From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jul 18 2003 - 05:10:50 BST
Hi Matt,
>Johnny said:
>To harmonize or be beautiful, something has to be there for it to harmonize
>with -static patterns.
>
>Rick said:
>Agreed. Sometimes art is better when it conforms to our expectations (ie.
>"that dialogue sounded so real, that's just how I'd expect real people to
>talk"). On the other hand, we usually walk away disappointed when an
>artistic creation completely conforms to our expectations (ie. "that movie
>was so predictable, there wasn't one twist I didn't expect". It's about a
>balance of static and dynamic elements, a harmony of the expected and the
>unexpected.
>
>Johnny said:
>That balance of Dynamic and Static you refer to is a certain expected
>balance, there is a static pattern of how much to 'twist' a movie plot to
>make it fresh but familiar. The changes may seem like changes, but they
>are really just static patterns carrying forward and interacting with other
>patterns in expected ways.
>
>Matt:
>To me, this looks like subsuming DQ under static patterns, making it static
>patterns all they down--and all the way up.
Yes! All the way down to the first static pattern, the Word. I've been
saying that the word is Morality, or Expectation - that dual meaning of
being expected and moral in a probability sense, and also in a Good sense.
Of each half deriving it's meaning from the other half and depending on the
other half to maintain it's own existence. DQ is an illusion, brought on by
our own existence as patterns within the whole of morality.
Matt:
If history were simply a matter of static pattern forming in expected ways,
I expect that we could come up with a science of history and predict the
ways static patterns will form.
Why would you expect that? We've never done it before, have we?
Matt:
This is the dead end that Marx led us down, the hypostatization of
History.
Please explain this some more - what does hypostatizazisninination mean?
Why was it a dead end? Is Marx cool, or what?
Matt:
Rather than saying it's static patterns "carrying forward and interacting
with other patterns in expected ways," I would say it's static patterns
carrying forward and interacting with other patterns in _un_expected ways.
Well, sure, sometimes, and to us. But the goodness is carrying forward in
the expected way, in expanding the point, rather than dispersing it. None
of us know everything, so we can't predict anything perfectly, let alone
everything. Would you expect us to be able to? But intersubjectively, by
sharing our knowledge and immersing ourselves in culture, we build up great
patterns of truth and matter and everything that is true and matters, of
which we are individually only aware of our subjective portion. But that
allows for unexpected things to happen to us.
Matt:
You have the "static patterns carrying forward and interacting with other
patterns" bit down, because if the future weren't our static patterns
carrying forward in some manner, we wouldn't identify the future as being
our future. A utopic vision of the future is one in which our patterns are
carryed forward, but there's no way to predict what this will pan out to be.
That's what DQ is. Dynamic Quality is the unexpected burst of beauty,
though according to convention it shouldn't be there.
That's a nice way to define DQ, but I think we shouldn't equate any and all
unexpected change with beauty, and if we don't attribute that less beautiful
kind of change to DQ, what do we attribute it to? I just feel that that is
a nice cheer-leading chant to have, go DQ go DQ, and it is necessary and
moral to associate change with beauty, but only if we associate beauty with
static patterns first.
DQ to me is the force that sums all our expectations (it gave them to us in
the first place) and carries the patterns forward in the way that maximizes
satisfaction from individual expectations being realized (over the long
haul, not at every moment, thus lunatics can't be satisfied by expecting to
fly or something strange like that), which results in the most enlarged
point, the hugest mass of patterns all expected by consciousness.
Matt:
And because it shouldn't be there according to convention, we can't
explain other than in retrospection, a post hoc rationalization. This ad
hoc explanation is tuned to the particular instance of Dynamic Quality.
What is a dead end is if we try to go transcendental and try and set an
explanation of what all breaks with convention will look like. That's what
I take the hypostatization of History to be: an attempt to outflank DQ and
call it all convention, static patterns. That's why DQ is undefined. It
only unfolds in history, leaving behind it waves of static patterns.
>
>Matt
OK, I went and looked up "hypostatize" (It means "to attribute real
identity to.") Do you think I trying to "go transendental" by asserting
that history was real? History in general?!? Not merely our
intersubjective agreements and personal recollections of it, but history in
general? I don't believe there are any gaps or holes in history, or has
there been or will there ever be any time when one part of the universe is
not in real relation to every other part. Is it not history that I have
been sitting in a couch typing a post for five minutes?
I do call it "all static patterns", but I don't claim to trancendentally
know them all myself, I don't have an explanation of what all breaks with
convention will look like. I expect that I know very few of them. To
create this "DQ" thing, apart from history, is to ignore future
responsibility, it is bad Karma. It creates a fairy that steps in and
provides beauty beyond our expectations. Or at least a personification, or
deification, of that aspect of our life that we like. I think that removes
us from history and passes the buck to DQ to ride to the rescue. You know
we can't remove ourselves from history. History was real and the present is
real, I don't see why it is better to not say that. What creates existence
is believing that things are real.
Am I over-reacting? Missing your point?
Johnny
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