In a message dated 1/27/00 7:45:37 AM Pacific Standard Time, beasley@qld.cc
writes:
> Xcto and others,
> It seems to be my fate to be misunderstood on this topic. No - I am not
> arguing that art resides in objects. You say that my "pursuit of beauty and
vitality is a
> pursuit of ideas." It's enough to make me cry.
I don't believe I misunderstood you, but in order to put the High Quality of
direct experience in perspective to SOM values, it will always devalue the
Quality of the experience. Thus, anytime we talk about it analytically, it
is the degenerate activity of making DQ more static.
> Let's try to clarify. When I write about art I am condemned to use words
and
> ideas to communicate. "Beauty" is a word, and so in that sense an idea.
"Beauty" is
> also, fundamentally, an encounter, an experience. (I would also go along
with the
> terms 'a dynamic quality encounter', if that helps.) Art History, Art
Criticism, and so on,
> are intellectual explorations of art, but they (and all ideas about art)
are to art as static
> is to dynamic.
I absolutely agree, and Pirsig talks about this too. It's all
Philosophology...
> My argument is that Pirsig is good at talking about ideas, and very poor
at
> encounter, at dialogue, whether with people or art. As I said before,
"Which is not to say
> that ideas about art are not valid in their own context, just that they are
not art."
>
> So where does art reside? It resides in the encounter between the human
> being, and the object/sounds/words/etc created by another human being, the
actual
> encounter being a direct experience marked by dynamic quality. Where the
person
> wishes to discuss the object of this encounter, he resorts to use of words
drawn from
> the mythos, the language in which he swims. So ideas are dragged in.
> I can relate to an ancient stone carving from Papua New Guinea, the
creator
> of which is totally unknown, the culture of that creator almost equally
unknown. My
> experience is my testof the artistic quality of this piece of stone. I
cannot and do not
> know what ideas the artist had, or why he produced this work. It doesn't
matter. I
> encounter beauty in my experience. I can assume a common humanity with the
long >
>dead creator of the sculpture, based on our shared needs as human beings.
This is >where Fromm's words are so significant,for he looks to the
essential, basic needs of all >humans, which are independant of the set of
wants promoted by our society. In this >sense art is, like intelligence, one
of the few experiences which allow us as individuals >to rise above and
critique our own mythos. Art is one of the fundamentals, in that sense. >It
is the encounter with non-ideational quality,quality that is just
experienced, but, >importantly, quality that is derived from HUMAN input and
effort. The artist
> performs the near impossible task of bringing into existence creations
which embody
> harmony, flow, balance, economy, and so on. Listing the words only hints
at
> what is there. That is why words about art are never adequate to represent
art, and why >my pursuit of 'beauty' and 'vitality' are not the pursuit of
ideas, heaven help us, but
> these ideas are the inadequate static response to an encounter which is
outside the >realm of words and ideas.
>
> Enough. If you can't grasp the difference then more words will not help.
>
> John B
>
This is where I feel the line must be drawn between you and me. If we can't
agree here, we must always disagree :( But I must say that there is no
difference between your view of beauty held in the stone carving than that of
anyone's view of beauty to any art object excepting only YOUR 'idea(l)s'
about what beauty is. I believe that you want to put certain "qualities" of
life outside our "mundane" existence. The magic you are seeking really
exists, but I believe you mistake the problem in the MOQ when it is actually
in the SOM world which demands an objective explanation as proof for
existance. It's the most inherent Prinicple of SOM thought that makes the
SOM truly evil (caveat: to me).
Remember those same words of harmony, flow, etc apply to many peoples idea of
great mathematical proofs. Pirsig uses essentially the same terms of the
values of science.
John B., you are swimming in quality and value, but your idea of beauty only
exist in you . The dirt that might have buried the stone carving see the
carving as just another piece of stone, no different than any other.
Animals, might see something a bit differently, but only you as a human being
can receive a value experience pertaining to the HUMAN input. Much of the
'beauty' of Zen can be traced in the search of for 'no mind.' I believe it
is a connection to the 'beauty' of seeing thinks without the HUMAN input
which you speak. You see, I also see no difference between looking at a
beautiful work of art and looking at a beautiful view off a mountain cliff,
excepting THE HUMAN INPUT. But I don't see how you can disagree that the
beauty of Angel Falls, Venezuela does not emote a response from the same
place within you as your notion of "beauty." It's just one depends on the
Human input and one does not.
I believe in the idea that Quality makes us. In the same way I say Man does
not make God, but God makes Man, but not in the literal sense. Our values
about spirituality causes us to be a certain way; our values about God makes
us behave in a certain way (in a general sense, not in the sense of free will
in a given moral situation- that's a different DQ situation). Furthermore
our ideas of what is 'beauty' will always make us see the beauty,
preconceptually, to our set of values. Our static Quality blinds us to some
avenues of Dynamic Quality. It's the same thing as how a eye/ear/throat
doctor will say a headache is caused by a sinus problem, a chiropractor will
say the headache is caused by a back problem, and a podiatrist will recommend
a different pair of shoes. MOQ tells us to use the solution that works...
I think the problem between you and me, John B., is that when I talk about
the IDEAS and am holding the Intellect in my mind, I am separating it from
reality for examination. Your view on what is beauty necessitates a
connection between the Idea and the Object with the experience. But when you
discuss it you have to take them apart. The whole of Pirsig is to reunite
it and put the Idea-and-Object-with-the-Experience back into the discussion,
into philosophy.
Is it Horse or Roger that always reminds us how we exist in all four levels?
But we must remember that our ideas of 'beauty' and ''virtue' are pretty much
exclusively human terms.
We change our paradigm to fit the argument and thus, I must admit my paradigm
about art was limited to mostly Intellectualism, but it does include you
John. But I'm too square, I got to get with it and groove with you...
There's a lot of talk about freewill, and how how 'B values precondition A'
or we 'prefer' a certain choice. I think that whatever the freewill that an
electron has does not have as many choces as we do when we choose what kind
of ice cream we want. It's not where our choices are going, it's rather the
fact that we are going away from just a few choices to situations with many,
many, many choices. Philosophies of Top to Bottom, Bottom to Top...the
situation is really neither; quality is evolving to the most freedom, through
a stable static foundation of parts. But hey, I'm not that great of a
philosopher, so I don't know enough about it to argue.
xcto
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:18 BST