From: Rebecca Temmer (ratemmer.lists@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Oct 26 2005 - 19:03:55 BST
Hi Case,
Rebecca:
((Aside: Really I never liked Pirsig's emphasis on dynamic over static
quality, myself... I'm more of a 'balance' girl, myself.))
[Case]
Me either. He rants against the "system" an awful lot but often you have to
wonder what all the fuss is about. I hate to agree with Platt but while
commercialism is crass it is hard to imagine what could replace it. Or take
Lila's head boat sure it is gaudy but who wants to have diner in a dingy? By
making DQ into some mystical transcendental phenomena, a second undefined
term in a vocabulary of three words, many MoQers fail to see, as the Chinese
did, what a curse it is to live in interesting times.
Rebecca:
Right. Even when I first read Lila I got the impression that Pirsig was
overcompensating towards DQ. That maybe he was favouring dynamic patterns
over static patterns because he was overwhelmed by the ideas that he was
toying with... I think he was railing against old, useless and low quality
static patterns and slightly missing the fact that there are HIGH quality
static patterns as well. He does touch on it briefly I think when he's
describing the levels, that high quality static patterns are those that
allow freedom for the levels below them.
I never much liked Phaedrus' view on Lila's head boat either. Frankly I
couldn't see too much wrong with the whole thing. Just because it's static
and nostalgic doesn't mean that people still can't appreciate that - float
down the river, get drunk, have a singalong: sounds like good times to me.
That's not what was tacky per se, for me. It was that Lila worshipped this
memory of something that wasn't uniquely dynamic and worthy of such
attention. She held this to be a model and and icon of greatness but she's
just an ignorant small town girl who didn't have any knowledge of the
diversity of cultural opportunities available. She didn't know any better
and he wasn't willing to forgive her ignorance - or at the very least he
didn't take it into account, he just thought it was terrible.
Romantic dinner in a dinghy by candlelight with an acoustic guitar sounds
appealing to me :)
Meh, I'm not into undefined terms. I have a perfectly good idea of what
Quality is. The reason you can't define it is because it's relative - like
Justice. In order for quality to occur, you have to have two things - any
two things. Quality implies comparison... it's an event right? It's one
thing interacting with another (that's two things)... You get off the hot
stove because it has low quality, but why did you jump onto the stove in the
first place? Maybe that hot stove is a better place to be than the floor
that is teeming with poisonous snakes?? Suddenly your 'low quality' hot
stove seems to have the upper hand...
I'll give you a quarter if you can find me a time that wasn't interesting :)
Rebecca
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