[MD] Words and Metaphysical Mysticism.

[David Harding]

Hi Mark,

Quality from ZMM becomes DQ in Lila.   Quality is left undefined in ZMM, and turned into the non-concept of DQ in Lila.  You do not like the distinction between DQ and sq.  You conflate these two very different qualities - often.  This is ugly mysticism, metaphysics and ugly generally…  There is a beauty in the MOQ's first division if you'd care to see it..

Also, had you read any mysticism before you read Lila?  Do you like Zen Buddhism? What appears to attract you to the MOQ is DQ.  However, DQ cannot be found by the intellect.  In fact, the intellect will take you *away* from Dynamic Quality not toward it.  The MOQ is an intellectual pattern of value.  If you like DQ so much, I point you towards Zen Buddhism and not an intellectual thing called the MOQ.

> Mark:  I fully agree here.  I am hear to learn, not to profess.  Through a
> formulation of what I present, I learn how to bring DQ into the realm of
> SQ.  I appreciate your indulgence.

What you seek is to have DQ for yourself by capturing it in sq.  Pretend otherwise as you might, this is what you do.  Embrace the fact that by your mere existence you are ruining the ultimately undefined nature of the universe.

> Mark: This is a false use of the biological level.  All that you are saying
> is that sounds are made by biology.  Biology is not the biological level.
> Biology is a manifestation of the biological level.  The two are very
> different things.  For example (using another level as analogy), a society
> is not the social level.  A society comes about as a function of the social
> level.  The levels cannot be pointed to, all we can point to are the
> results of these levels.  You seem to be confusing SQ for DQ.  What we see
> as animals are an SQ representation of the biological level (DQ).

The biological level isn't DQ.  It is sq.  Your conflation of DQ and sq here shows how your bad mysticism muddies the clear distinction between the two and thus cannot point to either.

> Mark:  I believe that here we have a fundamental difference in opinion
> concerning Quality.  (No, not DQ, Quality, remember that concept?)
> Metaphysics is an expression of value.  What metaphysics is expressing in
> words, is what comes before those words.  

I've never read a thing which I disagreed with more on MD. Metaphysics is sq intellectual values.  It is very clearly stated that these are 

> Metaphysics is like a painting of
> a landscape.  But it is not the landscape!  Any metaphysics is based on
> something which brings it forth.  It cannot stand on its own, because it is
> a description of something.  That Something is required before it can be
> described.  Metaphysics is not a degenerate activity, any more than a
> painting is degenerate.  We do not go around assuming that a painting is
> actually the real landscape, and we don't go around believing that a
> metaphysics is actually the nature of being.  This is what MOQ teaches.

I wholeheartedly disagree.  This is the point of my original post.  You conflate DQ with sq.. The words of a metaphysics can describe different things.   Words can describe the biological and inorganic values of a landscape, or the inorganic painting can represent the biological and inorganic values of a landscape.   So words don't just point to DQ.   The MOQ points to a whole lot more than DQ, and in fact it takes us away from DQ by naming it…   This is the mystical degeneracy of the intellect.

> 
> Last century (and this) was characterized by the dominance of words, which
> are thought to be the real thing they are describing.  As Pirsig laments at
> the end of ZAMM, the world had become hollow, without Quality.  When you
> say that metaphysics can stand on its own, you are making metaphysics
> hollow.  It is only a representation.  Pirsig warns that it is degenerate
> as soon as the words replace that which they describe.  However, knowing
> this, when we use words we are not using them in a degenerate manner.  We
> are using them for communication of that which lies before them.  We use
> money to represent something of value, but we do not confuse money for that
> thing.  Money does not stand on its own either, it is just pieces of paper.
> It is what that money represents that is important.

Words by their nature are fixed.  To these fixed words metaphysical meanings are attached.  

" The only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born — and to whose birth no thought has been given."

>> "To the intellect the process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality
>> of its own. It produces a certain excitement even though it leaves a
>> hangover afterward, like too many cigarettes, or a party that has lasted
>> too long. Or Lila last night. It isn't anything of lasting beauty; no joy
>> forever. What would you call it? Degeneracy, he guessed. Writing a
>> metaphysics is, in the strictest mystic sense, a degenerate activity." -Lila
>> 
> 
> David, I have to warn you that I see no value in quoting scripture.  In
> order to use this paragraph, you need to put it into context.  The context
> is the whole book.  Therefore in order to use this quote you need to
> include the whole book.  Just because it has all the words that you need,
> does not make it self sufficient.  I would appreciate it if you stopped
> throwing a bible at me as if it means something.  I ask the same thing of
> Christians.  The idea that their opinion is true, because they found it
> written in the Good Book, is complete nonsense and you know it.  I could
> find passages in Lila to support anything I wanted, such as "Quality states
> that capitalism is better than socialism".  These are just examples of a
> bigger picture.  Please use your own words, and do not resort to some kind
> of authority as if it make you right.  Such a thing is not very
> intellectual and does not convince anyone that you understood a
> metaphysical description of Quality.

Okay Mark - dslkfjakldsflk;adjsfjk;ahsdflk;hjdsa;klfjadslk;fgjkl;dsgj; - understand? Didn't think so. If we do not use conventions and rules everything becomes chaotic and meaningless.   We need static quality to create a fixed situation whereby we can communicate and build quality. On this forum - the static quality which we build quality on is RMP's two books - ZMM and Lila.   If we cannot discuss the content of those two books then we might as well be talking gibberish because we're never going to have any static quality we can build upon.  This is the beauty of static quality.  It creates a situation where DQ can flourish.

>> The MOQ does not say we should look to the 'source of the shadows'(DQ).
>> In fact, it's created so that we can look at the shadows(sq).  The first
>> division of the MOQ is between DQ and sq.  This division has been created
>> so we can intellectually put aside all mystical concerns and focus on the
>> intellectual value of the static patterns themselves.   The MOQ is
>> degeneracy.   Mystic degeneracy.  Need I repost another Pirsig quote which
>> says as much?
>> 
> 
> Mark:  Are you kidding me?!!  Have you heard of something called Quality?
> Have you heard of something called Value?  Have you heard about something
> called Morality?  These are the things that cast the shaddows.  MOQ is full
> of these things.  Stop being so literal, and try to understand what MOQ is
> trying to teach.  You are stuck in words, MOQ gives you a way out.

Quality becomes DQ in Lila.  DQ is the source of the shadows. If you want to discuss DQ on a philosophical forum then these thoughts will take you away from DQ not toward it:

"Thought is not a path to reality. It sets obstacles in that path because when you try to use thought to approach something that is prior to thought your thinking does not carry you toward that something. It carries you away from it. To define something is to subordinate it to a tangle of intellectual relationships. And when you do that you destroy real understanding." - Lila

The MOQ does not give you a way out.  By definition the MOQ is intellectual POV which does not take you towards DQ - it points you away from it.

> The MOQ is not degeneracy, it is a description.  Is the description of a
> mountain considered to be degenerate?  Put aside all mystical concerns?

The MOQ is *only* mystically degenerate.  From a static quality standpoint it is very valuable.  It is one of the best ideas ever created IMHO.  A description of a mountain is mystically degenerate yet intellectually valuable.   These two things - intellectual and mystical are in opposition..  

"To the intellect the process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality of its own. It produces a certain excitement even though it leaves a hangover afterward, like too many cigarettes, or a party that has lasted too long. Or Lila last night. It isn't anything of lasting beauty; no joy forever. What would you call it? Degeneracy, he guessed. Writing a metaphysics is, in the strictest mystic sense, a degenerate activity."

> Are you serious?  The MOQ leads to mysticism.  Tell me David, what are you
> hoping to get out of MOQ.  How do you plan to use it?  It is more than just
> a picture, it is a picture OF something.  That something is Quality.  Let
> us not forget Quality.

The MOQ leads us *away* from mysticism.  It is an idea.  Ideas capture reality into fixed metaphysical meanings.  DQ is not 

> Mark:  No, sorry but you are really on the wrong path here in terms of what
> MOQ is for.

It is you who is 'on the wrong path'.  I have no troubles with you valuing mysticism.   I value mysticism as well.  What I do have troubles with is your conflation of sq with DQ.  These two things could not be more different and go in very different directions..

> David, don't snip a little bit of what I present and then chime "So it's is
> a matter of belief?".  This is disingenuous and downright despicable.  What
> I had said was that MOQ (for example) is degenerate if one believes that
> the words stand on their own and do not represent something.  For example,
> if I say that Love is Blind, this does not mean that Love is something that
> walks around and has no eyes.  If I say that Quality is the source of all
> things, this does not mean that Quality is a machine that is churning out
> everything we see.   It means that a personal description of Quality is
> similar to the sense of "source of all things".  This only works if you
> know what my sense of "the source of all things" is.  When Jesus said that
> God is a father.  He did not literally mean that God is this man in the sky
> who treats us like children.  What he meant was that the sense he had of
> God was similar to the sense he had of a Father.  These senses are what
> forms our experience of such things.  You have to get away from words in
> themselves, and try to imagine what they represent.

Now who's the religious fanatic..   This is what I meant.. Your fearing that I am a religious fanatic simply meant that you fear that in others that which you fear most in yourself.  Thus, I was right to point out that you would likely be fanatical about religion (and especially fanatical about not being mystically degenerate when discussing the MOQ)..  Purity

> Mark:  Well, we can go round and round here.  All I can say is a painting
> is not the landscape, an idol is not a god, a menu is not a meal, money is
> not a car, the front end of a train is not DQ, static quality is not
> dynamic Quality.  We can agree to disagree here.

All you have said is that static quality exists.   A painting represents the static biological and inorganic quality of a landscape, an idol represents the static quality of a (cultural) god, a menu represents the biological quality of a meal, money can represent the sq of a car to be purchased, front end of the train can represent *statically* - DQ.  I agree - static quality is not Dynamic Quality.  

I don't agree to disagree.  This is a Philosophical forum created for the purpose of discussing philosophical disagreements.  

You conflate DQ with sq and this results in metaphysical ugliness.   I think there is a better, more beautiful, understanding of the MOQ. 

>> Would someone fearful of definitions write a Metaphysics which is just
>> about the largest thing you can define?  Pirsig literally embraces the
>> degeneracy of the intellect at the start of Lila and proceeds to be a
>> mystic degenerate by defining the MOQ.  Pirsig says that the MOQ is an
>> encapsulation of Dynamic Quality!   When you say Quality are you referring
>> to Dynamic Quality or are you conflating the two like a bad mystic?
>> 
> 
> Yes, of course he would be, because people would then try to pin whatever
> words Pisig uses and demonstrate that there is a flaw in there somewhere.
> This is why he states that any metaphysics is degenerate, to make the
> point that the metaphysics is not the real thing, but just a description.
> There are thousands of descriptions that Pirsig could have use that would
> have worked.  The literature is full of these.  Since descriptions of the
> same thing are 
>  available, we can compare MOQ to other forms of thought.
> 
> What you are saying, is that MOQ should be renamed to MODQ.  Pirsig does
> not bring in dynamic quality until his second book.  MOQ started with ZAMM.
> ZAMM is the spiritual that started the whole thing.  Besides,
> MOQ is a description, not an encapsulation.  Let us not fantasize cages
> where there are none.
> 

Pretending that the cage doesn't exist does not make it so..

> Mark:  I am sorry that you feel this way about MOQ.  Well, have fun being a
> degenerate then.  I see it as an opportunity to reveal a better way of
> looking at reality.

If you think that you can find a quote in Lila that says just about anything, then prove it by finding a quote which contradicts this….

"But the answer to all this, he thought, was that a ruthless, doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort. That's the degeneracy fanatics are made of. Purity, identified, ceases to be purity. Objections to pollution are a form of pollution. The only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born — and to whose birth no thought has been given. The rest of us have to settle for being something less pure. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life."



> Heh, heh, I have got no idea what you are saying here, except that it does
> not look like a compliment.  You feel that MOQ is degenerate, is see it as
> regenerative.  Maybe you are using the word degenerate in a way that I do
> not understand.
> 
> Here are some definitions:
> Degenerate
> 1. Having declined, as in function or nature, from a former or original
> state.
> 2. Having fallen to an inferior or undesirable state, especially in mental
> or moral qualities.
> 3. Physics Relating to two or more quantum states that share the same
> quantum numbers.
> 4. Physics Characterized by great density and consisting of atoms stripped
> of electrons.
> 5. Medicine Characterized by degeneration, as of tissue, a cell, or an
> organ.
> 6. Biology Having lost one or more highly developed functions,
> characteristics, or structures through evolution:
> 7. Genetics Having more than one codon that may code for the same amino
> acid.
> 
> Which one are you using?

Number 1.  and 2. (if we omit mental qualities..)

I'll repeat - The MOQ is mystically degenerate yet intellectually very valuable. These two things are in opposition.  To pretend otherwise is to misunderstand the MOQ (As I've shown through textual examples from Lila)

> No, they don't, they foster it.  One can reach a metaphysical state through
> the intellect.  This is what Zen, and other forms of Buddhism promote,
> contemplation.  One can become a Christian mystic by contemplating on the
> Bible.  A Sufi can reach mysticism by reading Islamist texts.  A Jewish
> mystic can be formed through readings of the Cabala.  There is nothing
> degenerate about these activities.

There is an important distinction Mark, between what is mystical and what is metaphysical.   One is before all definitions and is destroyed by them, the other is nothing but definitions. 

I'd have no disagreement with what you wrote above if you simply exchanged metaphysical with mystical.

> 
>> We all know what's good and bad Mark, you don't need to link that to the
>> inorganic level…   SOM needs to link everything to the objective world as
>> ideas 'don't really exist'.  Your insistence that your quality judgements
>> come from the inorganic level indicates that you still see things, as does
>> Marsha, from a SOM based perspective...
>> 
> 
> Mark:  All I can say David is that you do not understand the levels.  Nor
> do you understand mysticism. Try reading "Practical Mysticism A Little Book
> For Normal People" by Evelyn Underhill.  It is an easy read, and free in
> Kindle books.  Then read some books by the more famous proclaimed mystics.
> Try to imagine being one of them, seeing through their eyes.
> 
> You seem to think that mysticism is a point of view.  Now that is
> disparaging to mysticism.

From an intellectual standpoint - mysticism is a point of view.  Mystically speaking mysticism isn't anything - not mysticism not zen not anything.  But this is a philosophical forum where we speak intellectually.  As I said, if you would like to speak mysticism, which I have no troubles with, then please do so at your nearest Zen centre.. Not on a philosophical discussion board.

> 
> Mark:  This just suggest to me that we have different interpretations of
> what mysticism is.  How would you describe a mystical experience?  I do not
> pretend to be a mystic, I will leave that for the fortune tellers.
> 
> STOP with the quotes, you remind me of a fundamentalist moslem with all
> their dictates from their holy book!  Are you trying to put the fear of
> Pirsig in me?

Rather than a religious fanatic - have you heard of the value of textual references in academia?  If one makes a claim about the MOQ, the only place the MOQ has been 'officially' espoused is in Lila and built from the foundations of ZMM.  Everyone on here claims to understand the MOQ as espoused by Pirsig in those two books.  If you do not make such a claim then that is rather unusual as it would be against the rules of the MD. 

> 
> By the way, what do you mean by "the mystical nature of the universe".
> What on God's green earth is that?  Please, tell me more about this nature.

It's interesting that you accuse me of religious fanaticism when you mention God or Jesus so regularly…

I can tell you nothing about the ultimately undefined mystical nature of the universe.  For it is before all words.  It is that very thing which you try and capture by pretending that you don't capture it when you discuss the MOQ.  

> Mark: Well, here you are wrong again.  Riding a horse only becomes static
> quality when we think about it and turn it into such.  Try to imagine
> riding a horse without thinking.  Yes, the description of it is static
> quality, but the description is not that riding itself.

Is the activity of riding a horse a thought? No. It's a good idea to think that when we ride a horse we are actually riding a horse and not thinking about it.    

Therefore, the thought of riding a horse represents the *static quality* of the activity of riding a horse.  

>  It is just a story
> about it.  When you see a book, do you say: "There it is, the French
> revolution in action!"  "I gotta go and save Miss Lucie Manette!"

Books about the French Revolution contain words which intellectually represent the *static quality* of the French Revolution which happened over two hundred years ago.

> Well, your claim that my denial precludes value in distinction shows that
> you have run out of steam.  What kind of nonsense is that?  It would seem
> that you do not value the distinction between DQ and SQ since you claim to
> be stuck in SQ.  

I am just as 'stuck' in sq intellectually as you.  Your denial of this, doesn't mean that you are not stuck just as much as the rest of us.  In fact, your denial that you pollute the world with fixed metaphysical meanings, means that you're more stuck because it means that you will never fully confront any static quality that you create for you'd deny that you have any to begin with..

> MOQ is an attempt to rectify the degeneracy you have
> fallen into.  Give me an example of one of your good mystics, and then an
> example of a bad mystic.  I will look these up on the internet so that I
> can see what you are talking about.

A good mystic is one who doesn't deny that they pollute the world with fixed metaphysical meanings.  Any Zen teacher or master will be of the opinion that what the 'small self' creates is *not* the 'big self'.  

> What has MOQ done for you lately?  Are you lying in a gutter, pissing in
> your pants?  Have you been drinking too much of that despicable MOQ juice?
> Go easy on that stuff or you will remain degenerate!  All this degeneracy
> has got to get to you sometime.

Mystic degeneracy.  The MOQ is intellectually very valuable.  The MOQ is a great guide to life and can help us make good *intellectual* decisions about our lives.  

> If you ARE your opinions, then where do these opinions come from?

DQ. 

> I am Dynamic Quality, and so are you.  Stop thinking about it so much and
> just do it!

This is ugly.  You aren't DQ.  DQ isn't yours.  No thing is DQ.  No you, not me, nor anything else..

> Cheers David, and thanks for being a good sport.

Mark, I must also note that I have discussed things with you before, years ago, and your views on the MOQ appear to have changed very little.  I think this is because you do not accept that the MOQ really says very much at all other than point to DQ.  If you realised how wrong this outlook is, then you would be able to confront the sq of your own life and become a better person as a result...

Thanks Mark, 

-David.