From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jul 04 2005 - 21:05:31 BST
In the last few weeks, "harmony" has gained exposure as an important piece
of Pirsig's philosophy. In recent history, Mark Maxwell's "The Edge of
Chaos" (in the Essay Forum) has done much to raise the status of the concept
as a working tool. Lately in the MD, Allen has started emphasizing it and
Mike, Paul, and Steve have mainly agreed (at the least, its a good word to
use, if not to the particular ways Allen uses it). And I know Platt, for
one, has also made much of the concept for some time in his aesthetic vision
of the MoQ.
What I would like to do is suggest that harmony shouldn't be used as it is
typically used by Pirsigians. There are basically two versions I would here
like to criticize. The first is the idea that harmony is represented by a
static pattern's harmonious relationship with Quality/DQ (it matters little
which). So, when a static pattern changes, what we call a moment of DQ or
DQ's intervention can also be described as the static pattern falling into
harmony with Quality/DQ. What is important in this version is the idea that
Quality/DQ is the cause of the change. Paul gives very good expression to
this version when he says, "From this point of view static patterns of
intellect are forced by Dynamic Quality into reweaving new relationships
between existing patterns." The important word is "forced."
I think this is bad because it creates a representational-style relationship
between static patterns and Quality/DQ. Bad static patterns fall away (are
broken) when they achieve harmony with the antecedently existing Quality/DQ.
Quality and DQ have to be phrased as "antecedently existing" because of
the use of "harmony" as a good description of the relationship. Harmony
only occurs between two things that exist. Harmony doesn't occur with one
note, it occurs with two. So if we use "harmony" I think we commit
ourselves to an appearance/reality distinction and a representational-style
relationship. Bad static patterns are seen to be bad, and only
"appearances," once we "see," become harmonious with, "reality," Quality or
DQ.
Paul has been speaking out against the appearance/reality distinction and
its engendered representationalism, so I hope to persuade Paul to drop this
use of "harmony." We shouldn't have any truck with "antecendently existing"
anythings that "force" us into patterns we can call "better." We should
remember that DQ is “no thing.”
The other version of this is something like what Mark proposed in his paper.
That paper provides the genesis of one of the most interesting innovations
in Pirsigian philosophy, encapsulated in the slogan "SQ-SQ coherence as DQ."
(I haven't focused on or studied Mark's paper or MD contributions
properly, so I'm not sure if Mark made up that slogan, or if I just did, or
someone else. The point, though, is that I'm not positive if what I'm going
to attribute to Mark is his actual view. But, it does provide an important
counterpoint to the other view.) The core of this view is that it is the
harmony _between_ static patterns that produces DQ. DQ is not something
that we respond to, or if we do, it is signaled by harmony between static
patterns.
I think this version is also bad, though for opposite reasons. Marking DQ
as harmony or coherence between existents eliminates the notion of DQ being
a _rupture_ of previous static patterns. Harmony and coherence signals the
commensurate working of everything, but the point of saying that DQ is
creativity or newness is to point out that DQ breeds _discordance_ with our
existing views. The brujo was a discordant voice to the shamans. He didn’t
fit in, he was incoherent, unharmonized. It was only after he broke the old
static patterns and instituted new static patterns that harmony was
re-established.
Instead of these two versions of harmony, I would like to propose a
different one. I think Mark is right to refocus our attention on the
interplay of static patterns. This eliminates the use of Quality or DQ as
an antecedent reality which we are in relation to. If the DQ is taken to be
synonymous with Quality, with reality as a whole, then the SQ-DQ dynamic is
supposed to mark our relationship with reality as a whole. The idea that we
have a “relationship with reality as a whole,” however, is mistaken. We
don’t _have_ a relationship _with_ reality, we _are_ a relationship _in_
reality. Saying we “are a relationship” punches up the description of us as
static patterns. We don’t _have_ static patterns, we _are_ static patterns.
We are the interrelationships between “things,” a notion itself that is
fluid once we describe ourselves _as_ static patterns, as relationships.
The only thing that gives us any definiteness is our stable relations. This
is why we change, because we, as static patterns, _aren’t_ completely
static—they swim. They move about through reality (though they are what
constitute reality). Inorganic patterns are practically static because they
are so stable as to almost be immutable. Intellectual patterns, however,
are extraordinarily fluid. They are always shifting.
The idea that we _can_ have a relationship with reality as a whole is what
produced Platonism in the first place—trying to hold reality _as a whole_ in
a single, steady vision. It was what produced the appearance/reality
distinction.
Instead of DQ intervening upon us, I suggest we think of DQ as the
designation of the openness of our patterns. Change occurs because static
patterns are engines of change—they are meant to swim because they are
suffused, through and through, with DQ (an image that Mark also uses). We
still shouldn’t, however, think of DQ as causing change. We change as
static patterns come in conflict with each other (Mark also uses “tension,”
in addition to “harmony,” as a term for what happens when static pattern
produce DQ, but I’m not sure how the two terms are supposed to fit together
for him). These patterns interact and, in a Hegelian manner, sometimes
create new patterns. Patterns break and begin to shift in new directions,
but not because they are caused by something outside of themselves or put
into relation with something outside themselves. They shift because that’s
what they do--life is an engine of change. I think a better name for
“static patterns” would have been “stable patterns” to mark their openness.
If we think of our patterns as static, we are more likely to think of our
“self” as a circle moving over top an unmoving mass of patterns. But we
don’t have a “self” like this (that version of the “self” being a modern,
SOMic idea). All there is to our “self” are these patterns, but they are
all open, all shifting, stable but always with the possibility of
instability.
Harmony, on this count, is what happens when we get our patterns to fit
together. Harmony, in this sense, is also intrinsic to life, as intrinsic
as change, because it is the nature of life and static patterns to harmonize
themselves. It is the pursuit of harmony, however, that creates disharmony,
conflict, discordance. Harmony is what happens when we are successful in
our pursuit of getting our beliefs to hang together, but it can’t tell us
whether those beliefs are any good or not. Of course, neither can conflict.
Conflict doesn’t mean our old beliefs are bad. The process of harmony and
conflict is the living of life and the only thing that can certify our
beliefs is the living of life--the utility and usefulness, broadly
construed, of those beliefs in our lives. When our beliefs, our patterns,
_us_, stop being useful (in whatever guise the word comes in), that’s when
disharmony is produced. We’ve encountered something--some _thing_, another
static pattern--that breeds this disharmony. The only solution is the
reweaving of our static patterns, our web of beliefs, until harmony is
reproduced.
Matt
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