[MD] Indiviidual Achievers

[Platt Holden]

All:

Pirsig´s focus on the importance of the individual in responding to Dynamic 
Quality is evident throughout his writings, perhaps most eloquently 
expressed in Lila, Chap. 29:

"That's what drives the really creative people-the artists, composers, 
revolutionaries and the like-the feeling that if they don't break out of 
this jailhouse somebody has built around them, they're going to die.
"But they're not being contrary in a way that is just decadent. They're way 
too energetic and aggressive to be decadent. They're fighting for some kind 
of Dynamic freedom from the static patterns. But the Dynamic freedom 
they're fitting for is a kind of morality too. And it's a highly important 
part of the overall moral process. It´s often confused with degeneracy but 
it´s actually a form of moral regeneration. Without its continual 
refreshment static patterns would simply die of old age."

I was reminded of this passage this morning while reading a Wall St. 
Journal article about Paul Cezanne that begins:

"For many modern artists Paul Cezanne was a talismanic figure, the shadow 
of his painting as impossible to escape as his achievement was to define. 
Throughout the 20th century, as scholars labored to construct a viable 
history of modern art, Cezanne (along with Manet, Courbet and a handful of 
transgressive others) was posited as its fountainhead, the protean begetter 
whose countless progeny shaped a new aesthetic that placed vision and touch 
above formal and narrative concerns."

Besides illustrating a human being´s response to Dynamic Quality, Cezanne 
almost single handily rescued painting from static boredom and eventual 
deterioration. That´s what the great  individual achievers do, whether a 
Paul Cezanne or a Niels Bohr. In pursuing the Conceptually Unknown in 
response to DQ they lift all the rest of us to new levels of freedom, 
versatility and beauty, revealing the creative force of DQ  in the process.

Platt