[MD] Static & Dynamic Simultaneously

[david buchanan]

EVEN MORE QUOTES FROM PIRSIG that I take as evidence for the claim that static patterns are a necessary ingredient for dynamic freedom, as a crucial ingredient in the art of rationality. I take this as evidence against relativism and nihilism, which has infected Marsha and a few MOQers.

"Now I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal recognition of Quality in its operation."

"A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself."


"One’s rational understanding of a motorcycle is therefore modified from minute to minute as one works on it and sees that a new and different rational understanding has more Quality. One doesn’t cling to old sticky ideas because one has an immediate rational basis for rejecting them. ..It’s not a set of ideas you have to either fight or resign yourself to. It’s made up, in part, of ideas that are expected to grow as you grow, and as we all grow, century after century. With Quality as a central undefined term, reality is, in its essential nature, not static but dynamic. And when you really understand dynamic reality you never get stuck. It has forms but the forms are capable of change.  ...If you want to ..fix a motorcycle, ..then classical, structured, dualistic subject-object knowledge, although necessary, isn’t enough. You have to have some feeling for the quality of the work. You have to have a sense of what’s good. That is what carries you forward. This sense isn’t just something you’re born with, although you are born with it. It’s also something you can develop."