This seems to me a very dubious transformation to go after at all, but that may be because I'm more a ZMM philosopher than a LILA one. A Platonist, if not a lover of Plato. At first glance, this month's topic begs "unask the question." Pirsig has taken the poorly cut jigsaw puzzle of reality, dashed and jagged along subject-object lines, and reunited it into a whole with the single word Quality. He has then cleaved it again, in new places, along the static/Dynamic lines, but it's important to remember that it's still the same puzzle. It's still reality. Cutting it a *third* time, back along SO lines, to see where they cleave around the Static/dynamic lines, seems like it's going to end us up with a huge mess of tiny, jagged pieces we can never sift our way through. Even so, Pirsig left a few clues as to how to go about this.
First, in ZMM he said "Quality destroys objectivity every time." What he left out (but certainly implied) is that since the subject can't be known without the object (their meeting place is, or would be, the Quality event) Quality also destroys *subjectivity* every time. I think what he meant by this is that to look Quality, God, Buddha, directly in the face, is to abandon a sense of self as "subject" and other people and things (people especially) as *objects* and perceive them directly, as inhered in Quality itself. Unfortunately the word "perceive" is a word trap here and retards our understanding of this, because it's so closely tied to our subject-object way of "perceiving" things. We don't really have a word for our relationship with other entities in terms of Quality. No surprise there.
All right, at this point you may be saying "well why go at the question at all? You've already said that Quality destroys those subject-object lines, erases them, wipes them clean. Why mess with the new divisions he's made?" The answer, of course, is because most people haven't given up those old lines (in fact, it's my bet that very few people on this site, myself included, *really* have either. We're living in this world and the "analogues upon analogues upon analogues" of SOM-run life tend to have us pretty well beaten down, in general).
Again, Pirsig leaves bread crumbs on the trail. It's in his reference to the changes in the operation of his cycle, given while he's tackling Hegel's "a priori" view of the world, cycle vs. cycleness, etc. Some things about the cycle change quickly, such as its relation to the road, the angle in a turn, etc. Some more slowly, like fuel leaving the gas tank, rubber being burned off the tires. Some almost imperceptibly, such as the change in the tensile strength of the steel frame, wear in the pistons and rods, etc. But *all* of these are our analogue of Dynamic Quality, though not Dynamic Quality itself.
The problem with converting SOM into MOQ isn't that the Dynamic is in some objects and not in others, it's that we can't percieve it directly or properly in some objects, and so we miss the flavor of it. The rock referred to in an earlier post is having molecules shaved off its surface, and others deposited, literally every second. Its pores may be home to thousands of microscopic organisms. It's loaded to the hilt with the Dynamic, but we can't "see" it, so we consider it completely static (not Pirsig's static, *our* SOM static), completely an *object*, unchanging, because our analogue to its change, the a priori concept we call "time", is a poor one. The only universally accepted method of seeing change has a built in hierarchical structure to it, where that which changes "quickly" is seen as important, and that which changes "slowly" is ignored.
As long as we can toss the concept of "time" as our only means of viewing dynamic quality in what we call objects, and as long as we take as rote that Quality is the *enemy* of this poor relativistic view of change, it gets a lot easier. Objects inhere Dynamic Quality inasmuch as they aid our ability to view change, view the *true* Dynamic, more directly. Subjects inhere it where they are more able to perceive it directly themselves.
Unfortunately, the last two sentences aren't what I wanted to say. They answer this month's question by presuming SOM as the starting point, and you can see how muddled they got by doing that. A hint of falseness there, or at least misdirection. Much easier to start with MOQ and work back. So I say: Dynamic Quality is not "in" subjects and objects, but in their meeting point. It's the *event*. Subjects and objects inhere it, but only as much as they interrelate. This is easy to see. Think of with how much Dynamic you regard your desk, or wherever you are, right now. Then think about New York City (unless you're there, in which case think of Tokyo), a bustling, explosive metropolis, which Pirsig described as being connected as closely with the Dynamic as anyplace on Earth. *But for you it's not..* There's no Dynamic there for *you,* apart from a few new connections you may have made as a result of thinking about the place. For you those objects inhere next to no Dynamic Qual!
it!
y. You're not interrelating with New York right now (unless you're there, in which case, Tokyo). They're *loaded * with static Quality though. The thinking about them you just did was a callup of tons of static patterns of memory you have stored up (or indirect perceptions, of you've never been there.)
Now presume you're in New York City. The same objects will be brimming with the Dynamic and you, as the subject, are likely to be fuller of it yourself because of your relationship to your surroundings.
The difficulty with seeing this, I think, is that while trying to think about where a subject or an object splits into Dynamic or static Quality, you're not working with a full deck. You're trying to eke out a Dynamic portion where there really isn't one handy. The memory patterns you have about the object are all static. Memory of the Dynamic isn't Dynamic at all. But go and look at a stream, or a rock, or look at a book on your desk for a while and you have a chance of seeing the Dynamic in that "object." Or more accurately, seeing it through that object. This is why Quality destroys subjectivity and objectivity every time, because the front of the Quality train, the Dynamic that drives it, is always bashing through the division, uniting subject and object in a relationship that's always more powerful than the concept of subject and object, and is unique every time.
Hope you all will forgive a first-time poster for being so thoroughly infatuated with Pirsig's writing style....
Drew
"...that which destroys the old mythos becomes the new mythos..."
-Pirsig
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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