From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jul 23 2003 - 02:36:28 BST
Hey Matt,
I think we're pretty much in agreement.
> DMB said:
> The "aesthetic pleasure", says our unknown author, is "a major clue to the
quality of the revelation". And I'm glad the writer used the word
"revelation" because I think what we're talking about here is, for lack of a
better word, spirituality. See, its not just that we are pleasantly
surprized by new twists on old formulas, it is that we intuitively perceive
the harmony between the rendered static form and the cosmic order of things.
Its true that all static forms are a product of this same cosmic order, but
as they grow stale and then obsolete that original meaning is lost. The
creative person's job, then, is to shatter the old forms and render the the
same "truth" in new forms, ones that refresh the quality of the
revelation....
> Rick replied:
> I know what you're saying here David, but I don't think creativity is
always about rendering the "same truth" in new forms. While, no doubt, that
is sometimes the case, I think a belief in DQ implies a belief that the
truth can get better over time; and that therefore, one of the functions of
the creative must be to refresh the old forms by co-opting them to render
newer and higher quality revelations.
> Matt:
> I agree that creativity isn't rendering the "same truth" in new forms.
When DMB starts talking about corresponding to the "cosmic order of things,"
I see that as a remenant of Platonism, of the appearance/reality
distinction. I have no truck with corresponding to anything already
pre-given. I most certainly do not see us as having an intuitive perception
of DQ. As I've said before (and I'll unpack more for Johnny), I see DQ as a
compliment we pay to something only after the fact. We may sense a break
with tradition as being good, but that doesn't by itself make it good.
Hitler thought he perceived Aryan supremacy as something good. I hope we
all agree that it was not, despite the fact that he and many others thought
so.
R
Pirsig is fuzzy on this point in LILA I think. He does explicitly say that
it takes about 100 years to sort out the saints from the sinners. And when
he says that, I think he's acknowledging that DQ is, as you put it, "a
compliment we pay after the fact". However, at times, he certainly talks as
if he thinks we can perceive DQ 'in advance'. I read those passages as if
he's urging us to follow our instincts as what we think is better (what we
think will someday be called DQ) because following that instinct is what
drives the system forward (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse).
M
> I see DQ as something that breaks with the past in some way, that doesn't
repackage the same truth in new forms, but, in a Wittgensteinian manner,
creates new forms of life where new and different kinds of things are
truth-candidates. The creation of the liberal in Enlightenment Europe,
where the individual was given political and social importance, was the
creation of a new type of person, a new form of life, a complete break with
the older, Greek-given polis-centered form of political life. I don't see
this as corresponding to some cosmic order that always had held that the
individual should have a private life that is separate from state
intervention, but as the shunting away of an older, now obsolete way of
looking at things. It was the creation of new truths.
R
Well said.
take care
rick
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. - Linus Pauling
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