From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Wed Aug 03 2005 - 20:55:21 BST
Joe,
You wrote:
> It is hard to know from what point of view consciousness-evolving, or
> mechanical-life a person is writing. MOQ is not life-mechanical experience.
Attempts to rule life by the MOQ is violent. What is evolving is lawfully
unknown.
Arlo:
I hear Bourdieu's idea of "symbolic violence" echoing in your thoughts. Simply
stated, the internalization of ANY cultural habitus (I'd argue that Bourdieu's
habitus and Pirsig's static social patterns are philosophically synonymous) is
a form of "(symbolic) violence" against the undifferentiated, aesthetic of
experience (DQ, in Pirsig's terminology).
The point, however, in both is that this "violence" is necessary, and is what
sustains the social layer. That is, with the cultural "indoctrination" of being
immersed in any given culture, individuals can participate and evolve social
(and subsequently intellectual) quality patterns. Without this "violence", this
is not possible.
We are ALREADY succombed to the violence you fear. It already exists. Using the
MOQ as a guide in thinking about practical solutions to moral problems is no
more violence than that what has created the patterns that exist now. We NEED
static social patterns. Pure DQ is chaos. The creation of static social
patterns is ALWAYS (symbolically) violent in its limitation of Pure Quality.
JC had said this more eloquently and to the point that I have (or could). So
I'll just quote his words. They deserve a repost in my opinion anyway.
"If we start fresh on any question and leave behind our static
prejudices about the way things are supposed to be, we can find fresh
answers, better solutions, quality decisions. That is my plea for
bringing the metaphysics of quality down to earth. Any problem has a
best solution. We don't always get it. Sometimes the best we can do
is approximate and hope. But to my mind, the best of what Pirsig has
to offer the modern world is a way at finding pragmatic solutions.
It's not that the MoQ Society has all the right answers, it's that
there are ways of opening ourselves to discovering answers if we can
free ourselves from static blockages."
Arlo
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