From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Apr 27 2004 - 13:57:45 BST
Dear Wim,
> When I summarized my questions as how do you pursue DQ and how do you know
> it is DQ, you answered 'by gathering in groups at concerts, in museums and
> in the great outdoors. ... I know it's really DQ when I experience it
> shining all around me as my static patterns disappear'. As for my original
> questions of 29 Mar 2004 23:27:30 +0200 (practical results? static patterns
> of value left in DQ's wake? social and intellectual patterns induced to
> migrate towards DQ?), I wasn't really happy with your unforthcoming replies
> of 30 Mar 2004 09:04:19 -0500 ('I'm happy. I have no idea. I hope so.') In
> your posting of 6 Apr 2004 16:07:14 -0400 you more or less repeated your
> answer to the first question as an answer to the second question ('Happier,
> wiser people.') and weren't really more forthcoming with your answer to the
> third ('It operates on both levels and would induce migration, you bet.').
> If that is all you can offer as of answers to my questions, than I'll have
> to accept that ... eventually. (-;
Sorry to disappoint you. I thought happiness was a legitimate goal of all
human endeavors, but apparently you have other ideas.
> By the way, do I remember correctly that you have been arguing before that
> DQ only operates on the highest static level nowadays?
Yes. As Pirsig says, "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."
> Can I interpret 'DQ ... shining all around me as my static patterns
> disappear' in the sense of your quote from Aziz Nasafi, i.e. as light that
> 'shines through [static patterns] as through a window'? Does that mean that
> art (creating it or contemplating it?) creates some sort of mystical
> experience in you?
Yes, but rarely.
> You wrote that you deny the God of organized religions. That doesn't really
> clarify to me what God you mean. Is the alternative to 'organized religion'
> in your terms a religion without social patterns of value or would a
> religion with (purposefully) minimized social patterns of value (like
> Quakerism) also qualify? In what way would the God worshipped by such a
> better religion have to be different from the God of organized religions?
> Again: as Quakers we DO worship a God that can be interpreted as DQ. The
> static 3rd and 4th level patterns of value that define us (and that are
> necessary as 'springboard' towards DQ) are minimal. Quakerism is not
> unorganized, but its (comparatively limited) organization is such that I
> don't recognize your objections against organized religion as valid for
> Quakerism.
IMO so long as you meet at a certain time in a certain place and follow a
prescribed method of worship, your religion is organized.
> You wrote:
> 'sitting around in a circle waiting for someone to say something doesn't
> work for me'
>
> Have you tried?
Yes. I was raised in Quaker country, Pennsylvania. I've attended many
Quaker meetings.
> You continued:
> 'The Quaker ritual is SQ wouldn't you say? Does it not lead to the DQ
> experience for some?'
>
> No, it is not the Quaker method that leads to DQ experience. It is the
> openness to DQ experience that does so. The very austerity and plainness of
> Quaker ways symbolizes for us this need for openness, but they are not
> essential. We recognize the possibility to experience God in/through other
> religious practices and outside religion.
I assume 'outside religion' includes pursuing DQ through beauty?
> You also wrote 19 Apr 2004 11:26:05 -0400:
> 'I think you're saying that static patterns to be static patterns require
> recognition by someone other than an individual. Not so. My memories are
> static patterns and are recognized by me exclusively.'
>
> We have been into this before. Yes, individual habits, memories and ideas
> constitute static patterns. The more meaningful/influential ones, that hold
> societies and systems of ideas (like the MoQ) together are shared by more
> people though. The point I wanted to make, referring to static patterns
> holding societies and systems of ideas together, was that their originators
> may be less important than their later participants. Let me use your art as
> an example: Say you have been creating watercolours for years in a
> particular way. You see a watercolour by someone else in a gallery and
> experience it as very beautiful. Being a watercolourist yourself, you see
> how that artist created that beautiful effect (which ordinary visitors
> don't see) and you decide to try it yourself. Whereas otherwise it might
> have stayed a unique piece of art, ending up in a museum cellar or a
> private collection, your copying makes it part of a pattern that reaches
> more people.
Point taken. But it's a matter of emphasis. You put primary value on
social patterns, I put primary value on individual patterns. Both are
needed.
> Unless you call Britney Spears and
> the like 'art' of course... I tend to include popular music, TV pulp (=
> most TV), commercialized film production etc. in 'art and culture' together
> with everything everyone does for a hobby, as I don't know how to
> distinguish between highbrow art and popular culture without confirming the
> claim of some elite that everyone should value what they value and ... what
> gives them social status. That is also why I am hesitant to recognize
> 'creating and contemplating art [and] pursuing beauty' as ONLY ways of
> pursuing DQ. What is someone appreciating a performance by Britney Spears
> doing differently than you are doing? Why is your pursuit 'pursuing DQ' and
> is having a great time during a Britney Spears performance not? I submit
> that for many, many people visiting a performance by Britney Spears or one
> of her colleagues (or a sporting event) is an experience that is
> undistinguishable from your experience when you experience beauty. Does
> that make their experience 'DQ experience' or does it throw doubts on your
> idea that beauty always refers to DQ experience?
As Pirsig said, one's ideas of quality depend on an individual's life history.
Same for beauty. But, I know you can tell the difference in quality (beauty)
between a performance by Britney Spears and the Three Tenors, just as you
can tell the difference between a finger painting and a Rembrandt..
> You misunderstood me when you wrote:
> 'European elites are further along the evolutionary path than stupid
> non-European elites?'
>
> I wrote that 'unity in diversity' is ONLY 'in' among those PARTS of the
> European elite whose consciousness is far enough developed. I guess that's
> true for the American elite also.
I think 'diversity' is low quality. I don't see Pirsig celebrating it like
your 'elites' do.
> You ended with:
> 'I consider it wrong to throw tax money at arts. Would you want your tax
> dollars used to fund a tour by Britney Spears? Whether the art centers of
> Europe would never have arisen without tax dollars is debatable. For
> example, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, one of the great museums of
> the world, was founded in 1870 by group of businessmen and financiers, not
> a bunch of government bureaucrats using money extorted from private
> citizens.'
>
> You can be sure that not a single tax Euro is used to fund commercial
> culture. Government budgets for art and culture are used to support
> diversity and innovation and ... unavoidably that which is traditionally
> considered beautiful (the so-called 'cultural heritage'). Don't forget that
> 'government' in the time when Amsterdam became an art center of Europe
> (16th - 18th centuries) consisted of ... businessmen and financiers, who
> used governmental power (including taxation) to further their own interests
> (e.g. defending their trading vessels, protecting their wealth from thieves
> by putting them in houses for widows, orphans, sick, elderly etc., setting
> up hospitals to stem outbreaks of contagious diseases in their overcrowded
> city etc.). Other European art centers originated in powerful aristocracies
> maintaining artists at their courts for the sake of their social status.
Like I said, tax dollars coerced by socialist style governments has yet to
foster any great art, nor is it likely to IMO. Diversity, yes, resulting
in celebration of the lowest common denominator. Not my idea of progress.
Best regards,
Platt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 27 2004 - 13:56:52 BST