clark (clark@netsites.net)
Thu, 11 Dec 1997 08:47:25 +0100
Mark and Lila Squad,
I am not sure where to start. I feel like I am standing on a floor of
ball bearings.
I am not sure where you are coming from. If your basis of reality is
based on the God of the Bible then I am forced to conclude that you have
not read the Bible closely. The Bible is not a moral book. Far from it. It
is a book directed at a certain people at a certain time in our history. It
is full of what we today would consider immorality. Even evil if you want
to go that strong. The God of the Bible is not a moral God.
If you conceive of God as the idea of Truth and Good then we first have
to define what Truth and Good is. I see much discussion on the Squad about
Truth and Good. Truth and Good are assumed to be the same thing but it
seems to me that this does not necessarily follow. Truth can also be bad as
well as good. What do we mean by good? Is it just what makes the Human
Race feel good. Is it good for Gaia and may sometimes be temporarily
detrimental to us Humans. Is there an overarching, abstract Good that we
are striving for? If so, I don't know what that ultimate Good would be
You say that you take the approximation of Quality to be the source and
substance of all things. I also see other people on the squad speaking as
if Quality were some abstract entity that is forcing sources and substances
on us. That is not how I interpret what Pirsig as saying at all. To me he
is saying that Dynamic Quality is those insights and feelings that we have
from time to time that serve to augment or alter our conception of the
human condition as we, individually, understand it at that moment by way of
our Static Quality construct. We can even get input to our static quality
construct from other people or from observation, or from other sources, a
Juke Box in a bar for instance. "Quality is different for each individual".
Quality does not construct things for us to trip over when we go to the
bathroom at night. Quality is not necessarily always correct or good, only
the general drift is toward a higher level of ethics.
You say that the ability to think about some new idea, to reason, etc is
always in the past, after the Quality Event. Of course it is. If it were
not after the Quality Event we would not be aware of it. We would not be
able to add it to our stock of static Quality as a basis for cogitation. I
think your Road Map example is incorrect. A better example would be that we
were using the map for the correct state but would run into detours or
changes that had occurred after we got the map. If, as you say, we will
never reduce Quality into knowledge then we have no use for it. You are
implying that we do not already have a world view. We do have a world view
that has built up from infancy due to input from Dynamic Quality as well as
A priori sources as well as the mundane flow of information that reaches us
from sources that bypass Dynamic Quality. We are all aware of being
subjected to information that crosses our eyes with boredom. Dynamic
Quality is not the sole input to our individual world view. only that input
that opens new vistas to us.
You ask if I can imagine a day when all of life's mysteries are in some
book. Millions of prople have had that very view. It has led to much strife
and suffering in the world. It would be an interesting project for some of
you scholars to go through history and make an informed estimate of how
many untimely deaths mystic religion has been responsible for.
There is plenty of mystery in the objective universe. It may be that the
ultimate conclusion will be that the objective universe rests on a mystical
base. We have nowhere near enough information to make hard and fast
statements about much of anything. I do know that I have no interest in
being a sentient entity forever. It would take all the fun out of this time
that I have here. Lets bring Pirsig back to believability. Ken Clark
-- post message - mailto:lilasqd@hkg.com unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:42:26 CEST