As I read John Beasley's interesting essay, "Creating an Organismic
MOQ", I had a thought about one aspect of his analysis of Pirsig's
philosophy. While I agree with many of his points, and in particular
felt his re-wording of some of Pirsig's overly broad and bold assertions
is helpful, I was troubled by the following, quoted from Beasley's essay
(from the discussion of "Stand 9"):
"What Pirsig has done is to confuse the value of immediate experience in
which the dynamic is encountered, which he fails to see is at the
biological level, with the broader types of quality which are
encountered at the social and intellectual/artistic levels. He then
wriggles on a hook of his own making, trying to assert that intellectual
quality is superior to social and biological quality, yet recognizing
that the intellect is a static form of quality because it is always
removed from the immediacy of experience."
My thoughts:
I don't believe the intellectual experience is always static. It is
static by the time it is communicated, because to communicate it we must
put words to it, which confine the meaning of the dynamic intellectual
experience, but the experience of a new idea (new for the person having
it, at least) is to me a dynamic, not a static, experience. I believe
it is also an intellectual experience, not an inorganic, biological, or
social experience. A "flash of insight" to me is hardly a static
experience at the moment it occurs. Therefore I don't agree with
Beasley's assertion that "the dynamic...is at the biological level" with
intellectual/artistic levels being relegated to some undefined "broader"
type of quality. Dynamic quality, in my opinion and experience, can
occur at any level (at least in the biological, social and intellectual
levels that "I" can possibly lay some claim to having experienced (I'm
not sure I've ever had direct "experience" at the inorganic level)).
Gregg Baker
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