[MD] The Tao of Quality - Verse 1

[Krimel]

[Robert Pirsig]
I think, furthermore, that all his metaphysical mountain climbing did
absolutely nothing to further either our understanding of what Quality is or
of what the Tao is. Not a thing. 
That sounds like an overwhelming rejection of what he thought and said, but
it isn't. I think it's a statement he would have agreed with himself, since
any description of Quality is a kind of definition and must therefore fall
short of its mark. I think he might even have said that statements of the
kind he had made, which fall short of their mark, are even worse than no
statement at all, since they can be easily mistaken for truth and thus
retard an understanding of Quality. 
No, he did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason. He
showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include elements that have
previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational.

[Krimel]
Notice that refrain? Yet some are convinced that after doing nothing for the
Tao in his first book, Pirsig wrote a second to demolish it.

I think not. I think he proceeds in order to benefit reason, or as James
would put it conceptualization. That is, chopping the world into measurable
parts. But he reiterates in Lila no metaphysics can to anything for the Tao.
Not a thing.

As he points out we are overwhelmed by "irrational elements crying for
assimilation." This is an important point amplified by Dan Ariely and the
behavioral economists. We are at our core irrational. But irrational does
not mean incoherent or even incorrect. It means other than rational;
nonalgorithic. We do not navigate our lives with reason. Reason itself
emerges as an artifact, as a technique, as a process for assimilating the
irrational. But reason does nothing for the Tao, or for Quality. Not a
thing.

[Robert Pirsig]
Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there
is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. A
metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any
metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of dialectical
definition and since Quality is essentially outside definition, this means
that a 'Metaphysics of Quality' is essentially a contradiction in terms, a
logical absurdity.
It would be almost like a mathematical definition of randomness. The more
you try to say what randomness is the less random it becomes. Or 'zero,' or
'space' for that matter. Today these terms have almost nothing to do with
'nothing.' 'Zero' and 'space' are complex relationships of 'somethingness.'
If he said anything about the scientific nature of mystic understanding,
science might benefit but the actual mystic understanding would, if
anything, be injured. If he really wanted to do Quality a favor he should
just leave it alone.
What made all this so formidable to Phaedrus was that he himself had
insisted in his book that Quality cannot be defined. Yet here he was about
to define it. Was this some kind of a sell-out? His mind went over this many
times.

[Krimel]
Here he echoes the refrain, "if he really wanted to do Quality a favor he
should just leave it alone." He see the MoQ as akin to a defining
randomness. The mystical and the irrational are subaltern voices, who
disappear in being spoken. He might preserve them in his silence but he has
an irrational urge him to speak. Yet in his speaking he can do nothing for
the Tao. Not a thing.

[Robert Pirsig]
A particularly large amount of this time had been spent trying to lay down a
first line of division between the classic and romantic aspects of the
universe he'd emphasized in his first book. In that book his purpose had
been to show how Quality could unite the two. But the fact that Quality was
the best way of uniting the two was no guarantee that the reverse was true -
that the classic-romantic split was the best way of dividing Quality. It
wasn't. 

[Krimel]
He see that the Tao provides a means to unite dualities and begins to
consider "the best way to divide" the Tao. He is not looking for the only
way to divide the Tao nor does he seek to kill it with his division. He
knows he can do not such a thing to the Tao. Not at all.

[Robert Pirsig]
Not subject and object but static and Dynamic is the basic division of
reality. When A. N. Whitehead wrote that 'mankind is driven forward by dim
apprehensions of things too obscure for its existing language,' he was
writing about Dynamic Quality. Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual
cutting edge of reality, the source of all things, completely simple and
always new. 

Static quality, the moral force of the priests, emerges in the wake of
Dynamic Quality. It is old and complex. It always contains a component of
memory. Good is conformity to an established pattern of fixed values and
value objects.

[Krimel]
The problem with the subject/object division is that once divided these
poles cannot be put back together again. But dynamic and static? 
 The dynamic aspect of Quality is change. It is flow. It is the distance
clamber of the subaltern, the mystic and the madman. It is irrational. It is
analog. It asks nothing from reason.

What does not drown in the wake of Dynamic flow, congeals in its wake. The
static aspect is orderly, regular and stackable. It can be arranged,
shuffled, measured, subdivided and constructed. It is digital. It is
algorithm. 

There was nothing he could do for that dynamic flow. Not a thing. But what
about reason; that static stuff? It can always use another coat of paint, a
bit of tinkering. He goes on to trying to show ways that flotsam and jetsam
are sloughed off and bob in the wake of DQ. But in the end he does nothing
for the Tao, or Quality. Not a thing.