From: SQUONKSTAIL@aol.com
Date: Thu Jun 12 2003 - 00:31:27 BST
Matt:
Wasn't it Pirsig himself who said that everything is an analogy?
Ah, here it is:
"Of course it's an analogy. Everything is an analogy. But the dialecticians
don't know that." (Ch. 30, ZMM)
Squonk:
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
You see, some analogies - are better - than others. ;)
Dynamic Quality isn't an analogy. DQ is where the best analogies come from.
Matt:
Of course some analogies are better than others, when have I ever said that
they weren't?
But, by saying that DQ isn't an analogy, you hypostatize DQ just as Plato
hypostatized the Good, which makes you a dialectician, a Platonic metaphysician
of the kind that Pirsig railed against in ZMM. I simply wanted to point this
out to anybody who thought that Squonk was trying to evade my charge. Instead
of evading it, Squonk took it head on and essentially said, "Yes, I am a
metaphysician of the kind that Pirsig dislikes in ZMM."
Squonk said:
OK, how about this? The best analogies are a tension between the static
repertoire of our language and
Matt:
I take the blank space at the end of your sentence to purposeful, but I don't
follow completely in it. I think that in efforts towards self-perfection,
the play between the known and the unknown, literal and metaphor, are excellent,
the best. But in efforts toward the public good, I have doubts. I think to
get things done for the public good, literal tools sometimes work better than
metaphorical ones, meaning metaphor may not always be the best.
Matt
sq: I find what you say difficult to understand.
If you have a good way of seeing things, then i hope you put it to good use
outside this forum, because i am not at all sure what good it's doing in it?
I feel postulating a universal DQ/SQ tension through analogy can actually
help people understand for themselves, and open up areas of experience they would
otherwise have been blind to. Blind to. More metaphor! Indeed, that is what
you yourself mean when you say, 'the play between...'
All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
squonk
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