BODVAR, THE CLARKS, MARY and any interested Pirsigers:
BO: As I read your Dec. 30 post, our disagreement seemed to melt away. I
had just one remaining objection; The claim that Pirsig's fourth level
(intellectual) is equal to Subject/Object metaphysics. But then you said
you "had a small epiphiny" and now doubt that view!?! Cool! That's what
good conversation is all about! That's happened to me before and it's
the reason I love this kind of debate.
It's a subtle, but crucial difference. The intellectual level is NOT
exactly the same as SOM. For example, Pirsig's books are full of
thoughts that are, the author hopes, not within SOM. I'd argue that all
genuine Mysticisms are also outside of SOM and that's why the author
uses them to help explain the MOQ. In short the author believes that the
intellect can handle metaphysical systems other than SOM. Its just that
the SOM has become so dominant that we tend to equate it with not only
the intellect, as you formerly believed, but with reality itself.
KEN: I liked your explaination for the "big bang" in terms of the
evolution of Quality. But I think that undefinable Quality doesn't
itself evolve so much as cause evolution. You totally forgot to mention
static quality. Quality is behind it all, but what we see in the
universe are the static patterns of value. Even the early hot gases are
static enough to have fomed into atoms. Even the subatomic constituents
have enough "form" to be considered static patterns.
KEN asked, "wouldn't it be nice if we could agree on a definition of
mysticism?
I don't know how to respond to Ken's definition of mysticism cause i
didn't understand it. I say we gotta go with Pirsig's definition of
mysticism. I've taken Mary's advice and dusted off my copy of Lila. Its
filled with mysticism. Pirsig uses the concept frequently and goes along
way toward explaining it's relevance to the MOQ. Please let my response
to MARY serve as an example of what I mean.
MARY: I looked up the Lila quotes you used in your objection to my
equating the MOQ with mysticism. (Although I have a hardback edition
with different pages and had to read for hours to find them.) I'm just
going to type in a few lines from the book so you can see your quotes in
context.
"The Metaphysics of Quality associates religious mysticism with Dynamic
Quality but it would certainly be a mistake to think that the MOQ
endorses the static beliefs of any particular religious sect. Phaedrus
thought sectarian religion was a static social fallout from DQ and that
while some sects had fallen less than others, none of them told the
whole truth. ... From what Phaedrus had been able to observe, mystics
and priests tend to have a cat-and-dog-like coexistence within every
religious organization. Both groups need each other but neither group
likes the other at all. There's an adage that, "Nothing disturbs a
bishop quite so much as the presennce of a saint in the parish." It was
one of Phaedrus favorites. The saint's Dynamic understanding makes him
unpredictable and uncontrollable, but the bishop's got a whole calendar
of static ceremonies to attend to;.. It can take the bishops years,
decades, even centuries to put down the hell that a saint can raise in a
single day. Joan of Arc is the prime example." (P. 376-377 Bantam HB
Lila)
"A subject-object metaphysics presumes that this kind of Dynamic action
without thought is rare and ignores when possible. (Pirsig had just
given and is refering to the hot stove example.) But mystic learning
goes in the opposite direction and tries to hold on to the ongoing
Dynamic edge of all experience, both positive and negative, even the
ongoing Dynamic edge of thought itself. Phaedrus thought that of the two
kinds of students, those who study only subject-object science and those
who study only meditative mysticism, it would be the mystic students who
would get off the stove first. The purpose of mystic meditation is not
to remove oneself from experience but to bring one's self closer to it
by eliminating stale, confusing, static, intellectual attachments of the
past." (P.116 Bantam HB Lila)
I swear I didn't change a word. You can see clearly that relgion and
mysticism are not the same things in Pirsig's view. Elsewhere he says
priests are just clerks for the mystics, or something like that. In
short, religions are static and mysticisms are Dynamic.
SUGGESTED TOPIC: "What is the meaning or point of the story of the Zuni
social change described at the beginning of chapter nine?" We could
spent a month trying to answer this question. It would help us stick
close to Lila and further our discussion of the top two levels, and the
static versus Dynamic debate at those levels. Just my two cents before a
decision is made. Who decides, by the way?
David B.
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