[MD] Arlo

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[John]
Well clearly I was being ironic.  I don't think that differentiaion is bad. 

[Arlo]
Who said "differentiation is bad"? What you're doing is the reductio ad absurdum, by suggesting that because Pirsig sought to fuse classical and romantic modes of thinking (the result of SOM) into one, that ALL forms of difference (e.g. you suggested "night and day" and "male and female") are useless.


[John]
Just to be clear, Arlo, are you saying the concept "art" ought to be eliminated?

[Arlo]
"Art" is high-quality endeavor. I've said this repeatedly. Why would you suggest I want to "eliminate" the concept? "Art" suffers under the classic/romantic schism, and, like Pirsig, I hold that uniting these RESCUES 'art'.

[John]
You think that would make everybody more artistic in their academic and and economic production?

[Arlo]
Like Pirsig, I think expanding the concept of "art" to apply equally to motorcycle repair and painting make all forms of human activity potentially better. Yes, I think both academics and business professionals benefit from an understanding that unites (classical) 'science' and (romantic) 'art'.

[John]
You really think it would help us if we just eliminated all art classed, and then remove the name so we won't miss it?

[Arlo]
Again, this is absurd. But, on the level of terminology, why not rename 'art classes' to just say the activity? "Painting 101", "An Introduction to Sculpture", "Music in the Middle Ages". Then we could have classes like "The Art of Painting", "The Art of Rhetoric", "The Art of Rationality", "The Art of Motorcycle Repair". 

But, here, I suggest you read Doorly. And Ant has already given you Doorly's way of approaching the terminology.

[John]
Since sculpture is the same as rotisserie assembly and motorcycle maintenance, then we don't need separate terms so lets just call it all what it is.

[Arlo]
Sculpting with clay, assembling a rotisserie, and repairing a motorcycle require both domain specific knowledge and an awareness that the patterns you are working on are in harmony with yourself and everything else. You continue to suggest that by uniting classical and romantic separations that anyone can do anything. Expertise derives from care, which derives from both an understanding of the historically accumulated knowledge on that activity AND an appreciation/awareness of immediate Quality. In LILA terms, you need BOTH static and Dynamic Quality.