Hello:
Kev wrote:
"But a person is something more than the mere sum of their genes,
behaviors, and thoughts, and with the addition of the mystic level, I
think its rational to conclude that every person has something
resembling the anachronistic concept of a "soul" - that is a
patterned connection to freedom, a patterned desire to strive for
Dynamic Quality. This soul has the capacity to come much closer to
Dynamic Quality than social systems and intellectual thoughts."
Kev is touching on the point over which I have anguished lately.
It seems that Pirsig's writing on the "self", on the existing
individual is, if not contradictory, then incomplete or confusing. I
have posted a number of quotes such as this:
"What the record did was weaken for a moment your existing static
patterns in such a way that the Dynamic Quality all around you
shone through." -135
"If the baby ignores this force of Dynamic Quality..." -137
Okay. Now, again I ask: "shines through" to what? "what" does this
"ignoring"? Surely not static pov's, as we know that they themselves
cannot adjust to DQ, right? Only "a living being can do that". And it
is NOT the bio'l, soc'l or int'l aspect of the "cohesive spacetime
unit"
"She's a cohesion of changing static patterns of this Quality. There
isn't any more to her than that....Lila is composed of static
patterns of value and these patterns are evolving toward a Dynamic
Quality." -150....160
I think there is a middle term missing here. A "soul" if you will.
Some "thing" which does the perceiving, which is aware that "some
thing" is aware of the actions produced by spov's. Which is aware
that it is writing a book in which DQ is spoken of as something
TOWARD which 4spov's are evolving, which implies that the "author" is
NOT sole-ly(pun intended) spov's, nor - apparently - DQ.
If it is Dynamic Quality that is this middle term, as I suspect, it
opens many mystic doors. Such as the unity of all souls, the
VERY conscious "aversion" to the idea that "I" don't exist...
This heightened awareness of negative intellectual value must be
"more" DQ than before the question was raised.
Right. So. Like also I have tried to stress, there MUST be different
"kinds" of DQ. These may be simply differing "degrees", or "lengths
of time", such as defined the difference between "romantic" and
"classic". However, there are two very distinct concepts of DQ:
The first is "the cutting edge of reality, always simple, always new".
The second is the "betterness" which is "fit to survive", which gets
us off the stove.
What I mean is, Pirsig and LS'rs speak of coming "closer" to DQ. How
is that possible, if "you" (reality) ALREADY are DQ? Only if there
exists a SCALE of Dynamicness = betterness, and a TIMELINE of
staticness = worseness. The equation is as follows:
The further the value from the Dynamic leading edge of reality,
the more static it becomes.
This, of course is completely smothered when you ponder that GRAVITY
the most static pattern of all, is pretty damn close to the leading
edge of reality. (rather - curved spacetime, such as a billiard ball
on a bedsheet)
Well, I have only become more muddled than when I started this post,
as seems to be the norm lately. Forgive me, for I have two exams
left, and there is an incredible amount of information competing for
my intellectual valuation.
rich
OH - This really throws a huge platypus into the duck-bill:
WE MUST ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND, AND THIS IS SO IMPORTANT, THAT:
"B value precondition A"
the data is unchanged, but the resultant conceptual scheme of
things... oh nelly.
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