[MD] The Hero's journey

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Dan,

Matt said:
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.

Dan said:
It seems apparent (to me) that RMP equates Dynamic Quality with 
pre-intellectual experience. I take the prefix "pre" to mean before. 
That's why I said Dynamic Quality comes before the coin. 
Intellectually, we decide what's better or worse, after the Dynamic 
moment has passed.

Matt:
Yes, DQ is pre-intellectual experience.  And I took it that Pirsig was 
saying that evaluative responses were our root experiences, and 
therefore pre-intellectual in nature, which means low/high 
evaluations are pre-intellectual though the _words_ "low" and "high" 
come later.

Dan said:
If Dynamic Quality is seen as synonymous with experience, then I am 
not so sure that there is a longitudinal evolutionary history outside a 
personal history. In ZMM RMP talks about the law of gravity and how 
it did not exist before Newton "discovered" it. What he seems to be 
saying is that the law of gravity (personal history) and gravity 
(longitudinal evolutionary history) are one and the same. In fact, 
when I asked him about this in LILA'S CHILD he responded along the 
lines of: How could they not be the same? So I will leave you with 
the same question...

Matt:
The trouble with this line of thought is that in Lila, Pirsig will talk 
about how some intellectual patterns are of high value (like 
distinguishing between subjects and objects was for a time, and still 
can be).  I think the endgame of the ZMM ghosts passage is more 
complex than you're allowing here, because I think Pirsig in the end 
would argue that while it is silly to think that gravity existed before 
Newton made it up--because intellectual patterns are incumbent 
upon people making them up--on the other hand it is internal to the 
correct functioning of that intellectual pattern that it be true for all 
previous time, in the past.  Not all intellectual patterns have this 
flavor, but a lot of the one's out of the natural sciences do.  
(Principally, I think, because a lot of the stuff in "nature" was around 
before we personally were.)

So how could evolutionary history not be the same as personal 
history?  Two distinct reasons.  1) one should make a distinction 
between "persons" and "not persons": rocks have histories, too, 
which means that though persons write the rocks' histories, persons 
should make a distinction between their own history and rocks' 
histories.  2) one should make a distinction between one's "I" and 
everyone else's "I," with the recognition that a lot of previous, 
now-dead I's have been around.  The point here is that the current 
crop of I's we see walking around are the inheritors of the evolving 
intellectual patterns created by people like Newton.  So we should 
make a distinction between _my_ personal history (born in 
Wisconsin, 1980, etc., etc.) and the histories of _groups_ of 
persons that extend beyond the range of a single person's lifespan 
(like the US, born in Pennsylvania, 1776, etc., etc.).

My "shoulds" denote that I think these are high quality static 
intellectual patterns.  We can, for example, blur the distinction 
between persons and not-persons, and between personal-history and 
group-history.  Good insights have come from so doing (as Pirsig did 
in the ghosts passage).  But I think the outcome is often a better 
understanding of relevant differences, not the obliteration of the 
distinctions.  For if "the law of gravity (personal history) and gravity 
(longitudinal evolutionary history) are one and the same," then why 
didn't gravity die with Newton?  Because of his ghost, right?  Well, 
there you have the distinction: group-history as ghost-history.  Our 
ghost-histories aren't our own first-personal experiential-DQ, they 
are what we drag with us from past first-persons' experiential-DQs.  
That's why I made the distinction between experiential-DQ and 
evolutionary-DQ.  I want to find just the right way of putting their 
relationship.

Matt