From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Oct 01 2003 - 22:03:41 BST
Hi Steve, Scott,
> Platt said:
> > > Intellect (thinking) is not a response to DQ. Thinking is the
> > > patterning of pure experience (Quality) into static symbolic forms.
> > > What responds to DQ is not intellect but a vague sense of something
> > > better. One's initial reaction to great art (or getting off a hot
> > > stove) isn't intellectual. It's immediate, involuntary, instinctive,
> > > intuitive, visceral, spontaneous. Thinking about experience is
> > > secondary. Thinking about thinking is even further removed from DQ.
>
> Scott:
> > ????. Apparently, the fourth and highest level of SQ is the furthest
> > removed from DQ. Something's backwards.
>
> Steve:
> I agree with Scott that there is something wrong with saying "Thinking
> about experience is secondary. Thinking about thinking is even further
> removed from DQ." I don’t think that thinking about thinking can be
> thought of as further from DQ than thinking about a biological
> experience (as I’m thinking about thinking about thinking). Thinking is
> itself an experience just as is sitting on a hot stove. Experiences of
> any type can be dynamic or static. Thinking can be dynamic if one is a
> new line of thought rather than following well-established patterns of
> thought.
I agree that experience can be Dynamic or static. Quality is experience, and
Pirsig splits Quality into Dynamic Quality and static Quality. The reason for
any split of experience is so intellect can operate. Intellect depends on splits,
divisions and differentiations of one kind or another to function. What's
Dynamic is coming up with a new split as Pirsig did. That engendered a
"new line of thought." Without a new split, it's mostly "swishing old tea around
in your cup." Once in awhile someone comes along like a Darwin or an
Einstein and in a flash of response to DQ, creates a new line of thought.
> Platt also said in a different thread:
> "Thinking" isn't a Dynamic process. Thinking is a static intellectual
> process. DQ is not known by thinking. (Refer to how a baby 'knows' DQ in
> LILA, Chp. 9) You cannot think your way to experiencing DQ. As Pirsig
> points out, "Thought is not a path to reality," reflecting the mystic
> view. The response to harmony, the aesthetic response, is allied with
> DQ.
>
> Steve:
> Thought is not a path to reality because thoughts are already part of
> reality. You can’t get closer to or further from reality by thinking if
> reality is experience and if thoughts are experiences.
Reality is experience and experience consists of Dynamic Quality and
static Quality. If you agree with Pirsig that "Ideas are static in the
MOQ" (LC, Note 138), then thoughts alone can never take you to DQ,
i.e.,"full" reality. the reality of Quality. Thinking about thinking
about thinking takes you further and further away from Quality as
intellect gets more and more swallowed up by it's own endless pit of
infinite regress. Eventually, static intellect digs its own grave and
climbs in, shutting out Quality entirely.
Thanks,
Platt
"The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own
good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of
theirs, or impede their efforts to attain it." -- John Stuart Mill
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