[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Platt]
I agree. I'll no longer respond to Arlo unless he comes up with  something new.

[Arlo]
Yeah, I guess it's tiring ignoring those long segments of Pirsig quotes post
after post after post...

[Platt]
IMO an instinctive, automatic response to the threat of death is not  DQ. Rather
it is a static, predictable pattern of behavior.

[Arlo]
Tell me, when animals COULD respond to DQ, what was that like? How was it
different from now? UTOE's DQ-enabled ancestors... how was their behavior
different? Could they appreciate beauty? Could they think? How did they live
differently because of their DQ-enabledness?

[Platt]
Animals lost their ability to respond to DQ when their responses to the 
environment became programmed in their response mechanisms so that they 
reacted predictably to external stimuli.

[Arlo]
When was the time that animals would not "react predictably to external
stimuli"? 150,000 years ago? One million years ago?

[Platt]
The animal part of our nature reacts predictably to external stimuli.  In the
face of danger, our instinct is to fight or flee just like the  aardvark.

[Arlo]
It might be "predictable", but its first a response to DQ. If you'd stop and
read Pirsig, you'd know this. For your edification, then...

"The negative esthetic quality of the hot stove in the earlier example was now
given some added meaning by a static-Dynamic division of Quality. When the
person who sits on the stove first discovers his low-Quality situation, the
front edge of his experience is Dynamic [THE FRONT EDGE OF THIS EXPERIENCE IS
DYNAMIC QUALITY]. He does not think, "This stove is hot," and then make a
rational decision to get off. A "dim perception of he knows not what" gets him
off Dynamically. Later he generates static patterns of thought to explain the
situation [STATIC QUALITY IS GENERATED AFTERWARDS]."

"And they are completely different from the biological pattern [BIOLOGICAL
RESPONSE TO DYNAMIC QUALITY] that can cause the most skeptical of intellectuals
to leap from a hot stove [PREDICTABILITY].

"Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify
without any intellectual argument [STATIC PATTERNS] whatsoever that he is in an
undeniably low-quality situation [DYNAMIC RESPONSE]: that the value of his
predicament is negative. This low quality is not just a vague, wooly-headed,
crypto-religious, metaphysical abstraction. It is an experience. It is not a
judgment about an experience. It is not a description of experience. The value
itself is an experience. As such it is completely predictable. It is verifiable
by anyone who cares to do so. It is reproducible. [A BIOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO
DYNAMIC QUALITY IS PREDICTABLE, AND IT IS STILL DYNAMIC QUALITY]"

Now, I know you've said you won't respond to anything "old", but since you've
never once responded to these, mayhap you'll consider them "new" this time
around?

Arlo