Rog, all
You asked SK:
> Adding a purpose or goal doesn't add anything to the theory. Does it? What?
Or: Does adding a purpose or goal to a theory make any real difference?
Well I guess if it makes the theory more closely align with and predict
experience, then Yes, it does. Pirsig suggests that this goal is
EVOLVING higher levels of stable patterns of value which provide greater
FREEDOM from the constraints or limits of lower level patterns.
Which is a perfect intro to re-post a group of Pirsig's quotes on the
subject of FREEDOM that I compiled some years ago:
Enjoy,
3WD
*****************************************************************
MoF's
The following are quote with the "F" word as it appears in my November
1991 issue of the "Lila" Bantam hardback (emphasis is mine). Not sure
it's all of them but probably most.
******************************************************************
"There'd been times when an urge surface to take the slips...and file
them into the door of the coal stove... Then it would all be gone and he
would be really FREE again. Except that he wouldn't be FREE. It would
still be in his mind to do. p 24
Ten Bear speech:
"I was born on the prairie, where the wind blew FREE, and there was
nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no
enclosures, and where everything drew a FREE breath." p 41
"FREEDOM" "That was the topic that would drive home this whole
understanding of Indians. Of all the topics on Indians covered FREEDOM
was more important.
"And as Phaedrus' studies got deeper and deeper he saw that it was to this
conflict between European and Indian values, between FREEDOM and order,
that his study should be directed." p 48
"It was the moral force that had motivated the brujo in Zuni. It
contains not pattern of fixed rewards and punishments. Its only
perceived good is FREEDOM and its only fixed evil is static quality
itself -any pattern of one-sided fixed values that tries to contain and
kill the ongoing FREE force of life." P115
Although Dynamic quality, the Quality of FREEDOM, creates this world in
which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order,
preserve out world. Neither static or Dynamic Quality can survive
without the other." Lila-pp 121
It was a vehicle they could steer to all sorts of FREEDOM by selecting
first one bonding preference and then another in an almost unlimited
variety of ways." p146
But in a value centered explanation of evolution they are close to
dynamic process itself, pulling the pattern of life forward to greater
levels of versatility and FREEDOM." p147
A third puzzle illuminated by the Metaphysics of Quality is the ancient
"FREE will vs determinism controversy." Determinism is the philosophic
doctrine that man , like all other objects in the universe, follows
fixed scientific laws, and does so without exception. FREE will is the
philosophic doctrine that make choices independent of the atoms of his
body." P 155
"If the belief in FREE will is abandoned, morality must seemingly also
be abandoned under a subject -object metaphysics." P155
"But to the extent that one follow Dynamic Quality which is undefinable,
one's behavior is FREE." p156
"Because a value center Metaphysics of Quality is not tied to substance
it is FREE to consider moral issues at higher evolutionary levels than
germs and fruits and vegetables." P160
"It must have been on his way to India. Breaking out of this whole
system. Running to get FREE." p215
"When they call it FREEDOM, that's not right. "FREEDOM "doesn't mean
anything. FREEDOM'S just an escape from something negative. The real
reason it's so hallowed is that when people talk about it they mean
Dynamic Quality." p 220
"On the other hand the conservatives who keep trumpeting about virtues
of FREE enterprise are normally just supporting their own self -
interest." P 221
"A FREE market is a Dynamic institution." p221
"The Metaphysics of Quality says the FREE market makes everybody richer
by preventing static economic patterns from setting in stagnating
economic growth" P 221
"What makes the FREE enterprise system superior is that the socialists,
reasoning intelligently and objectively, have inadvertently closed the
door to Dynamic Quality." p221
" People, like everything else, works better in parallel then they do in
series, and that is what happens in this FREE enterprise city." P221
"This creates the problem of getting the maximum FREEDOM for the
emergence of Dynamic Quality while prohibiting the degeneracy from
destroying the evolutionary gains of the past. Americans like to talk
about all their FREEDOM but they think it's disconnected from something
the Europeans often see in America: the degeneracy that goes with the
Dynamic." P223
"FREEDOMS that save the saviors also save the degenerates..." pg. 224
" But suppose it flew up for the balcony so high it got FREE of the
light of the city and saw the moon and began to fly straight. Would that
make releasing it moral?" P264
" It was presented as a fight for academic FREEDOM, but battles of that
sort had been going on for centuries without the kind of attention he
scopes trial got." p273
"Of all the "vices" none was more controversial that premarital and
extramarital sex. There was no depravity the Victorians condemned more
vehemently and no FREEDOM the new intellectuals have defended more
ardently." P279
" If you open the door to premarital sex you simply allow FREEDOM that
does nobody any harm." P 279
"The moral values that were replacing the old European Victorian ones
were the moral values of American Indians: kindness to children, maximum
FREEDOM, openness of speech, love of simplicity, affinity for nature." P 280
"What's good is FREEDOM from domination by any static pattern, but that
FREEDOM doesn't have to be obtained by the destruction of the patterns
themselves." P301
"This was not any new paradise the intellectuals of the twentieth
century were trying to achieve by FREEDOM from Victorian restraints.
This was something else that had blown up in their faces." P301
" By the end of the sixties the intellectualism of the twenties found
itself in an impossible trap. If it continued to advocate more FREEDOM
all it would get is more Hippies, who were really just carrying its
anti-Victorianism to an extreme." P302
"The great intellectual revolution of the first half of the twentieth
century ... was killed, hoist on its own petard of FREEDOM from social
restraint." pg. 303
"The idea that, " man is born FREE but is everywhere in chains" was
never true."
"There are no chains more vicious that the chains of biological
necessity into which every child is born. Society exists primarily to
FREE people from these biological chains." 307
" Today we are living in an intellectual and technological paradise and
a moral and social nightmare because the intellectual level of
evolution, in its struggle to become FREE of the social level, has
ignored the social level's role in keeping the biological level under
control." 308
"We must understand that when a society undermines intellectual FREEDOM
for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, but when it represses
biological freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally good."
P 309
"He remembered a metaphor that had occurred to him of a bug that had
been crawling around in some smelly sock all his life and now someone or
something had turned the sock inside out. The terrain he covered, the
details of his life, were all the same, but now somehow everything seem
open and FREE and all the horrible confining smell of everything was
gone." P320
" Another metaphor that had occurred to him was that he'd been on a
tightrope all his life. Now he'd fallen off and found that instead of
crashing he was flying, a strange new talent he never knew he had......
He was FREE of a static pattern of life he thought was unchangeable." P320
"During Phaedrus' time of insanity when he wandered FREELY outside the
limits of cultural reality,.." P339
"But they're not being contrary in a way that is just decadent. They're
way to energetic and aggressive to be decadent. They're fight for some
kind of Dynamic FREEDOM from the static patterns. But the Dynamic
FREEDOM they're fighting for is a kind of morality too." P359
" Both lunatics and mystics have FREED themselves from the conventional
static intellectual patterns of the culture." P373
" The explanation for this contradiction is the belief that you do not
FREE yourself from static patterns by fighting them with other static
patterns.... You FREE yourself from static patterns by putting them to
sleep." P385
"Lila problem wasn't that she was suffering from a lack of Dynamic
FREEDOM. It's hard to see how she could possibly have any more FREEDOM.
What she need now were some stable patterns to encase that FREEDOM." P386
" On the other hand, Phaedrus supposed, when you're the receiving end of
some karma dump like that is sets you FREE." P399
" Because everybody gets what he wants: the voice said. "Lila get her
precious Richard Rigel, Rigel gets his precious self-righteousness, you
get your precious Dynamic FREEDOM, and I get to go swimming." p 403
He stood on a mound of sand besides some juniper bushes and said, "
Ahhhh! He threw out his arms. FREE ! No idols, no Lila, no Rigel, no New
York, no more America even. just FREE ! P406
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:29 BST