Hi, Mary --
>Due no doubt to a combination of Sinead O'Conner, wine, cigarettes
>(lots) and muscle relaxers I'm taking for a back problem, I'm ready to
>share my latest brainstorm.
Mmmmm . . . sounds like a great combo!
>Q1 - define DQ. I would say that we can't,
No argument here. But then . . .
>and further, that Pirsig
>never experienced it himself, either.
Question: What's your take, then, on the experience that RMP relates near
the end of ZMM, sitting and staring at the wall for 3 days and nights, until
he was finally hauled off for ECT?
My take on it is that that was RMP's experience of purest DQ. [Not that that
particular experience is a goal I would strive for, mind you.]
I think you have it backwards! You suppose that RMP dreamed up DQ out of
thin
air to motivate the MoQ. I view it the other way around -- that the MoQ is
RMP's effort to make sense of his DQ experience, and to express it in a form
that others could grasp.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but to me the image of RMP deducing
DQ from the levels reduces the MoQ to little more than a pet thought
exercise.
The idea that the MoQ is the end result of hard-won direct experience, _plus_
a whole lot more thought and work after that to explain the experience, to me
gives it much more impact. That's just the difference in our viewpoints,
I suppose.
>Why do we
>feel such a need to define it anyway?
I've been wondering the same thing myself.
>We don't know what it is - and
>neither does Pirsig.
Actually, a big point that ZMM and Lila both make (ZMM more strongly) is
that you _do_ know what it is, but that it is not definable. Definitions
are linguistic entities, and DQ precedes language. Even to give it the
name "Dynamic Quality" is a stretch. The best we can do with language
is to try to explain it in metaphorical terms.
In your view, is it necessary to define DQ before you can know it?
>Though I'm personally an atheist, I can see where DQ just boils down to
>thinking about GOD. Why not? God is good. God is great. God puts the
>icing on the cake. In my presentation to the Humanists (this is the
>topic of the month on the LS), I had to resort to it - the idea of God =
>DQ - and this was among a group of Humanists! Imagine.
Nishida makes basically the same equivalence in "An Inquiry Into the Good".
I don't have any trouble with that usage of "God", although it's not one I
would use myself; but that has more to do with my own prior experience of
organized religion than it does with any lack of appropriateness.
[If I were to label myself anything at this point, I suppose it would have
to be "Secular Humanist" or some other similarly vague term.]
>To me, the levels are the most important aspect of the MOQ. They give
>us a logical way to analyze the absurdities of human nature.
You are your father's daughter, sounds like! ;^)
>Tell me why I'm wrong. I'm going through a crisis here that's trying to
>become existential.
I don't think you're wrong. But for me it's not an either/or proposition.
I think maybe you are relying too much on having a precise linguistic
construct as to what DQ is before you can really grasp the sense of it,
and you are facing the unresolvable difficulty that this entails. It
seems to me that this would also have some bearing on the lack of
conviction you noted earlier in presenting DQ as "Zen Mind" or "God".
More imprecise terminology. But at the bottom of it all, it's not
primarily about linguistic constructs and metaphysical models. You want
it to be, but it isn't cooperating with you -- hence a crisis.
[Recall in ZMM that Phaedrus' primary difficulty in finding a home in
academia for his ideas about Quality is that he was refusing to define
the term.]
OTOH, your emphasis on the rational, linguistically-oriented side of the
MoQ no doubt allows you to see connections that would I fail to make.
Hope this is some help. Having glanced at your newest posts, somehow
I don't think so; but alternate perspectives are the primary reason I
read this list, so let's keep talking.
I'll try to digest your new stuff more thoroughly tommorrow.
Jeff
MOQ Homepage - http://www.moq.org
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