From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Mar 26 2003 - 22:57:18 GMT
Hello Johnny,
In my last post I identified the problem I detected in your view as a
failure to recognize Dynamic Quality as a kind of morality. I suggested
that your view left no satisfactory way to explain how moral change occurs
and pointed to some of the awkward corners that your failure to offer such
an explanation had painted you into.
In this post, I hope to further trace some of the consequences of the
lopsided vision of Quality you seem to be selling. What I'll try to be
pointing out is the ways in which you're dismissal of the notion of a
Dynamic morality has forced you to completely redefine 'static quality' in
such a way as to include the characteristics that Pirsig associates with
Dynamic Quality.
But first, I'd like to respond this charge that I've "personified"
Dynamic Quality into some sort of God or "Tinkerbell". I'm sorry Johnny but
your comments to this effect just have absolutely nothing to do with my
view. I've never said anything even remotely resembling the thought you're
attacking here and if you think I have, you might be kind enough to point to
some examples so that I can correct your misunderstanding (or god forbid you
might *ask* me if that is my position before you assert that is).
All I've asserted is that Dynamic and static quality are aspects of
experience. Neither has any god-like characteristics or personality. They
are two different goods, two different species of morality. Both are
essential. But, of course, you could read all this for yourself in ch.9 of
LILA. I've ignored such misrepresentations of my position in this reply
and tried to concentrate on what I thought were some of your more credible
comments.
JOHNNY
> Where does he get the idea that custom cannot change custom?
RICK
He gets it from the way he defines his terms. In the MoQ a 'custom' is
static social pattern. Pirsig asserts that static patterns do not change by
themselves (LILA ch9 p133). Therefore, using Pirsig's definitions, customs
do not change by themselves. I think Pirsig's definition is a good one. I
like to think of settled patterns like parallel lines, if left undisturbed,
parallel lines will never cross each other. Similarly, if left undisturbed
(i.e. without Dynamic Quality) settled patterns will not conflict with each
other.
One might disagree with Pirsig and redefine static patterning to include
the ability to change Dynamically (as you have done). But then there's not
much point to a static/Dynamic split in the first place and you're probably
better off finding some other, more fundamental way to organize experience
(maybe 'subject/object' is more for you, or perhaps 'classic/romantic').
JOHNNY
There are many
> examples of customs that change customs, such as the custom of artists
> basing new art and literature on old and bringing it up to date, the
custom
> of learning from different disciplines and applying them to other things,
> the custom of making the world better for your children, the custom of
being
> fair to our fellow man, the custom of trying to discover what makes things
> work, the custom of interacting with other cultures and applying what you
> like about them to your own... You can see I could go on and on.
RICK
I think all of your examples are better explained as a combination of
static and Dynamic forces. For example, "New" and "bringing it up to date"
are signifiers for Dynamic Quality. If the artists just followed the
existing patterns without any Dynamic change they would just produce the
same exact artworks over and over again. Without DQ, the "new" art would be
indistinguishable from the old.
Also, "Learning" implies Dynamic change from existing beliefs. "Making
the world better" implies moral change and progress, both of which are
Dynamic aspects of experience. "Discovery" implies Dynamic change from
existing knowledge.
All of your examples contain some element of change, newness, or
difference from something already existing. Those are all *Dynamic*
Qualities. I feel that those "customs" you cited are better explained by
recognizing the Dynamic element of experience. You're left describing the
newness of discovery as either "static" or "amoral".
JOHNNY
We do those things because we
> should. We don't like artists who make carbon copies of others' artwork,
we
> EXPECT artwork to be innovative in some way, or it isn't high quality.
We
> expect improvement, we expect to gain knowledge and apply it.
RICK
Yes, but "Innovation" and "improvement" are Dynamic Qualities. Other than
that, I agree with you. We expect that life will entail Dynamic change as
well as static repetition. Both are aspects of experience that might result
in good or evil from the perspective of the other.
JOHNNY
DQ is just the energy and
> motive for the patterns to exert themselves into the future against other
> patterns... it just changes things
> according to how the static patterns dictate that it must.
RICK
Static patterns would NEVER dictate anything should change. If they did
they wouldn't be STATIC! If you think they do, then you're not really
talking about STATIC patterns anymore.
Moreover, I agree with you when you say "DQ is...the energy and motive
for the patterns to exert themselves into the future...". That's what I'm
saying (and what Pirsig is saying). Dynamic Quality is the motive and
engine for change.
JOHNNY
You saw
> Barbershop? According to that movie, blacks were dragged off to jail
pretty
> frequently for not giving up their seat, and Rosa Parks, tired and in no
> mood to move, was in the place and time to become the symbolic catalyst
> needed by the movement. But she was made so by all the players in the
> sweeping change that was taking place, all the static patterns
(intellectual
> patterns mostly, but that's our irrelevant observation), that were
changing
> other patterns.
RICK
Oh Johnny. You see, but you do not understand. I BEG you to read ch9
again. What you're describing is EXACTLY the interplay of static and
Dynamic forces Pirsig describes in the brujo story...
PIRSIG (LILA ch9 p131)
If you had asked the brujo what ethical principles he was following he
probably wouldn't have been able to tell you. He wouldn't have understood
what you were talking about. He was just following some vague sense of
"betterness" that he couldn't have defined if he wanted to....
...A tribe can change values only person by person and someone has to be
first. Whoever is first obviously is going to be in conflict with everybody
else. He didn't have to change his ways to conform to the culture only
because the culture was changing its ways to conform to him. And that is
what made him seem like such a leader. Probably he wasn't telling anyone to
do this or to do that so much as he was just being himself. He may never
have seen this struggle as anything but a personal one. But BECAUSE THE
CULTURE WAS IN TRANSITION (emphasis added) many people saw this brujo's ways
to be of higher Quality than those of the old priests and tried to become
more like him. In this Dynamic sense, the brujo was good because he saw the
new source of good and evil before the other members of the tribe did.
RICK
You'll notice that like Rosa, the brujo wasn't fighting for social change.
Like her, he was just being himself. But Dynamic elements of the culture
were inspired and united by the things they did and rallied around them.
And *in a Dynamic sense* they were good.
JOHNNY
> Consider if, instead of bucking the static pattern of Jim Crow laws, she
had
> bucked the static pattern of waiting until you get home to urinate, and
had
> been dragged of to jail for that. Would that have been Good?
PIRSIG (LILA ch26 p387 )
Just as the biological immune system will destroy a life-saving skin
graft with the same vigor with which it fights pneumonia, so will a cultural
immune system fight off a beneficial new kind of understanding like that of
the brujo in Zuni with the same kind of vigor is uses to destroy crime. It
can't distinguish between them.
RICK
Just as the cultural immune system would fight off a plague of public
urination, it would fight off the civil-rights movement. But that doesn't
mean that improvements in civil-rights are morally equivalent to urinating
in the streets.
JOHNNY
> You seem to think that static quality is monolithic, that there are never
> conflicts within static quality, that the flock behaves as one and always
> agrees about where to go.
RICK
A given set of settled static patterns will never conflict with itself. When
Dynamic evolution pushes two static patterns into competition with each
other, Dynamic change must occur. When the flock disagrees, the flock will
have to choose between two courses. In a Metaphysics of Quality, all other
things being equal, the more Dynamic choice is the more moral.
JOHNNY
Static Quality is infinitely complex, we can
> never hope to understand all the patterns or even see but a small fraction
> of them.
RICK
Agreed. To paraphrase Pirsig in ZMM, we take a handful of sand from the
beach of awareness and call it the world.
JOHNNY
> Being suspicious of a static pattern and demanding that it provide
> justification instead of respecting static patterns, is the opposite of
> morality.
RICK
Being suspicious of a static pattern and demanding that it provide
justification instead of respecting static patterns, is the opposite of
STATIC morality....
JOHNNY
The exhortation aspect of morality, the imperative, is respect
> for static patterns. To disprespect them just slightly, to say that you
> have a line on something called "Dynamic Quality" which is more truly
moral
> than static quality and completely independent of it, is subversive to
> morality.
RICK
...is subversive to STATIC morality.
JOHNNY
It has nothing to do with it being 'better' in some 'outside'
> sense, we just call it better because it is expected that we would, we
like
> it better because it fits our currently vogue static patterns.
> Did that get me anywhere?
RICK
I don't think so. You're still oscillating between saying either that
change for the better or worse "just happens" or that it's just some sort of
illusion. And you've pretty much abandoned the static/Dynamic split in all
but your terminology.
But ultimately, I'm just saying that I think you'll get more value out
of the philosophy presented in LILA if you read it as a conflict between two
different moral forces (sq/DQ) rather than a conflict between static
morality and some immoral (or amoral) Dynamic force.
thanks for the chat
take care
rick
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