[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[Ham Priday]

[DMB quotes Pirsig]:
> "Now it comes! Because Quality is the GENERATOR of the mythos.
> That's it. That's what he meant when he said, 'Quality is the continuing
> stimulus which causes us to create the world in which we live. All of it.
> Every last bit of it.' ...Men invent RESPONSES to Quality, and
> among these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are.
> You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you
> try to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've go to work
> with is what you know. So your definition is made up of what you
> know. It's an analogue to what you already know. It HAS to be.
> It can't be anything else."    -- [ZMM, Chpt. 28]


[Mary instructs Krimel]:
> Intellectual Patterns are not simply the sum of all patterns that
> have to do with thinking, the levels are patterns of value that
> have a purpose of their own that differs from their parent level.

Intellect is just another name for reasoning.  Patterns are cognitve 
precepts drawn experientially from value.  Valuistic precepts have no 
"purpose of their own" other than to be realized, which is the function of 
human existence.

[Mary ponders]:
> If there is a difference between DQ and SQ what do you think it is?
> The only clue Pirsig gives about the question is to say that one is
> experienced and the other is not.  One can be defined and the other
> cannot.  Well, what does that mean, especially when he says that
> all is Quality, all is Value, all is Morals?  It simply means there is no
> difference.  Quality is the same whether you put an "S" in front of it
> or a "D".  Whether you can define it or not.  Whether you experience
> it or not.  There is no split.

Yes there is, Mary.  Difference (contrariety) is the ground of existence. 
All existence is differentiated, "every last bit of it."  But if WE, the 
differentiated perceivers, experience quality patterns, our experience is in 
the perception, and so is the quality -- "the stimulus which causes us to 
create the world."

Leading up to the ZMM quote above, Pirsig also wrote:
> "There is only one kind of person, Phædrus said, who accepts or rejects
> the mythos in which he lives. And the definition of that person, when he
> has rejected the mythos, Phædrus said, is "insane." To go outside the 
> mythos
> is to become insane."

Although Pirsig believed that rejecting perception was insanity, he did it 
anyhow.  He rejected the very self that experiences difference, making it 
just another quality pattern.  And, because that is an irrational 
conclusion, Pirsigians are left in a cloud of confusion, possibly even 
questioning their own sanity.

Choosing values, like developing a philosophical thesis, is a process of 
analysis, which is why existential reality is "analytic".  Reason, logic, 
and mathematics all depend on difference and multiplicity to prioritize and 
objectivize values.  Not only are the objects of experience differentiated 
and individualized, but so are the value-sensible subjects.  If differential 
order is the "mythos", then cognitive sensibility is the "logos".  But 
neither mythos nor logos is ultimate reality.  They are merely negated 
analogs of an undivided reality from which existence is derived.

Doesn't this begin to make more sense?

Essentially speaking,
Ham