From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Oct 02 2003 - 18:47:53 BST
Scott,
> > > > [Platt prev:],
> > > > Intellect (thinking) is not a response to DQ. Thinking is the
> > > > patterning of pure experience (Quality) into static symbolic
> > > > forms. What responds to DQ is not intellect but a vague sense of
> > > > something better. One's initial reaction to great art (or getting
> > > > off a hot stove) isn't intellectual. It's immediate, involuntary,
> > > > instinctive, intuitive, visceral, spontaneous. Thinking about
> > > > experience is secondary. Thinking about thinking is even further
> > > > removed from DQ.
> >
> > [Scott prev]:
> > > ????. Apparently, the fourth and highest level of SQ is the furthest
> > > removed from DQ. Something's backwards.
> >
> > [Platt]:
> > If you think being a mindless lion is better than being a mindful
> > human, then I'd suggest you have something backwards.
>
> Scott:
> I don't think that. Apparently you do, since a lion will jump off the
> stove just as fast as a human but will not move away from DQ because the
> lion does not think about it.
Platt:
I'm glad you think a human is better than a lion. Frankly I don't know what a
lion thinks. I'm pretty sure, however, that a lion can recognize a low quality
situation when he encounters one, just as a goose or a germ can. As
biological patterns, all creatures great and small react to experience
(Quality). They must in order to survive. Humans, who possess
biological patterns as part of their makeup, react to hot stoves and
other similar physical threats the same as lions and other heat
sensitive organisms. That's biological quality at work or "instinct" if
you wish to call it that. What distinguishes humans from lions is that,
in adjusting to DQ, humans are able to figure out how to make stoves in
the first place, thanks to intellectual quality. Wasn't it Ben Franklin
who invented the stove?.
> [Platt]
> > The creative
> > force of DQ makes for higher quality patterns. A pattern with the
> > ability to think is better than a pattern that can't. It's better for
> > doctor to kill a germ than a germ to kill a doctor. It's better to
> > think independently than to simply regurgitate a party line.
>Scott:
> I agree with this. But if thinking just takes one away from DQ why do
> you agree with it?
>
> "The creative force of DQ makes for higher quality patterns". If you
> throw a dozen lions or people on a hot stove, they will all jump off
> immediately. What's creative about that? The only way you'll get
> anything different in this situation is if someone thinks "I will not
> jump off", and has enough mindfulness to carry it off.
Platt:
If you can find somebody with enough mindfulness to carry it off, please let
us know. What's creative is getting an idea to put a sign on the stove saying,
"Hot-do not sit." Unfortunately, a lion can't read.
> > Platt:
> > Maybe you can explain the passage in Chp. 9 of Lila where Pirsig talks
> > about DQ in relation to a baby of which the following is a brief
> > excerpt:
> >
> > "From the baby's point of view, something, he knows not what, compels
> > attention. This generalized "something,' Whitehead's "dim
> > apprehension,' is Dynamic Quality."
>Scott:
> To the baby it is, since the baby is experiencing these things for the
> first time. Grownups are supposed to "put childish things behind them"
> and, I would think, focus on the cutting edge of DQ: the intellect.
Platt:
Here's where our major difference lies. I go along with Pirsig's idea that the
cutting edge of DQ is pure experience prior to disintegration into patterns,
symbols, thoughts and ideas. You say the cutting edge is patterns, symbols,
thoughts and ideas, as if that once you become an adult you'll never
experience anything again for the first that isn't an intellectual
pattern of one sort or another. Is that an accurate summary of your
belief?.
> > Platt:
> > Not "supremely mindful" would you say? If you'll review what Pirsig
> > says about the nature of DQ in Ch.9 (the song, the heart attack, the
> > baby) you'll see that "mindful" has nothing to do with it--until after
> > the event.
> Scott:
> I am referring to "mindful" in the sense that Zen does: to be as aware
> as possible of what is "in your mind" at the moment, whether that is the
> pain from a hot stove or thinking about Quality.
Platt:
Is Zen awareness intellectual quality?
> > Platt
> > As for DQ being a "static response," you're right in the sense that
> > we know the quality of an experience before thinking about it:
>Scott:
> We know the experience of our sense perceptions before we think about
> them, but we do not know the experience of our thinking before we think.
Platt:
Didn't you just say "mindful" meant being aware of your own thinking?
Now you say we don't know the experience of thinking before we think..
What's the difference between 'awareness' and 'thinking.?'
> > Platt:
> > Finally, I'm I right in assuming you believe in Berkeley's
> > philosophy of idealism?
> Scott:
> No. If you want the name of an old philosopher that I do think I am
> close to I would say Plotinus. Or Coleridge. Not Berkeley.
Thanks for clarifying that for me.
Platt
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