From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat May 03 2003 - 17:24:22 BST
Paul, Rick and all living beings:
RICK said:
The last quote you mentioned comes from chapter 13, p.185 in my edition. It
comes from Pirsig's discussion of society's rights to kill an individual.
Pirsig essentially concludes that society is only justified in killing
individuals whose very existence is a threat to the continued existence of
the society itself because every human being is a source of ideas, and those
ideas are at a higher level of evolution than a society. This is where he
writes: "And beyond that there is more compelling reason: societies and
thoughts and principles themselves are no more than sets of static patterns.
THESE PATTERNS can't themselves perceive or adjust to Dynamic Quality
(emphasis added). Only a living being can do that." (Lila chapter 13)
dmb says:
I agree with Rick and am again grateful for his efforts. Putting the quote
into context was going to be my next move too, but Rick beat me to it and
thereby saved me some work. I'd quibble a bit, however. I don't think it is
correct to say that "every human being is a source of ideas". It might be
true that every normal healthy person is POTENTIALLY a source of ideas, and
that persons are the ONLY source of ideas, but I think its pretty clear that
there are many people in the world who have not yet developed to the
intellectual stage. In fact, I think Pirsig demonstates this notion in his
three main characters. Lila is biologically oriented, is pretty far down the
scale socially and intellectually "she's nowhere". Richard Rigel is socially
oriented, thus we see him strike various moral postures. Finally, there is
the author, the captian, who is obviously an intellecutally oriented person.
Each of them will have a different sense of what has quality because they
represent various levels of development. For someone like Lila, intellectual
concepts don't really register. They are beyond her. I picture her as
somebody like Anna Nicole Smith. (Personally, I think she's disgusting and
my heart goes out to her as it would to a cancer patient. She's a sick
person.)
RICK said:
Here we can see that Pirsig was not saying "Static patterns can't perceive
or adjust to DQ". Rather, he was saying that social and intellectual
patterns can't by themselves perceive or adjust to DQ (which is why he
thinks society should preserve as many living beings as possible). Why is
this? Because after the rise of the biological level, *life* became the
primary vehicle for DQ.
dmb says:
I'd quibble here too, and for the same basic reason. I'd say all static
patterns can respond to DQ, BUT ONLY ON THEIR OWN LEVEL. Atoms and molecules
can respond at the inorganic level, but biology, society and intellect is
beyond an atom's abilities. The higher levels just don't register. The laws
of physics seem totally static, and they certainly are more static than the
higher levels, but we can be fairly confident that the "physical" universe
evolved to its present state and, on a quantum level, we can see that even
at this first level there is a certain amount of choice. Likewise,
biological evolution is still going on even as we speak (The SARS virus, for
example). This second level is more dynamic than the first, and likewise we
can see that social evolution move at much faster rate than biological
changes. And the reason, clearly, that social and intellectual changes can
only occur through living humans, is that such values are beyond all rocks
and animals and everything, except for people. Only people can perceive the
3rd and 4th levels of static quality. Dirt doesn't know or care about sex.
Animals don't know or care about righteousness. Socially dominated people
like fundamentalists and fascists, to take an extreme example, not only
don't care about or understand intellectual level values, they are often
hostile to such values. (Pirsig describes Hitler's main motivation as an
extreme hatred of intellectual people and things.)
Make sense? I hope so.
DMB
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