LS Dynamic and static quality

From: John and Ruth Beasley (beasley@internetnorth.com.au)
Date: Wed May 05 1999 - 20:52:42 BST


Roger, Diana, Greg and Squad,

I was delighted to read Diana's 'life drawing' post. This seems to me to be getting close to
what Pirsig is talking about as Dynamic quality, and it links with much that interests me in
working either as an artist or a therapist. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (in his books 'Creativity'
and 'Flow') calls this getting lost in the present creative moment "flow". He thinks creative
people spend more time in this state than their less creative peers. Diana uses the word
"stare" where I would talk about "attending". And my current interest in mysticism seems to
lead to the conclusion that IF there is any path to mystic experience it is through attending.

Greg raises the issue of the transition between static and dynamic quality. This is very
relevant. In Pirsig's story of the song on the radio, is only the first hearing dynamic? I think
not. He says of the second hearing "you get the same feeling again". At the third hearing "it
doesn't quite transform the whole room into something different but its really good." And so
on until it is just "a memory of something you were once crazy about." The clear implication is
that there can be degrees of dynamism, or better, that the dynamic element of experience
fades leaving a static good. A memory.

To Roger, subtituting "patterned" for static gives the unhelpful outcome of "patterned
patterns" in Pirsig's global statement that I was critiquing. In response to your little diagram
showing the evolution of life toward "new fresh undefined experience'', I basically agree with
you that "the true aesthetic continuum is undefinable and indivisible", but I would go further.
It is primary. The arrows go in the opposite direction. Matter does not move towards mind.
Mind, as it emerges from undefinable and indivisible experience, creates intellectual, social,
biological and physical categories, including the MOQ. In this I agree with Roger when he
says "DQ is the real terrain, and SQ is a conceptual map of this reality". The obvious
conclusion is that Dynamic quality is experiential, and is not something that fits within levels
lower than the biological. (That is, a stone cannot experience dynamic quality.) Static quality
requires mind for its creation, so will not emerge unless there are conscious beings to do the
work of creation. The whole universe is the creation of sentient beings, us, who construct the
meanings which we then use to pattern our existence. It is almost impossible to express a
concept such as this without mixing different levels of discourse, so I realize the messiness
this creates. I shall try to schematize what is an incredibly complex matter.

1 Living organisms exist in an experiential world. Their primary experience (dynamic quality)
is never value free. Effectively, we only notice what has the power to help or harm us. Our
brains are so constructed that we only sample the vast input of our senses, and ignore most.

2 While experience is undefinable, it can be 'captured' in memory, codified in language, and
manipulated by intelligence. The 'captured' experience is then the 'map'. It is always less
than the primary experience, lacking its dynamism, but can retain aspects of the value
attached to the original experience. When this occurs we have static quality. (Static quality is
not, then, a property of things, but is attributed to things by us.)

3 'Mapping' is valuable. It provides us with shortcuts to assist our operation in the world. Like
in driving a car, much of what we do can become routine, so our attention can be reserved
for those dynamic inputs that require immediate response. However, the very success of
mapping can become a problem. It intrudes on the purity of experience, dragging in aspects
of past experience which can distort and limit present primary experience. In individuals we
call this neurosis when inappropriate material from the past jeopardizes our ability to respond
freely to new experiences. Intellectualism often kills contact with dynamic experience.

4 Therapists act to liberate neurotics by encouraging them to attend to the present reality,
creating awareness, which is dynamic and powerful. Artists act to liberate observation by
attending to what is, allowing the contact with dynamic quality in the medium to operate in the
process of creation. Mystics act to liberate experience through attending to what is and
stilling the mental chatter which contains the static quality of their previous experience.

5 Metaphysics is system building in the intellectual realm derived from mapped experience.
It can easily become addictive, and must constantly be tested against dynamic reality if it is
not to become necrophilic (dead). It is valid insofar as it draws upon that aspect of dynamic
reality which we term 'intelligence', which is something we encounter outside of ourselves,
rather than just a property of our minds.

I'll leave it there for now. I have not tried to pull in the lower levels of Pirsig's hierarchy, which
would take lots more space and time than I have right now.

John B

MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org



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