[MD] a view

[MarshaV]

Arlo, 

On Apr 8, 2010, at 10:40 AM, Arlo Bensinger wrote:

> 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)
Now it's the 'your life' that I would question.  While I wrote that I agree that society 
is changed one individual at a time, it doesn't mean I would disregard family and 
community.  But more than that I thinking this is getting too nit-picky.  This rewriting 
seems to be static-making, and I find that uncomfortable, like I'm being forced into 
a corner.  I'm wanting to bolt.  Makes me want to say something like 'Do your best 
and screw the talky-talk.' or 'Come and dance with me.'  Way too much detail!!!!!  


> 
> [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)

From Amazon:  
"The sociology of knowledge a la Berger and Luckmann is not about the history of ideas, the economic origin of ideologies, the social process of education, the study of intellectuals, religious Gnostics, or secret societies, or social theories per se. Rather, the intriguing concern of the authors is what they call everyday knowledge or common sense knowledge that is constructed at different levels of society all the way from language, to family history and memories, to children's folk tales, proverbs, and legends, to workplace and professional ideologies, to formal theories and paradigms, and finally to what they call symbolic universes or over-arching world views. Again, this is reminiscent of Vico who wrote: "common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race." To Berger and Luckmann reality (that which we can't wish away) is unknowable except through the prism of experience as interpreted through social enclaves or what they call plausibility structures."

http://www.amazon.com/Social-Construction-Reality-Sociology-Knowledge/dp/0385058985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270799696&sr=1-1 

  
> 
> [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.


(Marsha)
I like the image of the yin-yang tango, but I think even it is too confining.   

 


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