[MD] -elitist ideas

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Marsha]
I should have left things at the above statement.

[Arlo]
Er, then you can ignore my rather terse final statement. It was more-or-less
aimed at an assumption that you dismissed the Quality=Betterness connection
because of the title of his book.

[Marsha]
The way I read the quotes that you sited were that "betterness" is the movement
towards  Dynamic Quality that will provide for getting unstuck.

[Arlo]
The Quality question remains "what makes some things better than others?" This
was the central question of ZMM. We _know_ some things are better, but when we
try to pin down that "betterness", we end up in definitions that almost destroy
the Quality they were trying to define.

When we say "something has Quality" (or perhaps with Pirsig's inversion,
"Quality has some thing"), we mean that in some way it is "better" than
alternatives. Or, we can forgo the relational term and say "something that has
Quality is Good".

In LILA, a central question was "if everyone sees Quality, why do people
disagree about it?". Hence the development of a metaphysical frame to examine
"better" than SOM what a reality based on Quality means. But I don't think the
fundamental "Good/Better" meaning of "Quality" has ever changed.

[Marsha]
But, Dynamic Quality is still amoral in my book, not good, not bad, not 
betterness, not any definition.

[Arlo]
Technically, even calling it "Dynamic Quality" is a definition, is it not? But I
think Platt already pointed out how Pirsig was quite strong about Quality and
morality being the same thing. Since DQ/SQ is a metaphysical split of Quality,
I'd imagine that both DQ and SQ are also about morality.