LS Re: Conceptions of Dynamic Quality (was: Whats wrong with the SOM.)


Diana McPartlin (diana@asiantravel.com)
Mon, 23 Feb 1998 20:00:49 +0100


Hi Keith and Squad,

If you don't mind, I'll can deal with the question of defining Dynamic
Quality first. Yes Keith you are absolutely right Quality (and
especially DQ) is a concept that is beyond words. I don't think you'll
find anyone round here to argue with you about that, the very first
principle of Quality says

"Quality is reality. Quality is known to us as awareness. As such it is
impossible to define."

The question is, what's the next step?

As I see it, having realized the problem, there are two possibilities.
One is to take the Zen path of refusing to define anything,
avoiding the written word and basing everything on direct experience.
The other is to accept that words are limited but try and do the best we
can with them because they're all we've got.

In the Subjects, objects, data and values paper, Pirsig quotes
Heisenberg saying

"On cannot go entirely away from the old words because one has to talk
about something. So I could realize that I could not avoid using these
weak terms which we always have used for many years in order to describe
what I see. So I saw that in order to describe phenomena one needs a
language. The terms don't get hold of the phenomena, but still, to some
extent they do."

To say "conceptually unknown" and leave it at that is to say you don't
known anything about DQ. But that's not true. If you read through chp 9
of Lila, Pirsig uses lots of words to describe Dynamic Quality
(including "betterness"). He gives us examples of it, he describes its
attributes, what it does, what it feels like, and so on. He doesn't make
a precise definition because he can't, but still he uses words to point
us in the right direction.

Diana

 



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