[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[david buchanan]

Matt said to dmb:

Okay, so is "stuckness" the only criterion for being "controlled by static patterns"?  Are you saying that if you never feel "stuck" you are, ipso facto, following DQ?

dmb says:
No, I wasn't offering anything like a set of standards or criteria. I was just trying to show how two seemingly different topics from different books could both be coherently understood by way of the static-Dynamic distinction. I was trying to show how it all fits together harmoniously once you understand that central distinction, even things as seemingly different as bike repair and determinism. 
To your second question, I'd say that the person who never gets stuck probably has a very, very boring life. In every example Pirsig offers, the person who got stuck was trying to solve a practical problem or accomplish a particular task. In each case, somebody was trying to set something right or do something well. If one only ever follows the well-worn path, paints only by numbers and otherwise leads a cookie-cutter life, i suppose one could avoid getting stuck. That's fine if you're a plant or a Republican, I suppose.
If you got my main point, Matt, then you probably realize how absurd it would be to ask the same sort of question about following DQ. Pirsig says DQ is the primary empirical reality, "an EXPERIENCE. It is not a judgement about experience. It is not a description of experience. The value itself is an experience. As such it is completely predictable. It is verifiable by anyone who cares to do so. It is reproducible. Of all experience it is the least ambiguous, least mistakable there is. Later the person may generate some oaths to describe this low value, but the value will always come first, the oaths second." (LILA 66) How do I know when I am following DQ? That's like asking how do I know when I'm grooving on it, digging it, in the zone. You just know from your own experience. I mean, this is not a JUST a prescription. It's an observation. This is what people do, especially creative people. Doesn't everybody know this, even if they don't have jargon for it? Yea, in fact, Pirsig says intellectuals have the hardest time seeing this and I strongly suspect this has a lot do with your trouble. I've noticed your tendency to anxiously use DQ as a "placeholder" until [Whew!] the static concepts can finally come to the rescue and finally resolve or settle things for us. You can't see it because it's way too obvious for a mind like yours, eh? 

"This Quality, this feeling for the work, is something known in every shop." (ZAMM 285)


Matt said to dmb:
Are there not self-confident people who never feel stuck?  Isn't "stuckness" a function of being self-conscious about a problem having arisen, a function of a seed of doubt?  Wouldn't you never feel stuck if you never doubted the static patterns handed to you through acculturation? Isn't the inability to feel stuck the smug serenity we despise occasionally in the faith-based spiritualist?


dmb says:
Ego will get you stuck faster than anything. Chris's ego climbing is set side by side with the imitators who get their Aristotelian 'A's, eh? And the artful mechanic is one who identifies with the machine and with the task in an egoless way. So, no, I don't think "self-confidence" is part of the equation. Competence is another story. 
Yea, to address the second question, if you get stuck it very likely means you were trying to do something. I think the idea is that you are faced with a problem that cannot be solved by the existing static patterns. Your tools or conceptual categories aren't up to the task. They've been inadequate or even obsolete and the only way out is to grow, to push beyond those old limits. It's in the folklore, you know. That's what people mean when they say 'necessity is the mother of invention'. It mean you got creative because you had a particular need and it could not be met with the existing options, so you invent a new option.
To the third point, I'd say that cultures grow in the same way as people do. Pirsig says the old ways of thinking aren't working in our culture because they cannot assimilate all the new irrational values and the new art forms, or the experiences people have. It's the same sort of cramped situation wherein we have expanded beyond the size of the old skin. This was also part of the lesson of the Zuni Brujo, who somehow knew that his tribe wouldn't survive if they didn't take on some new ways of thinking. 
Finally, I'd say that faith-based religiosity is usually a matter of very deliberately choosing to walk the well-worn path, an extreme form of clinging to and being controlled by static patterns. Historically speaking, under theism, creativity is the kind of thing that'll get you killed and precise maintenance of ritual and dogma would make you rich and powerful. Today, sadly, mainstream religion it's an elaborate system of delusion and denial - and an extremely reactionary political force. It retards the growth of individuals and the whole culture. Faith-based religions are a form of degenerate evil and I think the anti-evolutionary energy is exactly what makes it so. On this point especially, I think Pirsig totally nailed it.  


Matt said:
I'm not sure you offered another criterion for knowing whether you are being controlled by the static/conceptual other than stuckness in your comparative list of pragmatist vocabularies, but I'm not sure how well it works.



dmb says:

You're missing the point. Stuckness was not the point. It was just one of many ways to illustrate the point, which is that everything in Pirsig hangs together when you understand the sq/DQ distinction as the discrepancy between concepts and reality. I'm saying that Pirsig gives us lots of concrete examples of what it means to follow DQ and I'm trying to show how other philosophers describe this same distinction. 

Seems like you breezed right past the actual point and got stuck on stuckness, of all things. I'm especially trying to explain what Pirsig's DQ or James's pure experience refers to but your questions are all about the static/conceptual side. How is it that DQ just sort of evaporates when that is the whole point? How can DQ be the good and be the negative value in the hot stove example? That's the question, right? It's all about DQ and my post was an answer all about DQ and your response ain't got no DQ nowhere, nohow. Poof, it's just off the table. You preformed a disappearing act on my main point and all the supporting material - like three times in a row.

Are you not pretending to know a lot less than you do? Are you not pretending to miss this obvious thing of all, namely the topic and your own question at the top of the page? Sorry, that kind of daft oblivion is just not plausible coming from you. I don't believe it. I think you have to be pretending. I think you're trying way too hard to avoid any serious engagement with the well supported ideas that I've carefully laid out. That's what disingenuous means, pretending to know less than you actually do. And yea, that would be a classic kind of bad faith.