[MD] Blink

[david buchanan]

About Malcom Gladwell's "Blink", Case said:
This is a book about the front edge of experience. It shows how frequently 
and commonly Dynamic Quality plays a role in our everyday lives. He never 
mentions Pirsig and there is no indication of MoQ influence but 
never-the-less that's what this book is about. It shows that rather than 
being mystical or mysterious DQ is just what we do. ...Blink is about the 
importance of preintellectual thinking and how many times our snap judgments 
based on it are equal to or better than rationally conceived and carefully 
thought out plans. ...

dmb says:
Exactly. Well, almost exactly. It seems to me that Blink is about the 
primary empirical reality, the pre-intellectual reality but I'd disagree 
with the assertion that this depicts DQ as "just what we do" RATHER than 
being "mystical or mysterious". Intead, I'd argue that mysticism is just 
what we do. I think this is what it means to say that we are all enlightened 
already, that enlightenment is right in front of your nose all the time and 
yet we fail to realize this.

I also want to point out that the picture painted by this book seems to lend 
tons of support to radical empiricism. As William James put it, "There must 
always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are 
static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing." As Pirsig 
puts it, "In this basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective 
thought, ..have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them." We see 
this idea illustrated in the hot stove example too, where the action 
undertaken to improve the low quality situation occurs even before concepts 
such as "self" and "stove" can be formed. You get off the stove in the blink 
of an eye and the linguistic network of meanings that may later be assigned 
had nothing to do with the movement that saved your ass. In fact, Pirsig 
says, mystics would be the first ones to jump off the stove.

Ooops. Gotta go. I think I smell something burning.
dmb

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