[MD] -elitist ideas

[MarshaV]

At 05:06 PM 3/10/2007, you wrote:
>Quoting MarshaV <marshalz at charter.net>:
>
> > At 04:08 PM 3/10/2007, Platt wrote:
> > >Quoting MarshaV <marshalz at charter.net>:
> > >
> > >
> > > > I should have left things at the above
> > > > statement.  It's not called the Metaphysics of
> > > > Betterness, "betterness" is just a very confusing
> > > > term.  The way I read the quotes that you sited
> > > > were that "betterness" is the movement towards
> > > > Dynamic Quality that will provide for getting
> > > > unstuck.  The "betterness" is the
> > > > unstuckness.  But, Dynamic Quality is still
> > > > amoral in my book, not good, not bad, not
> > > > betterness, not any definition.  And if good is a
> > > > noun (a static pattern of value), so is bad a
> > > > noun.  Only a hand-written explanation from
> > > > Pirsig, himself, will convince me otherwise.
> > >
> > >Hand written by Pirsig himself in Chap. 7 of Lila:
> > >
> > >"Because Quality is morality. Make no mistake about it. They're identical.
> > >And if Quality is the primary reality of the world then that 
> means morality
> > >is also the primary reality of the world. The world is primarily a
> > >moral order."
> > >
> > >Arlo is right. DQ is about "betterness."
> >
> > Greetings Platt,
> >
> > You cannot define as moral that which cannot be defined.  According
> > to Pirsig, Dynamic Quality cannot be defined.
>
>Hi Marsha,
>
>DQ and SQ are conjoined with Quality. Only for the sake of intellect are they
>treated separately. You can no more separate DQ from Quality than you can
>separate a word from its meaning.

Hello Platt,

"Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that 
there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these 
things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or 
there isn't any metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is essentially a 
kind of dialectical definition and since Quality is essentially 
outside definition, this means that a 'Metaphysics of Quality' is 
essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity.
It would be almost like a mathematical definition of randomness. The 
more you try to say what randomness is the less random it becomes. Or 
'zero,' or 'space' for that matter. Today these terms have almost 
nothing to do with 'nothing.' 'Zero' and 'space' are complex 
relationships of 'somethingness.' If he said anything about the 
scientific nature of mystic understanding, science might benefit but 
the actual mystic understanding would, if anything, be injured. If he 
really wanted to do Quality a favor he should just leave it alone.
What made all this so formidable to Phaedrus was that he himself had 
insisted in his book that Quality cannot be defined. Yet here he was 
about to define it. Was this some kind of a sell-out? His mind went 
over this many times.
A part of it said, 'Don't do it. You'll get into nothing but trouble. 
You're just going to start up a thousand dumb arguments about 
something that was perfectly clear until you came along. You're going 
to make ten-thousand opponents and zero friends because the moment 
you open your mouth to say one thing about the nature of reality you 
automatically have a whole set of enemies who've already said reality 
is something else.'
The trouble was, this was only one part of himself talking. There was 
another part that kept saying, 'Ahh, do it anyway. It's interesting.' 
This was the intellectual part that didn't like undefined things, and 
telling it not to define Quality was like telling a fat man to stay 
out of the refrigerator, or an alcoholic to stay out of bars. To the 
intellect the process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality of 
its own. It produces a certain excitement even though it leaves a 
hangover afterward, like too many cigarettes, or a party that has 
lasted too long. Or Lila last night. It isn't anything of lasting 
beauty; no joy forever. What would you call it? Degeneracy, he 
guessed. Writing a metaphysics is, in the strictest mystic sense, a 
degenerate activity."
                                                                      (LILA, 
Chapter 5)



Neither Quality or Dynamic Quality can be defined.  It's a degeneracy to do so.


Marsha