[MD] Are qualities memories?

[MarshaV]

At 02:11 AM 5/12/2007, Akshay wrote:
>I'm not pretending to be any sort of authority on the MoQ, and have also had
>no association with Pirsig other than the writer-reader relationship.
>
>1. I'm not sure if Pirsig would agree with the phrase "experiencing
>qualities" because it's not qualities, it's Quality; and secondly, Quality
>itself is experience. Initially, when I was lost in the cryptic beginning of
>ZAMM, I thought Quality was supposed to mean not Goodness but
>"characteristic" (and hence supposed to mean any state of mind other than
>dreamless sleep), simply because I couldn't conceive how everything could be
>Good; and even if everything was good, how do you even know what is good
>(because to know the good you need to know the bad -- you can't just know
>the colour blue, you have to know it in relation to some other colour).

Akshay,

Above you wrote, 'simply because I couldn't conceive how everything 
could be Good;...' (past tense).  Do you understand it differently 
now?   I think whether it can be discriminated, or not, _everything_ 
is Divine (Good).  How does it work for you?

I agree with your 2nd point too.

Marsha



>Quality cannot fully be associated with memory, because you also experience
>something that is outside memory (I suppose, rather naively, that Dynamic
>Quality and static Quality point to the difference between novelty and
>memory -- though certainly this would be valid only an intellectual level,
>for inorganic static patterns have no concept of memory).
>
>2. We value experiences differently (or rather, we value different
>experiences) because our former experiences have molded us so. Now why that
>is the case, I know not, because that knowledge belongs to a system outside
>my mind's capacity of reach (similar to Hofstadter's explanation). Maybe
>because there are patterns greater than us that decide what each part of the
>system is supposed to value (the Giant).
>
>-- Akshay