From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Oct 01 2003 - 15:35:34 BST
Hello Mark (DMB mentioned),
Platt:
> Division is one example of differentiation. To differentiate means to
> "mark or show a difference." Subject/Object marks a difference as does
> Dynamic/Static Quality. Both are symbolic differentiations created by
> intellect.
> Mark:
> Hello Platt, But there you go again: 'Both are symbolic
> differentiation's created by intellect.' If Intellect is the process of
> differentiation, then differentiation cannot be the intellect can it?
> Differentiation is the static product of a Dynamic process. Bo's SOLAQI
> says that division IS intellect.
Platt:
There are many processes that aren't Dynamic. As DMB said, "Bricks and
bricklaying are both static, you know?" The intellectual process of
differentiation is static. That's what intellect does. It
differentiates experience, creates symbols to represent differentiated
segments, and manipulates the symbols to create ideas.
> Mark:
> 30-09-03: I agree with: 'Intellect isn't dependent on the S/O
> division.' I like your use of the term characterise here, and i agree
> with it as long as we understand it does not have to be that way, and
> the West can learn from the East: 'The intellectual LEVEL, however, is
> characterized by the DOMINANCE of the value of the S/O division.'
Platt:
Agree!
Mark:
> 30-09-03: Any Dynamic process is responding to DQ? And thinking IS
> a dynamic process - a static repertoire of intellectual values
> responding to DQ. It is the preselection of new static patterns based on
> harmony or Quality. I think we agree more than appears so here, if i may
> be so presumptuous? The only major difference is that i am sticking
> closely to the language of the MoQ and using the term DQ and you the
> term Quality?
Platt:
"Thinking" isn't a Dynamic process. Thinking is a static intellectual
process. DQ is not known by thinking. (Refer to how a baby 'knows' DQ
in LILA, Chp. 9) You cannot think your way to experiencing DQ. As
Pirsig points out, "Thought is not a path to reality," reflecting the
mystic view. The response to harmony, the aesthetic response, is
allied with DQ.
Platt:
> Personally I'll stick to DQ/SQ and the indispensable value of the
> individual, the only pattern now capable of responding to DQ.
> Mark:
> 30-09-03: Not sure if i would commit myself to your view that
> individuals are the only patterns responding to DQ? I would certainly
> have allot of time for the view that individuals are responding in such
> a dynamic way as to make social patterns look limp by comparison?
Platt:
The crucial importance of the individual is made clear in the following
excerpt from LILA, Chp.15:
"What makes killing him immoral is that a criminal is not just a
biological organism. He is not even just a defective unit of society.
Whenever you kill a human being you are killing a source of thought
too. A human being is a collection of ideas, and these ideas take moral
precedence over a society. Ideas are patterns of value. They are at a
higher level of evolution than social patterns of value. Just as it is
more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than a patient, so it is more
moral for an idea to kill a society than it is for a society to kill an
idea. And beyond that is an even more compelling reason; societies and
thoughts and principles themselves are no more than sets of static
patterns. These patterns can't by themselves perceive or adjust to
Dynamic Quality. Only a living being can do that. The strongest moral
argument against capital punishment is that it weakens a society's
Dynamic capability-its capability for change and evolution."
Compare this to the Rorty/Fish postmodernist view that groupthink
trumps an individual's ideas.
Be that as it may, our main difference is that you consider thinking as
somehow a part of DQ while I consider it a static process pattern with
some processes being of higher quality than others. To me, DQ doesn't
play any part in thinking at all. Thinking only comes into play after a
DQ experience. To me, DQ is "what stops you in your tracks," a song, a
painting, a vista, a pretty girl, or a sentence near the end of a novel
like, "That's a good dog." :-) When something you experience seems to
resonate in harmony with the whole universe, that's when you know
you've been touched by DQ and, for a moment, realized the aesthetic
continuum.
Platt
"On my fifth birthday my Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said,
'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at
the end of your arm." --Sam Levenson
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