From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Sat May 29 2004 - 23:02:02 BST
Dear Mark H. and others interested in this thread,
You wrote 26 May 2004 14:22:07 -0700:
'Not sure I understand the "freedom is negative" part.'
Maybe Pirsig's wording helps (from the 1984 afterword to 'Zen and the art of
motorcycle maintenance'):
'The hippies had in mind something that they wanted, and were calling it
"freedom", but in the final analysis "freedom'' is a purely negative goal.
It just says something is bad. Hippies weren't really offering any
alternatives other than colorful short-term ones, and some of these were
looking more and more like pure degeneracy. Degeneracy can be fun but it's
hard to keep up as a serious lifetime occupation.
This book offers another, more serious alternative to material success. It's
not so much an alternative as an expansion of the meaning of "success'' to
something larger than just getting a good job and staying out of trouble.
And also something larger than mere freedom. It gives a positive goal to
work toward that does not confine. That is the main reason for the book's
success, I think. The whole culture happened to be looking for exactly what
this book has to offer. That is the sense in which it is a culture-bearer.'
Quality can be presented as an alternative to or expansion of both material
success and mere 'freedom from'. (In 'Lila' Pirsig distinguished Quality in
DQ and sq, in which 'material success' is social level sq.)
Moral social evolution requires 'freeing from' static patterns of value as
'freedom to' create new static patterns of value. Without creation of new
static patterns of value, society degenerates: falls back in lower quality
static patterns of value. The task of DQ is 'freeing to create' (not just
'freeing from'). The task of sq is latching what is created, holding on to
the highest available quality. Both are needed equally. Only by combining
them (neither putting DQ above sq, nor sq above DQ) can evolution proceed.
Pirsig describes this in 'Lila' (chapter 11) in detail for biological
evolution (the Dynamic force inventing a dynamic and a static carbon
molecule, DNA and protein, in order to move up the molecular level and stay
there). He then applies 'this division of all biological evolutionary
patterns into a Dynamic function and a static function' to 'higher levels of
evolution': 'The formation of semipermeable cell walls to let food in and
keep poisons out is a static latch. So are bones, shells, hide, for,
burrows, clothes, houses, villages, castles, rituals, symbols, laws and
libraries. All of these prevent evolutionary degeneration.'
So if 'we want to talk [in this thread] about how current society fails to
attain the highest levels of freedom
possible [and] how we would see a more free society operating' (David M.
amended by Mark H. 26 May 2004 21:00:25 -0700), we should
1) be clear that we are talking about 'freedom to create' rather than about
'freedom from' and
2) try to identify Dynamic and static functions.
If 'biological evolution can be seen as a process by which weak Dynamic
forces at a subatomic level discover stratagems for overcoming huge static
inorganic forces at a superatomic level' ('Lila' chapter 11),
(moral) social evolution can be seen as a process by which weak Dynamic
forces at a subcellular level discover stratagems for overcoming huge static
biological forces at a supercellular level. At the biological level these
Dynamic forces have to invent different types of molecules. What do they
invent at the social level?
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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