Roger, Bruce, Diana and Squad:
Roger scored big points with me for being a Coltrane fan, but I don't
think the CD analogy really works. It seems to me the recording is
totally static. It will play the same songs the same way every time.
There was a dynamic event when JC was actually playing and there's even
some dynamic quality in listening, whether its live or recorded. (If
you're listening well.) The disk itself and the machine it plays on need
to be static to work properly. The last thing we want are dynamic
machines.
Remember HAL, the dynamic computer in Kubrick's "2001"?
I was thinking that not even static forms can be copied exactly. I know
it seems strange in an age of mass production where everthing is
duplicated by the millions. How many billions of burgers has McDonald's
sold? But every "object" in the universe is unique, if only in a tiny
way. You know, like snowflakes. The copies made by our factories are
certainly good enough for all practicle purposes. We don't need a quanta
by quanta reproduction of a wing nut for it to be useful. But to
reproduce a human individual?
Present cloning technology is really little more than "building" an egg
from the materials supplied by nature.(Dynamic quality) We can't really
manufacture DNA, we just move it from one place to another. Even then,
the dividing cells usually have to be grown in a normal, inside-a-womb
kind of way. Current technology just "tricks" undifferentiated cells
into thinking they are a fertilized egg, so to speak.
Our full-grown instant clone would have to be so far advanced that it
seems impossible.
Did Pirsig use the painting analogy or did I hear it somewhere else?
Anyway, the idea is that every finished painting, even an original and
unique masterpiece is static. The dynamic event occurs in the act of
creation and again when an appreciative viewer sees it, but the canvas
and dried paint are static. The finished work of art is a static
representation of a quality event. It's what is left in the wake of
dynamic quality. Same goes for the CD and computer analogies.
I hope you've all noticed my attempts to deconstruct our thought
experiment, claiming that it is flawed with SOM assumptions of the self.
Bruce agreed with the deconstuction part, but also asked, "WHAT
POSITIVE ARGUMENTS HAVE YOU GOT FOR THE MOQ'S VERSION OF THE SELF?".
Ouch! What a great and tough question! I think Bodvar said a similar
question is really the heart of the issue.
I agree, it looks like the question that really cuts to the center of
the debate.
Seems like Pirsig turns to the East to inform his MOQ on the nature of
the self. You know, all the talk about Zen, karma, dharma and the
Sanskrit origins of "right" and "ritual". Its no accident that his
"jungle of patterns" and "culture of one" sound a little fuzzy and
unreal. In the East they maintain that there is no self, that the self
is an illusion that needs to be let go of in order to see the true
nature of reality. I think this idea specifically refers to what Pirsig
might call "letting go of static intellectual patterns" and experiencing
reality directly. Meditation is designed to facilitate this un-mediated
awareness. Like Diana said individuality is a useful, quality
perception, but I'm not sure if it is our ultimate nature. In the East,
and in mysticism, they say that all appearances of seperateness is also
an illusion. They say the true nature of reality is a seamless whole.
You know, to be at one with the universe and all that.
I can't help but think these ideas are very related to Pirsig's
insistance that it all about moving toward dynamic quality. There must
be the same mystical unity at the end of that movement toward DQ.
This is related to the claim that MOQ is a better and positve answer to
the problems with SOM. Pirsig says that unlike SOM, the MOQ makes
quality, value, morality and even religious mysticism verifiable. In SOM
all this kind of stuff is merely "subjective". In the MOQ this stuff is
not only verifiable, it is considered the "primary empirical reality".
I get a feeling that if there is a self at all, it isn't a noun. The
self is a verb. The self is at the cutting edge of reality and is the
interactions of all "your" static levels with each other, and with
Dynamic Quality? The idea that we only exist in a context ties in with
these same ideas, don't they? They're same kind of interactions that
created the entire universe, so i figure...? Help!? I know it sounds
very fuzzy, but really, words are not enough.
David
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
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