Hi everyone
I'm playing a CD I bought last week very loudly and singing along, also
loudly - it's great. Last night we went to the lantern festival in the
park, some people had big old lanterns with real candles, others had new
plasticy ones - the old ones were better (although we speculated that,
sadly, the kids probably preferred the electronic "hello kitty" ones).
Earlier in the evening I bought a new suit. The salesgirl advised me to
buy a different skirt from the one I liked, but I didn't - I don't need
her to tell me what's good.
These are dynamic events, explained in som terms. I'm shouldn't have to
say this, but the DQ does not lie in the music, the lanterns or the
suit, it lies _between_ me and these objects.
And then there's the dynamic quality of the brujo. That's a more long
term kind of thing. Like the MoQ Discussion group. I don't find it
wonderful all the time but I feel it's good because I get frustrated by
the SOM. If more people would see things the way I do it would be
better. Taking part in discussions such as this is a step towards
changing things.
Oh god I'm being all romantic aren't I. Well DQ is only a stone's throw
from romantic quality. In ZMM romantic quality seems second rate - like
those dumb people who don't want to know how a motorcycle works. Yeah
of course we say that it's just as important but nobody really thinks
that.
In LILA most of what was romantic gets shifted into Dynamic but with
more power behind it. And there are a few news things in there - the
quality of the American Indian going on a vision quest; the quality of
the brujo campaigning for social change even though he himself doesn't
even know why he's doing it. Motorcycle maintenance becomes a process of
moving towards DQ (gumption) and away from static. The difference
becomes the difference between good maintenance and bad maintenance
rather than the difference between maintaining the bike and riding on
it.
The challenge for us is to show how these events which have previously
been discarded as subjective are actually the basis of reality - neither
subjective nor objective. If we continue to ignore them as subjective
(in spite of the examples given in LILA!) then we're just chasing our
tails in the SOM like everyone else. You have to forget about what
skience is supposed to be about and look at your own experience
directly, yourself, honestly.
I haven't got the faintest idea what the immediate flux of experience or
the cutting edge of reality means, but Pirsig is a decent writer so he
gave us examples. I do know what it feels like to hear a great song, or
feel passionate about a cause or feel great after trauma, or see the
answer to an equation, or have fun.
Then ... having identified DQ in your own life the next step is to find
out how it relates to the objective universe. It is supposed to be the
bond between the two, but simply saying so doesn't automatically make it
so. If you want to say it's potential or purpose, okay fine, but then
you need to show why that should be so at both the subjective and the
objective levels.
As we stand at the moment the "feels good" aesthetic explanation of DQ
works well at the subjective level while the "possibilities" explanation
looks like it might have something in common with quantum physics and so
would be a good objective explanation.
But, like I said, what we need to do is combine them.
Diana
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