[MD] Dewey's Zen

[david buchanan]

Andre said to Anthony: 
...I do have a question though with regards to what Anthony said which has nagged me for quite some time prior to this as well. Anthony said: "Thinking is [Dynamic but] could not even exist without the felt qualities of [the aesthetic continuum]". I understand that 'thinking' is a (let's for clarity's sake say) ongoing process/activity. But is it "Dynamic" (with a capital D)?


dmb says:
Good question. I think this seems somewhat tricky because we want to maintain the distinction between static and Dynamic but we also want to understand that these two elements are always working together. The artful motorcycle mechanic, for example, cannot ride the Dynamic cutting edge of his repair work without also having a whole lot of static patterns under his belt. And this motorcycle is an analogy for any rational system. This is one of the points I was hoping to raise with this exercise, by the way.
One of the false impressions I've seen floating around way too much is that experience has to be just one or the other, has to be either Dynamic or static. I think instead that DQ and sq cooperate in every moment, like they are "married" to each. Static patterns are derived from and lead back to DQ or, as it's expressed above, static thinking couldn't even occur without DQ as it's felt and lived and that ongoing flux of experience is what the static patterns are about. You gotta have both, simultaneously, not one then the other or one to the exclusion of the other. (I think this "one or the other" notion is not only a false dilemma, it ends up being destructively anti-intellectual, as we've all seen a thousand times from Marsha.)

dmb quotes Pirsig:
"A subject-object metaphysics presumes that this kind of Dynamic action without thought is rare and ignores when possible. [jumping off the hot stove.] But mystic learning goes in the opposite direction and tries to hold on to the ongoing Dynamic edge of all experience, both positive and negative, EVEN THE ONGOING DYNAMIC EDGE OF THOUGHT ITSELF. Phaedrus thought that of the two kinds of students, those who study only subject-object science and those who study only meditative mysticism, it would be the mystic students who would get off the stove first. The purpose of mystic meditation is not to remove oneself from experience but to bring one's self closer to it by eliminating stale, confusing, static, intellectual attachments of the past." (LILA 116)