Hello all,
This is my first posting. I read ZMM a few months ago, and I have just
finished LILA, and was fairly impressed by how well they both agreed with
the personal philosophy I have built up over the years. I have used
different terminology, but the basic ideas are the same. As a computer
programmer, I felt a certain identity with the passages in Lila concerning
programming; but, as you all know, these form but a small part of MOQ.
The distinctions mentioned in Lila between Hardware and Software were used
as an analogy for the distinctions between inorganic, biological, social,
intellectual, and Dynamic Quality. These are platypuses of the highest
order!
I don't feel qualified to discuss inorganic Q, so I will start on biological
Q. For simplicity, I will discuss only a single species, dogs. Within the
biological species 'dog' there are individuals, which vary considerably; and
there is the species. The species is the sum of the individuals. Each dog is
exploring his own dimension of Quality, and the species is following another
dimension. The two dimensions are inextricably linked, which is perhaps why
Pirsig overlooked the distinction. It gets really important, though, when we
get to the next 'category' -- social Quality.
Social Quality and Intellectual Quality are analogues of Dog Species and Dog
Individuals. They are linked, but they are on the *same* level.
This perception of Quality cleans up lots of Pirsigs platypuses, which he
didn't even realize were there. The most glaring one is the placement of
intellectual Q above social Q. Both levels co-exist!
Another omission of MOQ is the recognition that Dynamic Quality exists
everywhere at all times. Sometimes its presence appears to be lacking,
because we can't recognize the minute changes ocurring; but the changes are
always there. No two events can be exactly the same. Therefore, what Pirsig
defines as static Quality is simply a lack of refinement in our perception.
Quality is Dynamic!
So: what we have here is two branches of perception of Quality. Inorganic
quality should also be split, but that is beyond the scope of this message.
intellectual Quality | social Quality
biological Quality in Individual | biological Quality in Species
inorganic quality
Comments?
Curtis Burisch
"Culture is the learned, shared, compelling, inter-related set of symbols
whose meaning provides a set of orientation for members of a society. These
orientations taken together provide solutions to problems that all societies
must solve if they are to remain viable." - Alice Everard, The International
Society.
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