Good morning people, I just got up, until the day before yesterday turning
Pirsig's insights into a working model, which one could live by, was a
private activity which I am engaged in for the last 6-7 years. My first
apology is that what I may say will sound rigid, the second is that Hebrew
is my first language so my English will be rusty [this has a good side to
it, because if language has its own immune system, hence objecting to new
ideas, so one can tolerate it more from a non English speaker]
To the point:
In Tao Te Ching the first sentence goes: "The Tao that can be named is not
the real Tao". The whole book is a formulation of things that cannot be
formulated. Tao= DQ, which cannot be formulated, but can be grasped [what I
call the AHA effect] as the ability of experiencing quality in the moment
only. The formulation is a SPQ [Static Pattern of Quality]. All our body of
knowledge is made of SPQ's and
structures of SPQ's.
Knowing that "they have a life of their own", that they have a life span,
gives us the permission to treat them in a tentative way, namely, as long as
we sense quality through them. This goes well with two giants of thought of
the beginings of this century.
Karl Popper and Hans Vahinger. Regarding the tentativity of scientific
theories [Popper], namely having them as something to refute [discarding
them once they stop to carry quality]. Regarding the life of an idea
[Vahinger], it's movement
from the hypothetical to the dogmatic and from there to the fictive. If I
may translate Vahinger thoughts, then I would say that in the hypothetical
stage the idea or DQ gets formulated into a SPQ, in the dogmatic stage it is
used "as if" it is true [the quality of the SPQ is checked by applying the
theory in real life], and in the fictive stage it is still used after the
theory was refuted, "as if" it is still true, incertain cases [where the SPQ
still holds it's quality].
So we can say [using Zen lingo again] that the SPQ is the finger pointing to
the moon, while the moon is DQ, and the SPQ lives as long as there is a moon
to be pointed at, at that particular direction.
As a matter of fact, Pirsig's books as such is a heap of such SPQ's too, and
should,
in my modest opinion, to be treated as such.
We could see the constant movement between SPQ > DQ >SPQ as a sway.
Suggesting these two states are necessary but not satisfactory conditions.
The fact that it isn't satisfactory, creates the movement between the
states, the necessary side keeps the two possibilities there. What the SPQ
lacks is the ability to adjust itself to contain new situations the dynamic
side, and what DQ is
lacking is the specifics, the ability to understand the specific situation
in its details, hence the formulation of it, hence the static side.
This constant sway between SPQ > DQ > SPQ, is in my eyes, an answer to your
question.
and don't forget to be gentle
Avid
icq 6598359
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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