Lars Marius Garshol (larsga@ifi.uio.no)
Fri, 22 Aug 1997 20:54:13 +0100
Hello, everybody! It's great to finally find other people interested in
Pirsig and I'm really looking forward to discussing MoQ with you. I had a
brief discussion with Bodvar earlier this year and had planned to invite him
to join this list, but that now seems unnessecary. :-)
Bodvar Skutvik wrote:
>
>Jason referred to Renselle for hinting to a new level above
>Intellect.
>This is a very interesting point and in my view the MOQ allows for a never
>ending escalation of moralities, but the "ascending value" is dynamism
>itself at work and doesn't QUALIFY as a new static level.
Pirsig describes static quality as an agent that "works behind" the dynamic
forces and tries to preserve what they create. Using this idea on the levels
of quality seems to imply that 100 million years ago (during the reign of the
dinosaurs, long before the arrival of man (or even our ancestors, the great
apes)) there the levels of social and intellectual quality did not yet exist.
I'm less certain on whether it means that entirely different levels of quality
might have arisen in their place had the dinosaurs not died out.
I think this also means that the intellectual level is fairly young (about 2500
years) and that no further levels have yet appeared, although they almost
certainly will, if all goes well. This certainly agrees with what you've
written.
Also, with regard to the Quantum level: how would you argue that it is not part
of the Inorganic level?
> As to the vague borderline between the different static levels I would
>say that this doesn't endanger the Quality idea. According to it, the
>static patterns are - like waves - patterns in an underlying dynamic
>medium: different from other patterns but of the same "stuff". No one can
>tell where matter ends and life begins, or where an organism ends and a
>society starts (a body can be regarded as a society of cells), nor the
>difference between communal cooperation and cultural activities. Still, one
>recognizes it when one encounters the experience itself.
Would you say that the levels of quality are really continuous, and that
the levels are just terms applied to static quality by humans, but not really
present in that quality by itself?
>The "friendship" term (any other emotion for that matter) is a good example
>of the interplay: As sexual/erotic/etc attraction it is an Organic value,
>as love/loyalty/sympathy/etc it is a Social value, but as "Platonic"
>love/empathy/etc it is an Intellectual value.
A very good analysis! I'm most certainly buying this. :-)
--Lars M.
________________________________________________________________________
Lars Marius Garshol
"Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot", Bill Arnett
http://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsga/ http://birk105.studby.uio.no/
-- post message - mailto:skwok@spark.net.hk unsubscribe/queries - mailto:lilasquad@geocities.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:41:25 CEST