[MD] e: Reading & Comprehension

[John Carl]

Hey Mary,

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 5:30 AM, Mary <marysonthego at gmail.com> wrote:

[Mary Replies]
> Can you tell me how the East thinks if not by using subject-object logic?
>  I
> kinda thought we all did that.  What about their pets?  Do they use
> something other than subject-object logic too?
>
>
I'm no scholar on the Eastern ways of mindfulness, but what I've read
suggests that they DO use S/O thinking, but with much less attachment to the
"reality" of their thought categories.  And it's that whole attachment to
one's categories that creates the problems of SOM.

The MoQ is about transcending our attachment to our intellectual categories;
transcending SOM, not capitulating to it.




> The whole social level = bad, intellectual
> > level = good has been problematic for me from day one and I think Arlo,
> > (as
> > usual) makes some good points here.
> >
> >
> [Mary Replies]
> The two levels are at odds, but both are static representations of Dynamic
> Quality.  Both have value.  Pirsig argues against the SOM attitude
> vehemently, mostly in ZMM as I recall.  I think as DMB points out, he views
> the MoQ as a way to transcend both.
>

Why are they "at odds" Mary?  Is that necessary,  or even true?

Social patterns compete for dominance with one another in a natural
evolutionary struggle.  With human striving, intellect objectively analyzes
and creates plans of action which are incorporated into the evolutionary
struggle, and I don't see a necessary conflictual relationship between my
intellect and my favored social pattern, perhaps tho, a conflict between my
intellect and some other's favored social pattern, but that's not the same
thing as inter-level conflict.

I've raised the issue from the beginning, challenging the MoQ koan, Is it
more moral for a Dr. to kill a germ than a germ to kill a Dr.?

Depends on the Dr.

If the entire edifice was so simply and hierarchically cut and dried, then
it'd be more moral for Dr.s to kill any "lower" life forms.  Or even all of
them.  And if we wiped out all germs, we'd also wipe out all life on the
planet.

Doesn't sound so moral to me.



> >
> [Mary Replies]
> Well, let me say it a clearer way, then.  The metaphysics itself, the
> books,
> the logic, the arguments, the explanations, are all SOM\SOL.  If they
> weren't, we wouldn't be able to read about it in books or talk about it
> here.  The MoQ - the Metaphysics - is a static representation of the
> Dynamic
> Quality but not the Quality itself.
>
> This distinction is probably also the source of our disagreement above
> about
> the East?
>
>

Yes, there is a tie-in.  And I think your view point  eloquently stated as
the view of language like a computer language, with cut and dried definition
and algebraicly constricted to one symbol having one meaning.

But language, as Ellul point out to me, isn't really like that.  Meaning is
built from ambiguity, paradox and uncertainty.  The finger pointing to the
moon is not the moon itself.

"The written word is just  a mummy whose wrappings must be removed
someday--not to disover a few bones, but to breathe lfe into it again.


Only the word conveys the truth of a message.  What the written word needs
is not to be considered the source of a mere code, law or formula, or of an
indefinitely repeated prayer.


It must be taken at its source and given rebirth, not by repetition, but by
an inspiration that reopens it.  Written language has closed the mind.  Like
a fist grasping a diamond, it has closed its grammatical and structural trap
over a vanishing whisper that it tries to translate through enclosing and
containment.  But instead, writing snuffs it out, and we must open the
straijacket of writing so that it becomes a freshly spoken word.  That way
the whisper can be perceievd and received again.  The the word can start the
listener off anew in his quest of truth."

Jacques Ellul, Humiliation of the Word


And this, dear Mary, is what I'm talking about.  The MoQ as a collection of
writings defining metaphysical position is plainly not what the author
intended.  The MoQ is a poem leading to realization, which invites anew the
listener in his quest for truth


> >
> [Mary Replies]
> DMB's goals may be one desired outcome, but the goal of the MoQ as I
> understand Pirsig was more general and applies to a lot more than just
> science and art.
>
> The goal of the MoQ is to realize that reality is not divided into subjects
> and objects but is undivided Dynamic Quality.
>
> You can experience DQ but as soon as you put it into words or pictures, or
> write a post about it it becomes Static.
>
> Statically yours,
> Mary
>
>

Well, I agree with you, for the most part - especially about the goal of
realizing - but I feel that language is not necessarily static.  It depends
on how its taken and how its presented.

Poetry, my dear, cannot be so statically confined.

Yours,

John