From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Wed Dec 17 2003 - 12:52:00 GMT
Hi all, especially Bo
This post is a response to Bo’s assertion that his SOLAQI fits better
with Pirsig’s previous writing than the definitions given in Lila’s
Child and correspondence, particularly Pirsig’s statement that the MOQ
is also an intellectual pattern.
This post is simply a series of excerpts from ZMM and one from Lila
which require no commentary from me other than to say that rationality
is clearly part of the intellectual level and that SOM is described here
as traditional, conventional rationality. I think this series of quotes
show that Pirsig conceived of the MOQ as a "root expansion" of
rationality and, as such, is also part of the intellectual level.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Phædrus spent his entire life pursuing a ghost. That was true. The
ghost he pursued was the ghost that underlies all of technology, all of
modern science, all of Western thought. It was the ghost of rationality
itself."
"To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as "the
system" is to speak correctly, since these organizations are founded
upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a motorcycle. They
are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all
other meaning and purpose."
"But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to
avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects
rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no
change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present
construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a
factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left
standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If
a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic
patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then
those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government.
There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding."
"Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a
better world. They are taking it further and further from that better
world. Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As long as the
need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to
work. But now that for huge masses of people these needs no longer
overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to
us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for
what it really is...emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and
spiritually empty."
"One can see how both the informal and formal processes of hypothesis,
experiment, conclusion, century after century, repeated with new
material, have built up the hierarchies of thought which have eliminated
most of the enemies of primitive man. To some extent the romantic
condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of
rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions. It's such a
powerful, all-dominating agent of civilized man it's all but shut out
everything else and now dominates man himself. That's the source of the
complaint."
"What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the belief that the
crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to
cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational means because
the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones
who're solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning
'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John
and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a
wrong direction too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the
solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you
expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with
a solution."
"We're living in topsy-turvy times, and I think that what causes the
topsy-turvy feeling is inadequacy of old forms of thought to deal with
new experiences. I've heard it said that the only real learning results
from hang-ups, where instead of expanding the branches of what you
already know, you have to stop and drift laterally for a while until you
come across something that allows you to expand the roots of what you
already know. Everyone's familiar with that. I think the same thing
occurs with whole civilizations when expansion's needed at the roots."
"The whole Renaissance is supposed to have resulted from the topsy-turvy
feeling caused by Columbus' discovery of a new world. It just shook
people up. The topsy-turviness of that time is recorded everywhere.
There was nothing in the flat-earth views of the Old and New Testaments
that predicted it. Yet people couldn't deny it. The only way they could
assimilate it was to abandon the entire medieval outlook and enter into
a new expansion of reason."
"Columbus has become such a schoolbook stereotype it's almost impossible
to imagine him as a living human being anymore. But if you really try to
hold back your present knowledge about the consequences of his trip and
project yourself into his situation, then sometimes you can begin to see
that our present moon exploration must be like a tea party compared to
what he went through. Moon exploration doesn't involve real root
expansions of thought. We've no reason to doubt that existing forms of
thought are adequate to handle it. It's really just a branch extension
of what Columbus did. A really new exploration, one that would look to
us today the way the world looked to Columbus, would have to be in an
entirely new direction."
"Like into realms beyond reason. I think present-day reason is an
analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far
beyond it you're presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are
very much afraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to
the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the
fear of heretics. There's a very close analogue there."
"But what's happening is that each year our old flat earth of
conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the
experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings of
topsy-turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people in
irrational areas of thought...occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the
like...because they feel the inadequacy of classical reason to handle
what they know are real experiences."
"Analytic reason, dialectic reason. Reason which at the University is
sometimes considered to be the whole of understanding. You've never had
to understand it really. It's always been completely bankrupt with
regard to abstract art. Nonrepresentative art is one of the root
experiences I'm talking about. Some people still condemn it because it
doesn't make 'sense.' But what's really wrong is not the art but the
'sense,' the classical reason, which can't grasp it. People keep looking
for branch extensions of reason that will cover art's more recent
occurrences, but the answers aren't in the branches, they're at the
roots."
"A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason,
and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature
study of the art of rationality itself."
"Now I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be
tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through the
formal recognition of Quality in its operation."
"It's long past time to take a closer look at this qualitative
preselection of facts which has seemed so scrupulously ignored by those
who make so much of these facts after they are "observed." I think that
it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in
the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all. It
expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific
practice."
"I think the basic fault that underlies the problem of stuckness is
traditional rationality's insistence upon "objectivity," a doctrine that
there is a divided reality of subject and object. For true science to
take place these must be rigidly separate from each other."
"When traditional rationality divides the world into subjects and
objects it shuts out Quality, and when you're really stuck it's Quality,
not any subjects or objects, that tells you where you ought to go."
"Phædrus went a different path from the idea of individual, personal
Quality decisions. I think it was a wrong one, but perhaps if I were in
his circumstances I would go his way too. He felt that the solution
started with a new philosophy, or he saw it as even broader than
that...a new spiritual rationality...in which the ugliness and the
loneliness and the spiritual blankness of dualistic technological reason
would become illogical. Reason was no longer to be "value free." Reason
was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality."
"The Metaphysics of Quality says that science's empirical rejection of
biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it is also
morally correct because the intellectual patterns of science are of a
higher evolutionary order than the old biological and social patterns.
But the Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the
value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious
one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one-is
another matter altogether. Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than
static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of
science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for church
authorities to suppress scientific method. Dynamic value is an integral
part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself."
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