Inorganic as the "least dynamic."
I'll agree with your first statement and disagree with the second.
In Ch 13 of Lila, Pirsig adresses this issue with Lila herself, when he
says,
"... the answer to Rigel's question that had been bugging him all day: 'Does
Lila have Quality?'
Biologically she does, socially she doesn't. ... Since biological and social
patterns have almost nothing to do with each other, Lila does and Lila does
not have quality at the same time ...
Biologically she's fine, socially she's pretty far down the scale,
intellectually she's nowhere. But Dynamically ... Ah! That's the one to
watch. There's something ferociously dynamic going on with her."
In Ch 15 Phaedrus sees the scars on Lila's wrist which he suspects were the
outcome of a long past suicide attempt, evidence of "some enormous battle
between the intelligence of her mind and the intelligence of her cells."
"That's the way it always is. The intelligence of the mind can't think of
any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the intelligence of the
cells can't think of any reason to die."
He goes on to talk of "this confluence where mental and the biological
patterns are both awake and aware of each other and in conflict ... The
language of mental intelligence has nothing to say to the cells directly.
They don't understand it. The language of the cells has nothing to say to
the mind directly. It doesn't speak that language either. They are
completely separate patterns."
Later he asserts that "Lila is a judge ... Lila's patterns of biology have a
disgust about the patterns of intelligence. They don't like it. It turns
them off."
Pirsig finds no easy answer to the question "Is it better to have wisdom or
is it better to be attractive to the ladies?" He reminds us of Sidis'
youthful vow to renounce sex in favour of intellect, and suggests that both
feminists and male Provencal poets condemned "static biological antagonism
to social and intellectual quality." But lest you think this disposes of the
argument, he concludes the chapter with "That was the only good thing that
had happened all day, the way their bodies paid no attention to all their
social and intellectual differences...".
Reading these extracts clarifies a few things, notably that Dynamic Quality
is not confined to the intellectual domain, and that the conflicts betweeen
levels are not confined to adjacent levels, as is sometimes argued in this
forum. At least according to Pirsig.
It also raises some interesting issues, especially about Pirsig's use of the
word 'intelligence'. I like his broad spectrum usage, where there is a
biological and (presumedly) a social intelligence as well as an intelligence
of the mind. This fits with the term often used by the Gestalt
psychologicts, 'the wisdom of the organism'. It also gels with the mystic
view that dynamic quality is recovered through a return to the immediacy of
experience, not through intellect.
RICK
"I believe it would be more accurate to say that the upper level
"attenuates"
DQ's influence on the lower level. With the level of attenuation increasing
over time."
This is close to the mystic point of view, though the mystic regards the
loss of the lower levels as indicative of the loss of something more
important, which is immediacy, or the ability to experience 'what is', here
and now. The gestalt therapists also saw the increasing intellectualization
of society as a symptom of disease, not health. Ken Wilber gives the best
overview of all this, starting in "No Boundary', which I regard as one of
his finest books, and continuing to influence his later more developmentally
organised thought. Briefly, Wilber sees the development of the stages
broadly outlined by Pirsig in his levels, as a process of human moral
development, but it is only the first part of a much longer process, which
includes the whole realm of spiritual development. Pirsig repeatedly speaks
of the loneliness and isolation of modern society, but offers no solutions.
Wilber would view this as a consequence of being stuck at a particular stage
of development, where the issues of isolation are the motivation to make the
next step to deal with 'what is'. I argue that more intellect, (more
philosophy, more ideas, a better metaphysics), is just a dead end here. A
return to the 'attenuated' intelligence of the organism is a part of the
solution, I suspect.
Your last sentence, Rick, I found especially challenging. You said "There's
nothing in LILA or the MoQ to suggest that DQ cannot be destructive." How do
you view 'destructive'?
Regards,
John B
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