[MD] The Quest for Quality

[Ham Priday]

Hi Marsha --

Responding to my critique of Pirsig's metaphysics (or its absence), you 
asked:

> In an existence where everything is interrelated and ever-changing which 
> direction would a first cause come from?  It looks to me like it would 
> come from these collections of patterns called self, egos.

And I've said before, "first" and "last" are intellectual precepts of 
causality that frame one's experience.  From a metaphysical perspective, all 
is One, and there is no sequence of events.  When we speak causally, it is 
always in reference to sequential existence (i.e., SOM).  So, when I said 
that Pirsig "cannot account for the cause of experiential reality",
I meant "cause" in the evolutionary way that we intellectualize reality, 
which translates to "source" in the metaphysical sense.  Understanding 
existence metaphysically is not a matter of knowing "'which came first" but, 
rather, how it is derived from the primary source.  There is only one 
metaphysical cause -- the first or primary -- and it is constant..

"Ego" is a psychological term relating to one's self-esteem or motivational 
drive.  "Self" (or "proprietary awareness") is the more appropriate term in 
the epistemological context of your question.  And since being-aware equates 
to one's experience of the world, subjectivity and objectivity arise 
concurrently.  One does not precede the other, but (as with all 
differentiation) both are "caused" by the sensibility/otherness dichotomy. 
Creation is not a series of events ("patterns"?) from alpha to omega, but 
the negational mode of Essence.  From the human perspective, however, it is 
the ongoing process intellectualized as "evolution".

Just as Pirsigians look at reality as a patterned distribution of Quality, I 
see reality as a  finite differentiation of Essence.

I hope this answers your question, Marsha.  It's incomplete without 
explaining the dynamics of negation.  (But that's a topic for another 
discussion.)

Essentially yours,
Ham