[MD] The Quality/MOQ dichotomy.

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Bo,

Bo said:
I read you admonishing but feel we are reasonably open to arguments and polite.

Matt:
It wasn't really an admonishing.  People can talk, write, and discuss any way it pleases them, it's no skin off my back.  Participation, naturally, is optional.  But having surveyed the scene for the better part of a decade, I've begun to see in a wider scope the types of things that drive and derail discussion.  Like clockwork, people accuse others of not listening.  Like clockwork, every three months somebody whose taken time off, or totally new, comes into the discussion wanting desperately to "finally move the discussion forward."  

When I first took part, the Lila's Squad years were still fresh in people's minds, and the idea of latching down the MoQ and beginning dissemination of a program of thought/action still seemed like a reasonable hope.  Ten years later, the hope has largely evaporated and turned into mixtures of anxiety, hysteria and frustration.

I've spent a lot of time in recent years thinking simply about the activity and practice of discussion, both in person, in print, and on the internet and I've spent some time writing on the topic, trying to promote both more reflection and different habits of participation.  I don't think the MD needs an intervention, or a referee, or an arbitrator because I'm not so presumptuous to think that anybody needs to be doing any of this.  _Because_ it is completely optional, people should have complete and total freedom over their composition, both in person and in writing.

But if I had to boil down to one slogan, one pithy bit of potted wisdom, the first step to having a good conversation that has the chance of "going somewhere," it would be this: you have to give a shit about the other person.  You have to _care_.  It's pure Pirsig.  You have to care about what the other person says.  Everything else falls from there, including all the stuff about the primacy of rhetoric and the downfall of Platonism.

I have no doubt most people are comfortable with the way they compose themselves, with their relative openness or politeness.  But it isn't one's self one should be worried about--worrying about the other person's comfort level is what leads to good conversation.

I don't know if that's an admonition or not, but it is another interventional suggestion.  I have no wish for people to be fake, to sin against their authenticity, who they are.  But it was Socrates who taught us to wonder, from time to time, whether or not who we are is the best "are" we could be.

On the actual topic at hand, I'm afraid I don't have much to say.  It's very difficult for me to follow you, partly because I find numerous parts contentious and I can't tell where the important contentions are.  You move too quickly for me.  But you said this--

Bo said:
Then the MOQ where he draws a Reality-Quality  "box" on top and below it the said DQ/SQ dualism  This is just as wrong, DQ directly spawns the SQ.

Matt:
What you are pointing to is an ambiguity in Pirsig's terms.  Quality is supposedly different from Dynamic Quality, but when you use the same terms ("ultimate reality," "immediate experience," "undefined") to describe both, it becomes difficult to tell how to tell the difference between the two (I talked about this in my review of a paper Anthony wrote for the Essay Forum).

You're taking a definite stand, on both the ill-fated nature of the ambiguity (which, if I'm not mistaken, Pirsig deliberately wanted) and the way out (it was a mistake to have two terms at all).  But your mode of enunciating your position has almost always, and here I take comfort in what seems to be a majority opinion, been very weird and difficult to understand.

But finally understanding your point of interception, it helps make some sense of your general project.  There are some upshots to it, but then there are some upshots to Pirsig's apparent desires.  I don't quite get incensed by the issue the same way you do, so I don't feel pressured to make a choice.  I'm content to notice the abiguitity, and simply deal with it on a case by case basis.

I've never been much for system.

Matt

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