From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Sat Apr 02 2005 - 07:15:47 BST
Dear Steve M.,
You asked Platt 31 Mar 12:15 & 19:48 -0800:
'What about static quality.'
Yes, interesting!
I wrote 7 Mar 2005 07:57:42 +0100 in the context of a discussion with Sam
about religion:
'I agree that DQ should not IN GENERAL be privileged over sq. I only argue
that DQ (the spirit) should be privileged over sq (the stranglehold) in
religion and nowadays more so than in history.
In life in general we need both DQ and sq. We need DQ, because only static
Quality fossilizes. We don't experience sq without DQ as 'good',
essentially -in my view- because it would take the Meaning out of our human
existence. Meaning requires change for the better, being part of a story
that goes on. We need sq, because it is the measure of DQ. We experience
change only as 'good' to the extent that it
creates new sq and we only experience it as change because we had old sq in
the first place.
Neither DQ nor Quality in which DQ and sq are unseparable can be an end
point. The ladder metaphor ultimately breaks down NOT (as you argued before)
because we should rather think about it as a spiral, BUT because a ladder
has an end, whereas evolution goes on.'
Generalizing what I wrote then:
I think a Metaphysics of Quality (in which "Quality" is made part of a
metaphysics and is not "pre-metaphysical " anymore, in Platt's term) should
stress the roles of DQ and sq equally. That doesn't mean that we (and
Pirsig) cannot have a personal preference for DQ and for making evolution go
a bit faster. Some people prefer a more Dynamic role, some a more static
one. Both are needed. Also some aspects of culture are and should be more
Dyanamic, others more static. I think religion, art and science are the best
candidates (in my order of preference, not necessarily yours) for Dynamic
aspects: the aspects that have the role to keep cultural evolution going.
(I'm using "culture" in the broad, antropological sense, as the sum total of
3rd and 4th level patterns of value.)
It's not only because I'm a "MOQ loyalist" (in Scott's term) that I keep
capitalizing DQ but not sq... It is rather because I prefer the
unconventional and (r)evolutionary tendencies in a lot of things. Even the
MoQ is a project in the making for me, not something to keep unchanged and
be loyal to. Metaphysics is for me religion and science cross-fertilizing
each other...
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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