Mfers
In my initial post I indicated that the art vs tech was a philosophical problem. To reiterate I
believe the problem was inadvertantly created by the evolution of Western Philosophy. In science,
technology, and particularly in art this led to the belief , as Raymond put it, that high quality
stuff is "carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working is splendid
isolation." This results in the perception (which experience tells me is a common one) that high
quality is a scarce commodity as evidenced by this Alfred North Whitehead comment:
"I am inclined to think that it is one of the permanent tragedies of life that the finer quality
doesn't prevail over the less fine."
Along comes Pirsig suggesting not only is quality ubiquitous, but that everything is evolving
towards higher, better, quality. Not only is this at odds Whitehead, but flies in the face of our
common perceptions. I chose "perception" as opposed to "experience" for two reasons. One, under the
MoQ, "experience" is closely related to DQ "the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality" and two
"perception" as a classic SOM word may well be a significant part of the problem. Marco's
"Artnology" post also points to this same perception problem. My Webster's defines perceive and
perception as:
perceive: 1 to grasp mentally; take note (of); observe 2 to become aware (of) through sight,
hearing, touch, taste, or smell.
perception: 1. a) the act of perceiving or the ability to perceive; mental grasp of objects,
qualities,etc. by means of the senses; awareness; comprehension. b) insight or intuition, of the
faculty for these 2) the understanding, knowledge, etc. gotten by percieving, of a specific idea,
concept, impression, etc. so formed.
So while experience is, "the act of living though an event or events", perception is the
understanding, knowledge, impression, the static patterns we form as a result of that experience. As
such perceptions are , in part, dependent on the individual and cultural filters (static
patterns/philosophy) in place prior to the event. By and large in Western societies it is due to
these widely held and ingrained perceptions, static filters, philosophies, that technology and art
are for the most part considered separate, isolated, activities. To illustrate just how ingrained
these are let's look at a snip from one of the most feverant anti SOMer, Bo.
> Once Platt Holden referred to cave painting as more artful than anything modern. He was right
> about that, but I don't really think the conflict ran along those lines; the stone age existence was
> magical through and through and the cave paintings were (part of) their "technology"
While there is some qualification indicated by Bo's "technology" in quotes, when we look at similar,
current examples of primitive cultures, such as Navaho or Australian aborigines sand paintings of
which we have more direct knowledge, we are hard pressed to find that within these cultures these
works are isolated as "Technology" or "Art" or "Magic" but are high quality integrations of them
all. And while even within these cultures there are "specialists" which these "techniques" have
been passed down to, the understanding and integration of these creations into the day to day
experiences of the whole culture is/was of a much higher level than the isolated roles of "Art" or
"Technology" or "Magic" currently are in Western ones.
My modest hopes for the MoQ and other similar emerging concepts is that though a better
understanding of quality our perceptions will change in such a way that Northrup's inclination to
think that "finer quality doesn't prevail over the less fine." is not our permanent tragedy.
DLT
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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