[MD] Free Will

[MarshaV]

On Jun 16, 2011, at 6:22 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> Marsha said to dmb:
> 
> I'm sure you think your paraphrasing is always correct, but it is mentally constructed from your own biases.  And thergrouping together of your paraphrased comments out of context make them sound like attributes of DQ.  And please don't miss explaining your quote: "DQ degenerates into chaos." when in LILA RMP states: "But Dynamic Quality is not structured and yet it is not chaotic.".    I think RMP would have paraphrased this statement differently.
> 
> dmb responds with textual evidence to the contrary (not that it will make any difference):
> "Life can't exist on Dynamic Quality alone. It has no staying power. To cling to Dynamic Quality alone apart from any static patterns is to cling to CHAOS. He saw that much can be learned about Dynamic Quality by studying what it is not rather than futilely trying to define what it is.
> Static quality patterns are dead when they are exclusive, when they demand blind obedience and suppress Dynamic change. But static patterns, nevertheless, provide a necessary stabilizing force to protect Dynamic progress from DEGENERATION. Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this world in which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order, preserve our world. Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without the other."
> 
> What would be a good way to paraphrase Pirsig's description of static patterns as a necessary stabilizing force and the quality of order that preserves our world? You think this stable order is best "paraphrased" as an ever-changing cloud, do you? I think that use of language is just plain stupid and the idea conspicuously at odds with the text. 
> 


Marsha:
I might state that progress may degenerate into chaos, or that static patterns may degenerate into chaos, or that an individual as a collection of static patterns may degenerate into chaos, but I don't think I would ever say that "DQ degenerates into chaos."   




 
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