From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Oct 24 2005 - 12:50:41 BST
Case (Arlo mentioned)
> [Case]
> Electroshock treatment is not used very much anymore but this sounds like
> as good an explanation as any for why it works. While Pirsig is certainly
> no fan he does say this about it as well:
>
> "But what goes unrecognized in a subject-object theoretical structure is
> the fact that this senseless unpatterned state is a valuable state of
> existence. Once the patient is in this state the psychiatrists of course
> don't know what to do with it, and so the patient often slips back into
> lunacy and has to be knocked senseless again and again."
>
> There are many ways to loosen up the bonds of static patterns. They all
> have their own special attractions and inherent problems. From appreciation
> of beauty and meditation to crack cocaine, what is interesting is how
> slight difference in the chemical balance of the brain can produce large
> shifts in perception and radically alter attitudes. Creatures of all kinds
> seek to alter their consciousness. Children spin around in circles until
> they can't stand up. Drunken elephants run amok
> http://www.realbeer.com/news/articles/news-001807.php or wander into power
> lines http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3423881.stm
Makes me wonder why those who deliberately alter the chemical balance of
their brains conclude that such alteration provides special insights about
the nature of reality. After millions of years of evolution, one would
think that normal brain chemistry would create a valid pre-intellectual
reality experience.
> The urge to alter consciousness is cross cultural and cross species. In
> Pirsig's terms this is one of the biological pattern that social patterns
> arise to control. If you started to catalog these biological patterns you
> would find that most if not all of them involve survival. Food, sex,
> shelter, pleasure pain. Organisms' behaviors basically boil down to
> seeking out pleasure and recoiling from pain. Most of morality, value,
> quality whatever you want to call it is ultimately defined in these terms.
> Pleasure is high quality. Pain is low quality.
Taking a step further, living organisms exhibit purposive behavior,
seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Even the lowly bacterium knows "It's
better here." Pirsig takes that another step further by suggesting
inorganic entities can also be viewed as exhibiting purpose, e.g., "Iron
filings value movement toward a magnet." (Lila, 8)
> In ZMM Pirsig says this:
> "The reason people see Quality differently, he said, is because they come
> to it with different sets of analogues."
That's the point I've been trying to get across to Arlo in saying what's
considered junk by some is treasure to others.
> These "analogues" are what behaviorists call reinforcement history. They
> are the sum of an organism's patterns of response to high and low quality
> situations. These patterns influence the probability of future responses.
> If a particular behavior results in pleasure it is more likely to occur
> again in similar situations. For example if a pigeon pecks at a lever and a
> piece of corn drops into it's cage it is more likely to peck at the lever
> again. Humans do this with coke machines.
>
> This whole theory of behavior has its detractors. Pirsig refers to it in a
> kind of off hand, dismissive way. But it remains the most comprehensive and
> complete system of psychology yet developed. I regard it as a rather
> Newtonian theory in that it explains an awful lots and certainly works from
> a practical standpoint. Certainly at the level of social phenomena it
> reigns supreme. Take advertising where the idea is to pair your product
> with a something that many will find pleasurable, say sex. It is a stretch
> to say that a wireless phone will get you laid but by putting Catherine
> Zeta-Jones in your commercial you can certainly raise hopes and as a result
> sales.
Hope springs eternal. :-)
> But there are other ways to use psychology from an MoQ perspective. As
> Pirsig states:
>
> "In any hierarchy of metaphysical classification the most important
> division is the first one, for this division dominates everything beneath
> it. If this first division is bad there is no way you can ever build a
> really good system of classification around it."
>
> In psychology there are a number of places one could make such a division.
> I believe the one Pirsig has chosen most closely resembles structural
> differences in the human brain between the left and right hemispheres. But
> that would be a topic for another day.
Thanks for expanding on the psychology of the MOQ. As far as I know, no
one else over the years of the MD has analyzed the MOQ from a
psychological vantage point. In fact, Pirsig's views of insanity have been
largely ignored. I look forward to your thoughts on that as well as
left/right brain division as it relates to Dynamic and static Quality.
Platt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Oct 24 2005 - 15:43:23 BST