Hi Roger, Kevin, Rich and Group:
Ah, Stravinsky. Now there’s a DQ kind of guy. No swishing old tea
around the cup for him. His “Rite of Spring” blasted the first night
audience right out of their static mindsets. Not that I go along with him
completely. Among the moderns, Shostakovitch is my man. His Fifth
Symphony reaches realms of DQ that Stravinsky only caught a glimmer
of. But for an all out "perceptual modification, vivid and spontaneous
imagery, intensified emotions, dissolution of personal identity and
expansion of consciousness," musical tour de force, nothing IMHO beats
Rachmaninoff's 2nd and 3rd piano concertos. But then I'm an
unabashed, incurable Romantic.
Speaking of music and levels higher than intellectual, as Kevin has been
promoting lately, Pirsig hints at one in Chap.13 (page 188 in Roger's
stunning new teal softcover version) when he says:
"Finally, there's a fourth Dynamic morality which isn't a code. He
supposed you could call it a 'code of Art' or something like that, but art is
usually thought of as such a frill that that title undercuts its importance."
If there's to be a fifth level, that's the direction I'd take—a level of art. In
some ways. Dynamic Quality as a fifth level makes some sense, but I
don't see how you can make a level out of something you can't define.
Anyway, DQ both permeates and transcends all levels. If you put it on
top, it has to filter down through the other levels. But the levels don't work
that way. Intellect doesn't filter down through the social and biological to
the inorganic. Rather, the intellect is built up from the social which is built
up from the biological which is built up from the inorganic in an
evolutionary sequence. Pirsig's metaphysics structure is a one way
street—upward. But DQ was present before the beginning and is
embodied (encoded as Ken might say) in one and all all along the way.
Speaking of one and all. Rich makes the point that the terms
"distinctions" and "separations" must be clarified in the statement "The
universe consists of distinctions but no separations," as the problem
smells like an SOM-caused problem.
Right on. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men," "Subject-
Object Metaphysics can't handle simultaneous contradictory ideas!" Or,
to use a term I just coined that academic types would gravitate to like
lemmings to the sea: "biperspectability." (Does wave/particle come to
mind?)
Even though SOM knows full well that there never was nor ever will be a
subject without an object, it insists on splitting what's one into two—to
make a "pragmatic" distinction, to create a necessary illusion—although
it's plain that subjects and objects are forever joined at the hip. SOM's
inability to pat its head and rub its stomach at the same time leads to all
those wonderful paradoxes like "The present never changes but
everything that changes changes in the present."
Meanwhile, Dynamic Quality floats serenely over and through all, darting
and weaving from time to time into a word here, a phrase there and
sometimes illuminated for all to see by such maestros as Stravinsky,
Shostakovitch, Rachmaninoff and, oh yes, R. M. Pirsig and all the great
people gathered on this site.
Platt
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