[MD] Chance v. Dynamic Quality

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt quotes Bob to prove DQ comes as a surprise]
"The first good, that made you want to buy the record, was Dynamic 
Quality. Dynamic Quality comes as a sort of surprise. What the record 
did was weaken for a moment your existing static patterns in such a 
way that the Dynamic Quality all around you shone through." (Pirsig)

[Arlo]
Excellent! I am so glad you included the entirety of this quote. I 
direct your attention to the next sentence. "What the record did was 
weaken for a moment your existing static patterns in such a way that 
the Dynamic Quality all around you shone through." (Pirsig)

".... so that the Dynamic Quality all around you shone through."

DQ is always there, it is in ever moment, it is the seed of 
uncertainty in the organism's immediate experience. It is not "rare", 
it is "ALL AROUND YOU".

"Mystic learning goes in the opposite direction and tries to hold to 
the ongoing Dynamic edge of all experience." (Pirsig)

Also, consider Pirsig's statement, "Static quality...emerges in the 
wake of Dynamic Quality".

Dynamic Quality is the always present NOW, static quality comes 
later. There are no "static responses". There is only preferred value 
in the wake of the Dynamic moment.

"Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the 
source of all things, completely simple and always new." (Pirsig)

Not some reality. Not here and there. Not on occasion. Not to a 
select few. ALL reality. ALL things. It is the cutting-edge of 
reality itself, the "front edge of his experience" (immediate experience).

To get back to your quote. DQ is all around you. Always. It is the 
NOW moment of your experience. It contains the potential for 
uncertainty. It keeps the cosmos from unaltering stasis. It is what 
provides our agency and free will as human beings, and as such MUST 
be present at every moment, or else we are reduced to either 
automatons or play-dough. The potential for uncertainty IS what makes 
us free, what makes all things inherently evolutionary.

Sure, we as human beings invent many wonderful analogues (in response 
to Dynamic Quality), and these analogues represent a preferred way of 
responding to immediate experience, and later we see them as a 
Gestalt we call "static quality".

What the record did... was shatter your existing static patterns 
(your preferred ways of responding to immediate experience)... in 
such a way... that the Dynamic Quality all around you... shone though 
(uncertainty led to seeing the world in a non-habituated way).

Exactly what I've been saying.

Thanks.