[MD] a view

[Arlo Bensinger]

Marsha and John responses combined:

[Arlo previously]
I guess my question remains why social patterns should not be 
dissolved as well? If I use your words here, I'd offer something like 
this instead.

While sustaining just enough biological patterns to preserve your life
Dissolve all intellectual and social patterns.
Dissolve them completely
And then follow Dynamic Quality
And morality will be served.

[Marsha]
I have no problem with the importance of the family and community in 
sustaining life.  I have never said otherwise.

[Arlo]
Well, if its a matter of sustaining life while dissolving patterns, 
maybe I'd reword the quote to something like this:

While preserving just enough static patterns to sustain your life
Dissolve all remaining static patterns.
Dissolve them completely
And then follow Dynamic Quality
And morality will be served.

[Marsha]
But I do think that many social patterns have outgrown their 
usefulness.  A long time ago I read 'The Social Construction of 
Reality', by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann.  It address such 
issues.  I bet you've read it.

[Arlo]
Actually, I have not. But I'll add it to my list.

[Marsha]
This dissolution I think is for the moment.  I am not talking of a 
lobotomy.  There might be a moment when an intellectual pattern is 
very appropriate, if so I'm quite sure it will prevail.

[Arlo]
Well, this was also a point I was getting at. A lobotomy will 
certainly "kill" all your intellectual patterns, but to what end? 
Then what? Obviously, this is not what Pirsig had in mind. There must 
be a "coming back", where Zarathrustra descends to the valley. I see 
the overall goal being evolutionary, we ascend to the zero-point, 
follow Dynamic Quality, so that in coming back we can build better, 
faster, stronger static patterns.

So its a matter (for me) of dissolution/reconstruction, in a yin-yang swirl.

[John]
I think morality is served, not when social patterns are erased, but 
when they are examined objectively (intellectually)..

[Arlo]
Well I think plays into Bo's quagmire. Its not so much an "objective" 
examination (as would be the mindset of SOM) as it is an examination 
that sees these patterns for what they are, and what their function 
has been, and how they can be improved, and when they should be left go.

[John]
This constant re-evaluation of them in the light of quality, is what 
keeps them honest.

[Arlo]
Yes, this is how I would say it. Not "objectively", but "in the light 
of quality".

[John]
But the only way to re-evaluated intellectual patterns, is this thing 
of "killing them" as Buddha suggests...

[Arlo]
Well this would make sense from the "orthodox" view of intellect 
being the highest MOQ level, and not Bo's additional level needed 
variant. And perhaps you're right, since the only thing "above" 
intellect is (at the present moment in evolution) DQ itself, there is 
no vantage from which we can gaze down on intellect.

But I think my point is, and continues to be, that static 
intellectual patterns are not the only barrier to "following Dynamic 
Quality". There are plenty of prohibitionary social patterns that 
blind one to Dynamic experience. I think Pirsig was much more 
accurate in this regard when discussing the morality of the hippies, 
when he declared their moral movement being one against both social 
and intellectual patterns. So its not a defense of intellect here, 
but a broadening of the dissolution necessary to be truly open to 
what the Dynamic moment may bring.

And in that regard, a re-valuation of intellect and social patterns 
as they are reconstructed from this Zero-Point.