[MD] MOQ Recursion

[david buchanan]

Arlo to John:
... The "MOQ" is not a verb, it is a "metaphysics of Quality", it is the result of the "defining process", one undertaken infinitely and creatively, but IT is an artifact not a process.

John replied:
Well, we'll just have to differ then Arlo.  I can't see something that is "undertaken infinitely and creatively" as a mere "artifact" to be pinned to your board and dissected, (you evil akerdemic you :) It is a process, not an artifact.


dmb says:

I think the most obvious analogy to invoke here is motorcycle maintenance. Fixing a bike is a process but that doesn't mean the bike itself is a process. Maintaining the thing in good working order is always going to involve a decent respect for the precision of the parts and an understanding of how all the various elements fit together to make up that thing we call a motorcycle. This artifact is not so rigidly constructed that it's absolutely static and in fact some of the parts practically change before your eyes. The gas gets burned up, the tires wear away, the oil gets dirty and even the metal frame is always changing in tiny, imperceptible ways. But none of that alters the fact that the machine absolutely needs a certain amount of stability for it to work at all. The process of riding and fixing the bike both rely entirely on this stability. If you understand the thing and you have a feel for the materials of which it is made, then you can see how an empty beer can be used to replace a handlebar shim. It doesn't have to be a fancy store-bought shim and you don't have to obey the owners manual because you understand the thing well enough to improvise when you need to. 

I think the MOQ is just like that. Fixing it and riding it demands a decent respect for the thing as an artifact. Using the MOQ in the process of living requires an understanding of what it is and how it works. To practice the fine arts or any skilled endeavor is not any different from doing philosophy or maintaining your life. You gotta, gotta, gotta have a feel for the material and you gotta, gotta, gotta know how the thing works. Otherwise, you're gonna mess it up. Otherwise you're gonna punch a hole in the cover plate or knock some fins off the engine block. The guy who did that in Pirsig's story is the same guy that Crawford calls an idiot. And this is no mere insult. If there is just one message to take from Pirsig's books, that's it. Don't be an idiot. Whatever the thing is - a bike, a garden, your life, a  philosophy - give it the respect and attention it deserves. 

"I think the basic fault that underlies the problem of stuckness is traditional rationality's insistence upon ``objectivity,'' a doctrine that there is a divided reality of subject and object. For true science to take place these must be rigidly separate from each other. ``You are the mechanic. There is the motorcycle. You are forever apart from one another. You do this to it. You do that to it. These will be the results.'' 
This eternally dualistic subject-object way of approaching the motorcycle sounds right to us because we're used to it. But it's not right. It's always been an artificial interpretation superimposed on reality. It's never been reality itself. When this duality is completely accepted a certain nondivided relationship between the mechanic and motorcycle, a craftsmanlike feeling for the work, is destroyed. When traditional rationality divides the world into subjects and objects it shuts out Quality, and when you're really stuck it's Quality, not any subjects or objects, that tells you where you ought to go." (ZAMM, p. 282) 

Vrooom!