DAVID B TRIES TO ACT LIKE A KNOW-IT-ALL and WRITE LIKE NIETZSCHE, AT
THREE IN THE MORNING, AFTER A PARTY, WHILE OPERATING A RADIO STATION.
Don't try this at home.
Dynamic Quality is the sound of one hand clapping: it is the silent
ground of being beyond all pairs of opposites, beyond all concepts,
where no "thing" exists. DQ is the primary reality out of which all
noisey "things" spring.
ZMM began as an attempt to persuade a romantic thinker that his
prejudice against technological things could be overcome by rethinking
the notion of quality. Pirsig's artistic friend saw no beauty in
machines, but that's just a matter of perception. Right is right.
The classic/romantic split blinded the painter to Quality's
omnipresence. What's moral and what is correct are the same thing. The
subject/object cleavage hides the fact. An aesthetically correct
painting "works" and efficiently running motorcycle is a beautiful
thing. Conversely, it doesn't matter if the accountant is morally
corrupt or simply incompetant, his books won't add up either way. Wrong
is wrong.
Sin is originally a term that comes from archery and means "to miss the
target".
Repent originally meant "to re-think your thoughts" and it's meaning
included a moral imperitive, as in... "Hey, you're pretty mixed up! You
better think again".
What moral and what is correct are the same thing.
An imperfect, but vivid and valuable analogy... Dynamic Quality is like
the equation underlying a fractal image and Static Quality is the image
itself. Static Quality is the actualized, visual representation of that
underlying mathematical principle. They are one and the same, but we can
see they are different. A most imaginable paradox. We can see the math.
Correct is beautiful.
The four levels of static patterns can then be seen as an infinite
fractal progession, always growing and expanding, spiraling outward with
new variations on the equation.
The evolution of reality is the unfolding of Quality into all possible
permutations.
I thought it was Thou art That, but whatever. Atman and Brahman are Thou
and That. William James' notion that experience depends on context
reminds me of the mystic's saying that "the center is everywhere, the
circumference nowhere".
Like Nishida's "distinctive sphere of limited experience", a single
permutation is a limited, smaller version of the totality represented by
the underlying principle.
The Santiago theory holds that the worlds brought forth by living things
"always depend on the organism's structure", but the organism's
structure only reflects the single underlying principle; Quality. It's
structure is both morally proper and factually correct. It's structure
is the fruit of experience. It's form is the shape of experience.
Formerly we'd say mind and matter arise mutually, but now we see they
are the same thing.
The Copernican revolution turned intellectual maps upside down, but the
sun is warm on my face either way. Now the sun is within our reach,
although it farther and bigger and hotter and more ancient than once
imagined, but flowers bloom all the same. My skin burns either way.
Horses and unicorns are both real, but unicorns exist only at the top
two levels. Formerly we'd say that unicorns are merely subjective, but
now we know myths and ideas are as real as rocks, they're just at
different levels of existence.
Precognitive sensory data is not the same as direct nonintellectual
experience, sensory data is primary experience MEDIATED thru inorganic
and biological static patterns. A cloud is so much more than white, but
eyes are limited.
EAch level adds further filters thru which direct experience is
mediated. There no way to step outside the mythos, the complex of social
level patterns of value is the very context of our thoughts. The values
we unconsciosly inherit from the language we speak can't be objectified
enought to effect escape. All concepts are mediated thru language. Ideas
need words like packs need dogs.
Intellectual patterns of value are out at the edge of that fractal
progression, but still perfectly reflect the equation. That single
principle describes the entire image, as well as each and every detail.
Each and every detail is an expression of the one thing it really is;
Quality. We, the details, can identify with the total image and the
underlying equation because ultimately they are all the same "thing".
(Experience is a verb, but you know what I mean.) Good is a noun.
When "Dynamic Quality is identified with religious mysticism it produces
an avalanche of information as to what Dynamic Quality is." LILA HB
PAGE 377
There is a huge body of scholarship on the subject, no one needs to take
my word for it. You can look it up, as they say. The similarities
between the mystical view of reality and the MOQ is striking and
undeniable. But Pirsig goes further than they are traditionally willing
to go. He connects that unmediated primary experience and the very
structure of reality into a coherent picture. He not only salvages the
mystical experience from the merely subjective, he demonstrates that
such experience is the basis of all reality. But the fractal analogy is
flawed because unlike an elegant mathematical equation, DQ is beyond all
static patterns and therefore beyond all concepts. DQ is a metaphor for
a mystery, as is God.
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
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