Hi everyone.
With much trepidation I dare to add a few thoughts on the question of
good and evil.
Platt wrote:
>
>That's about as clear as it can be. Dynamic Quality is good, static quality
>that tries to kill the free force of live is evil. Life is good, death is evil.
>
and
>I think if we shy away from loudly proclaiming that the Metaphysics of
>Quality is about morality--good and evil, right and wrong--we do
>monumental disservice not only to Pirsig but to ourselves. The MoQ is not
>just another wishy-washy, feel good, Zen-posturing grab bag of New Age
>philogism. It says this is a moral universe, a universe whose fundamental
>being is Quality--"the principle of rightness which gives structure and
>purpose to the evolution all life."
>
Can anyone point to anything in Lila which changes Pirsig's recognition
in ZMM (p. 246) that (Dynamic) Quality is another way of attempting to
put in to words that of which Lao Tzu talks in the Tao Te Ching ?
"When everyone knows good as goodness, there is already evil."
Good and evil are inextricably intertwined. Once you start to see that a
lot of things fall in to place. Such a view does not imply dualism but
rather allows for complementarity as discussed in Pirsig's '95 paper
"Subjects, Objects, data and Values".
When musing on such concepts I have found the writings of Alan Watts has
much to offer:
"The yin-yang principle is not, therefore, what we would ordinarily call
a dualism, but rather an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity."
- Tao the Watercourse Way
Accepting that there can be no good without 'mutually arising' evil has
sometimes been misinterpreted as encouraging "do as you will shall be
the whole of the law" degeneracy.
Perhaps we should think of the 'good' man as one who instinctively or
unconsciously does the right ('Rta') thing.
--+-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Pete Fisher at Home: Peter@psfisher.demon.co.uk | | "Do not adjust your mind - there is a fault in the reality" | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
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