[MD] confused

[Case]

Mark 25-10-06:
I'm not convinced static and Dynamic are the only options. I don't find
them satisfactory.
Choatic behaviour is neither static nor Dynamic for example.
I think many of us have experienced chaotic behaviour?

Mark 25-10-06:
I have come to regard the written Tao or the way as a relationship between  
sq and sq which allows DQ to shine through.
The 'shine' metaphor is used by Pirsig in Lila. Shine smacks of that lense  
you mentioned.
The unwritten Tao looks like DQ to me.

[Case]
Mark you and I are almost always but never quite on the same page. I have
long suspected that it is just the naming of things that separates us but as
the Chinese same the beginning of wisdom is calling things by their proper
names. So let me spell out a few reasons why I think you are calling the
right ideas by the wrong names. 

First, Pirsig makes it clear in ZMM that when he talks about Quality he is
talking about the Tao. This is the undefined center of the MoQ. It is also
true that he talks about DQ as though it is interchangeable with Quality in
Lila. Whether this is accidental or reflects his own misunderstanding of the
Tao I can not say. But by claiming they are the same he gives us two
undefined terms and that is at least one too many. By naming his divisions
of Quality static and dynamic he seems to be following a Taoist metaphysics
which divides the Tao into its active and passive principle. But saying that
the Tao is about the relationship between SQ and SQ is like saying the Tao
is only Yin. 

Second, by saying that DQ is an undefined warm fuzzy, you render it useless.
It is one thing to say that lightning is a static intellectual concept and
quite another to say that it is not dynamic in Quality. A bolt of lightning,
a hurricane, a newborn baby are pure dynamic quality. Our perception of them
as good or bad, that is, what value we ascribe to them, is a matter of
Quality but saying that all DQ is good, strips the concept of all utility
and relevance.

Third the idea that SQ is a permanent attribute is likewise problematic.
Pirsig grudgingly admits at one point that he is not as excited about SQ as
DQ but his slighting of the concept has resulted in misunderstanding. Higher
levels of dynamic quality are simply not possible until lower levels have
achieved some degree of stasis. Biological process can not take place in the
absence of inorganic stability. Social structure can not evolve until
biological entities achieve stasis. Intellectual development is highly
unlikely during times of social upheaval. The idea that the levels are a war
with each other is simply nonsensical. If an idea kills a society who is
going to be around to think it? An idea can change a society. But kill it? I
think not. Pirsig's example of the Zuni brujo is particularly inappropriate
in this regard. The brujo was a drunken quisling not a folk hero. How can it
be moral for a society to undermine its biological roots by changing the
climate, unbalancing ecosystems and willfully driving other species into
extinction? Sure you can get away with it for a while but to say that this
is moral?

Fourth, this is bit of a tangent but the claim is being made that the MoQ is
essentially mystical. I am not saying that it isn't but I am saying that it
is not necessarily or even primarily so. Back in ZMM when Pirsig talks about
the romantic/scientific split. It seems to me that it was the romantics who
suffered from a failure of vision. To regard assembling a barbeque grill as
sculpture is no great leap for the technologically minded. Even the idea of
the preintellectual is not a mystical notion. Most of our awareness is
nonverbal non-rational. The intellectual portions of the human brain are the
newest parts. They are very important to us but they are not the whole show.
Getting the ratchet jaw in our head to stop yammering is no doubt healthy
but I see no need to give it supernatural significance.

Fifth, you frequently get close to the point with your talk of chaos. I have
said many times that I think the MoQ is a metaphysics of chaos or of
uncertainty. The only thing that keeps you from seeing that chaos is both
static and dynamic is, I would suggest, terminological. Static orderly
patterns arise from chaos. They are opposite sides of the same coin. When a
chaotic attractor becomes static it has certain self correcting properties.
It is more likely to remain static because it is chaotic.

Finally, I would be the first to admit that I have laid out some shaky
points here. For example, if you are right and we can dispense with the term
Quality altogether, then what we get is DQ is chaos. Static orderly pattern
emerge from the background of chaos. Order is a particular manifestation of
fundamental chaos or SQ is a particular manifestation of DQ. That would work
but I am still clinging to the Taoist version.

Well, that was a bit wordy I get the short version is: The Tao, written and
unwritten, looks like the MoQ to me.