[MD] The Hero's journey

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Dan,

Dan said:
...going back to your implicit rejection of all other possibilities... isn't 
it more a matter of simply ignoring that which has no value 
according to our social mores? To reject a possible point of value 
assumes that it has been considered... however, in most cases no 
consideration has been made at all.

Matt:
I guess I don't really see a conceptual difference between my 
"implicit rejection" and your "ignoring" to get at issue we were 
discussing.  (Except that "ignoring" can still be something you actively 
do, like rejection, and I'm after the ultimate conceptual passivity, 
which is implicitness.  But as your concern seems to be exactly that 
kind of "no [active] consideration" case, we seem to be in accord.)

Matt said:
Maybe it's that I still don't understand what difference that makes a 
difference there is between "negative" (which is a static term in your 
view) and "low" (which you approve for use in describing a 
DQ-perception).

Dan said:
Well... I'm not so sure I approve of "low" but we have to use some 
kind of symbolic representation of what we mean by Dynamic Quality 
while simultaneously keeping "it" concept-free. That can be tricky. It 
might be best not to speak of Dynamic Quality at all but then how do 
we further the intellectual value of the MOQ?

Matt:
Hunh...  Well, bear in mind that I was using "low" because _you_ 
introduced it.  I assumed that meant it was okay for us to use the 
term in a stipulated way, which I took from your usage (and clarified 
explicitly by pairing it against "negative").  Your big "but," I think, 
gets at a kind of instinct of quietism, with respect to DQ and 
metaphysics, that I don't feel anymore.  I feel like I'm at a place 
where I understand what it means to say something wrong about 
DQ, while at the same time understanding that some sayings are 
good.  I think it is this skittishness that produces the below 
comments on your part.  And I honestly can't just wave away the 
skittishness because it's those instincts that occasionally provide the 
corrective against the re-inflation of Platonism, which I take it is a 
kind of hypochondria that we must always look out for (I say with a 
nod to Dave).

You go on to say that you think "Dynamic Quality comes before the 
coin" of better/worse in the MoQ.  I still don't think that is a correct 
apprehension of how Pirsig describes the MoQ.  But as this is an 
issue of scholarship, the task of amassing evidence and 
counter-evidence is yet the task not done.

Matt said:
What I don't see in your wish to reverse my formulation is an 
attempt to tackle the problem that seems to lie in connecting (what 
we might call) evolutionary-DQ and experiential-DQ.

Dan said:
I might well be wrong but here I'm sensing static quality definitions 
creeping in and labeling Dynamic Quality...

Matt:
As your first response, I want to call this your quietistic instinct.  And 
realize, I don't want to put down the instinct.  However, I haven't the 
faintest idea how you can wield it against me without having the 
same sense for everything _you_ wrote afterwards.  I assume that 
for the sake of conversation, in the MD we have all decided, more or 
less and for better or for worse, that we're going to put aside 
quietism in order to talk about things.  We can all be quiet in the 
safety of our own homes (and real, non-MD lives).

Dan said:
This seems (to me) that the key to tying together your 
"evolutionary-DQ" and "experiential-DQ" is that experience is leading 
us all somewhere... we are evolving as we speak... and we cannot 
say where that somewhere is. The nature of evolution isn't found 
among bones and debris from the past... it is right here, right now.

Matt:
Yeah, that sounds right, but what about the differentiation in static 
compartments of the train-of-self that for Pirsig also represents a 
longitudinal evolutionary history, not just a personal history?  I think 
there's a difference in context for DQ in Pirsig's texts that forces us 
to recognize a difference between the evolution of a group and the 
evolution of an individual.  I haven't provided textual evidence, but 
my recent posts have been prodding in that direction by a sense 
that this is true.  The "nature of evolution" may not be found 
amongst bones and debris, but why would Pirsig differentiate 
between some of the bones and debris at all if it weren't in some 
sense important?

Matt said:
I can't cite Pirsig passages, but I can't imagine Pirsig denying the 
point that mammalian biological patterns enabled social patterns 
whereas (as of yet) reptilian patterns did not, let alone plant 
biological patterns.

Dan said:
I'm not sure what point you're making here. Again, it isn't that 
biological patterns enabled social patterns... Dynamic Quality enables 
static quality patterns leaving a historical evolutionary footprint. If not 
for the response to Dynamic Quality there would be no social or 
intellectual quality patterns... I think RMP makes that point in LILA 
about the baby who doesn't respond to Dynamic Quality being 
mentally challenged.

Matt:
Okay, sure, but what do you make of Pirsig saying that capitalism 
better breeds DQ than communism?  I'm not denying that without 
DQ there would be no biological patterns, but does Pirsig not 
suggest that social patterns allowed for more freedom/DQ?  That 
intellectual patterns allowed _us_ to be more free than ants?  It 
seems to me that pressing in this fashion, you're pressing against 
Pirsig.  Not me.  When I say "bio patterns enabled social" and you 
say they don't, there's a clear sense in which you are wrong if one 
understands what I mean by "enable": for ask why inorganic 
patterns did not leap straight to social.

Matt