[MD] On Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner

[Adrie Kintziger]

What you wrote above Tuukka,only seems to be individual based
only,--but in fact it is a well known problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz

You schould read 'Tropic of cancer', and the rest of Miller,and also
consider
that in fact the core theme of what you wrote is in essence, philosophical.
Long time ago you told on this platform that you are a talented cartoonist.
I checked it out then, and it proved to be trhue;you have talent.
But why to diffuse away on this weltschmerz, and even analyse one's one
smoking habbits....pfff,kinda form of ultimate boredom?, probably?..

Strange , the way you wrote it,given the fact that English is not your
native tongue,suggests you are capable of much more in Finnisch.

This problem with your pension's money retrievability if you are caught
working is the same we have here in Belgium.If i get caught working
physikally, with my hands , in a paid situation,i will lose my rights for
years....
However they make an exeption here for creativity of the mind, it is
allowed to write books or create paintings and ask money for it.To allow
creativity.
But they do tax it in a high scale.I even have to be carefull with
performing
work on my own property.I can do maintenance,but if i do work on it that is
actually value increasing,--i have to ask permission,and i will be fined
if i sell it to cash in on the increased value, for a period of 5 years.

Adrie


2016-07-25 15:12 GMT+02:00 Tuukka Virtaperko <mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net>:

> Dan,
>
>
>
> On 24-Jul-16 23:54, Dan Glover wrote:
>
>> Tuukka,
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 10:26 AM, Tuk <mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Dan, all,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 20-Jul-16 9:25, Dan Glover wrote:
>>>
>>>> Tuukka, all,
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 3:35 PM, Tuk <mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Dan, Adrie, all,
>>>>>
>>>>>> Tuukka:
>>>>>>> Pirsig writes that the ancient Egyptians were social whereas the
>>>>>>> Greek
>>>>>>> were intellectual, but the MOQ wasn't invented back then. So I guess
>>>>>>> rocks were inorganic and dinosaurs biological, too.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dan:
>>>>>> Remember the gravity analogy from ZMM? That pertains to this point
>>>>>> too. When we begin to mistake the map for the territory, when we take
>>>>>> concepts as concrete reality, well then it only seems common sense to
>>>>>> think biological and social patterns existed before Robert Pirsig
>>>>>> invented the terms for his MOQ. Just like gravity existing before
>>>>>> Newton's laws of gravity. If we think about it, however, the only
>>>>>> conclusion we can make is that like gravity, biological and social
>>>>>> patterns did not exist before they were invented.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Tuukka:
>>>>> In any case, once Pirsig's letter to Turner was published the ancient
>>>>> Egyptians became social and the ancient Greek intellectual. That's the
>>>>> notion I'm trying to grasp here.
>>>>>
>>>> Dan:
>>>> Well, I think Mr. Pirsig answered the questions put to him as best as
>>>> he could rather than deferring. Check it out:
>>>>
>>>> "Dear Paul Turner
>>>>
>>>> "The question you raise about the intellectual level has troubled me
>>>> too. When I answered Dan Glover in Lila's Child, I remember being a
>>>> little annoyed that anyone should ask what the intellectual level
>>>> is-as though he were asking me what I mean by the word, "the." Any
>>>> definition you give is more likely to complicate understanding than
>>>> simplify it. But since then I have seen the question grow because the
>>>> answer I have given is inadequate.
>>>>
>>>> "First of all, the line that, "Biologically [Lila's] fine, socially
>>>> she's pretty far down the scale, intellectually she's nowhere. . ."
>>>> did not mean that Lila was lying on the cabin floor unconscious,
>>>> although some interpretations of the intellectual level would make it
>>>> seem so. Like so many words, "intellectual" has different meanings
>>>> that are confused. The first confusion is between the social title,
>>>> "Intellectual," and the intellectual level itself. The statement,
>>>> "Some intellectuals are not intellectual at all," becomes meaningful
>>>> when one recognizes this difference. I think now that the statement
>>>> "intellectually she's nowhere," could have been more exactly put: "As
>>>> an intellectual Lila is nowhere." That would make it clearer that the
>>>> social title was referred to and the dispute about her intellectuality
>>>> would not have arisen.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>>
>>> But what is Lila inorganically? Flesh and bone aren't inorganic
>>> according to
>>> you,
>>>
>> Dan:
>> Oh but they are. Inorganic. They, flesh and bone, are made of molecules.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Okay, I get it you mean they are both inorganic and biological.
>
>
>
>> so do you mean that Lila inorganically doesn't exist, or that she
>>> inorganically consists of some compounds that are part of her body but
>>> don't
>>> contain DNA? How about cells, then? Only their mitochondria contain DNA.
>>> So
>>> are only mitochondria of cells biological whereas the other parts of the
>>> cell are inorganic?
>>>
>> Dan:
>> If we check out Chapter 12 in Lila, we find:
>>
>> "In this plain of understanding static patterns of value are divided
>> into four systems: inorganic patterns, biological patterns, social
>> patterns and intellectual patterns. They are exhaustive. That's all
>> there are. If you construct an encyclopedia of four topics-Inorganic,
>> Biological, Social and Intellectual-nothing is left out. No "thing,"
>> that is. Only Dynamic Quality, which cannot be described in any
>> encyclopedia, is absent.
>>
>> "But although the four systems are exhaustive they are not exclusive.
>> They all operate at the same time and in ways that are almost
>> independent of each other.
>>
>> "This classification of patterns is not very original, but the
>> Metaphysics of Quality allows an assertion about them that is unusual.
>> It says they are not continuous. They are discrete. They have very
>> little to do with one another. Although each higher level is built on
>> a lower one it is not an extension of that lower level. Quite the
>> contrary. The higher level can often be seen to be in opposition to
>> the lower level, dominating it, controlling it where possible for its
>> own purposes.
>>
>> "This observation is impossible in a substance-dominated metaphysics
>> where everything has to be an extension of matter. But now atoms and
>> molecules are just one of four levels of static patterns of quality
>> and there is no intellectual requirement that any level dominate the
>> other three." [Robert Pirsig]
>>
>> Dan comments:
>> So Lila can be and is all four levels at the same time.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Yeah. I thought about this in a too complicated manner at first.
>
>
>> Anyway, the above Pirsig quote inspires me to modify the model.
>>> Unfortunately my attempt to do so produced a jungle of hypotheses that
>>> has
>>> been too complicated to understand so far. I spent the last day in that
>>> jungle and this day, too, and haven't come up with a complete solution. I
>>> won't be home for the weekend so I won't have time to think this through
>>> soon, if that's even possible. Maybe I should break down as a list what I
>>> have so far.
>>>
>>> Tentative value and pattern definition: Firstly, let us define "value" as
>>> something that's either inorganic, biological, social or intellectual,
>>> and
>>> "pattern" as a data object that may have an inorganic, biological, social
>>> and intellectual attribute. Values are not patterns and patterns are not
>>> values. In the context of programming we also want to say that variables
>>> have values or that functions return values, but these are "improper
>>> values". "Proper values" are either inorganic, biological, social or
>>> intellectual.
>>>
>> Dan:
>> You are making this harder than it has to be.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Possibly, if talking is what you want to do. But not so if it's
> programming. There would've been alternatives I seriously considered. One
> interesting alternative was one in which each value was also a pattern. But
> it didn't seem to make sense.
>
>
>> Tentative biological pattern definition: The biological value of a
>>> biological pattern is the sum of the decisions it has been affected by,
>>> including its own decisions. Lila is biologically fine because she's a
>>> sexually confident woman.
>>>
>> Dan:
>> No, she's not. Lila is growing older and she understands how she will
>> soon lose whatever it was that once attracted men to her.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Ah, but of course. However, Pirsig literally writes that "biologically,
> she's fine".
>
>
>> The social value of a biological pattern is the
>>> sum of how its decisions have affected everyone, including itself. Lila
>>> is
>>> pretty far down the scale because she breaks marriages. Its intellectual
>>> value is determined as the value of justifications it can express. Lila
>>> is
>>> nonexistent as she can't express intellectual things.
>>>
>> Dan:
>> Now you sound like Rigel.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Dang, I can't believe I fell into that Victorian thinking pattern. I just
> tried to find some reason why Pirsig wrote that socially, Lila's pretty far
> down the scale. But I guess that has more to do with not having a steady
> job, being some sort of a vagabond and so on. I don't remember getting a
> clear impression of who is Lila socially.
>
>
> Again, from Lila:
>>
>> "She didn't want to get involved with him, though. She didn't want to
>> get involved with anybody. After a while they want to get involved,
>> like Jim, and that's when the trouble begins."
>>
>> Dan comments:
>> See, Lila didn't wreck Jim's marriage. Jim wrecked Jim's marriage. And
>> it isn't simply Lila's biological beauty that draws men like the
>> Captain, Rigel, and Jim to Lila. Beauty has as much to do with
>> cultural values as it does with biological values. Justifications,
>> like beauty, are also culturally anchored, as described here:
>>
>> "Descartes' "I think therefore I am" was a historically shattering
>> declaration of independence of the intellectual level of evolution
>> from the social level of evolution, but would he have said it if he
>> had been a seventeenth century Chinese philosopher? If he had been,
>> would anyone in seventeenth century China have listened to him and
>> called him a brilliant thinker and recorded his name in history? If
>> Descartes had said, "The seventeenth century French culture exists,
>> therefore I think, therefore I am," he would have been correct."
>> [Lila]
>>
>> Dan comments:
>> And then so sure in a subject and object dominated world, black and
>> white, right and wrong, it is easier to assign value, positive or
>> negative, to 'things' but when we move to the MOQ, where things are
>> now patterns of value, we face a greater challenge in that a 'thing'
>> can be evaluated in both positive and negative aspects and at the same
>> time.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> I agree value assignment is cognitively more expensive in the MOQ than in
> SOM.
>
>
>
>> Tentative social pattern definition: Social patterns are the power set of
>>> the social values of biological patterns. The social value of each social
>>> pattern is determined according to how the decisions made by the members
>>> have affected the members of the pattern. This way, even though getting
>>> wounded decreases a soldier's biological value it doesn't decrease his
>>> social value as it wasn't his decision.
>>>
>> Dan:
>> As long as it is understood how social patterns are not a collection
>> of biological patterns.
>>
>> Tentative intellectual pattern definition: When a decision is made, its
>>> justification accumulates as much value as is the social value of the
>>> decision for everyone affected by it.
>>>
>>> Questions:
>>> 1. What is the inorganic value of a biological pattern?
>>> 2. What is the inorganic value of a social pattern?
>>> 3. What is the inorganic value of an intellectual pattern?
>>> 4. What is the biological value of a social pattern?
>>> 5. What is the biological value of an intellectual pattern?
>>> 6. What is the social value of an intellectual pattern?
>>>
>>> On a hypothetical inorganic pattern definition: Perhaps it's possible to
>>> combine the notion that serving as the extension of a biological pattern
>>> accumulates inorganic value with the notion that identification
>>> accumulates
>>> inorganic value. After all, a guitar cannot be the extension of a guitar
>>> player unless identified as such. This means that the notion of
>>> identification being the cause of inorganic value accumulation makes
>>> redundant the notion that serving as the extension of a biological
>>> pattern
>>> is the cause of inorganic value attribution. But if we define inorganic
>>> patterns as identifications, how does value accumulation work so that the
>>> inorganic level doesn't end up having more value than the biological one?
>>>
>> Dan:
>> Unsure where you are going with this.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> When I wrote that I was stuck because I understood patterns in a too
> complicated manner. That's just my way of approaching things. I slam right
> at them with an obsessed mind, write a lot of text that doesn't seem to be
> going anywhere, feel the urge to publish it to get it out of my mind, and
> finally at some later moment figure out what I really want to think.
>
>
>> "Another subtler confusion exists between the word, "intellect," that
>>>> can mean thought about anything and the word, "intellectual," where
>>>> abstract thought itself is of primary importance. Thus, though it may
>>>> be assumed that the Egyptians who preceded the Greeks had intellect,
>>>> it can be doubted that theirs was an intellectual culture."
>>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>> Here "intellect" means improperly or proprely intellectual whereas
>>> "intellectual" refers to properly intellectual.
>>>
>>> Dan comments:
>>>> See, notice how he qualifies his answer by first stating how difficult
>>>> it is to answer. The question. How by doing so may in fact only sow
>>>> more and greater confusion, especially since this language, English,
>>>> is prone to alternate meanings even given the same word and sometimes
>>>> even the same context. But on the other hand, he decides to do it,
>>>> damn the torpedoes and all that.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>> In effect, I get the feeling you're suggesting I should regard my
>>> results as
>>> preliminary instead of speaking of "resolving issues".
>>>
>> Dan:
>> If your results are falsifiable, then they may lead to greater awareness.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> They may be verifiable by creating an artificial intelligence according to
> them.
>
>
>> More from Robert Pirsig's letter:
>>>> "When getting into a definition of the intellectual level much clarity
>>>> can be gained by recognizing a parallel with the lower levels. Just as
>>>> every biological pattern is also inorganic, but not all inorganic
>>>> patterns are biological; and just as every social level
>>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>> Why does he use the word "level" here instead of "pattern" like in the
>>> rest
>>> of the text? Just a meaningless rhetorical convention?
>>>
>> Dan:
>> I would say so, yes.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Cool.
>
>
>
>>
>>> is also
>>>> biological, although not all biological patterns are social; so every
>>>> intellectual pattern is social although not all social patterns are
>>>> intellectual. Handshaking, ballroom dancing, raising one's right hand
>>>> to take an oath, tipping one's hat to the ladies, saying "Gesundheit
>>>> !" after a sneeze-there are trillions of social customs that have no
>>>> intellectual component. Intellectuality occurs when these customs as
>>>> well as biological and inorganic patterns are designated with a sign
>>>> that stands for them and these signs are manipulated independently of
>>>> the patterns they stand for. "Intellect" can then be defined very
>>>> loosely as the level of independently manipulable signs. Grammar,
>>>> logic and mathematics can be described as the rules of this sign
>>>> manipulation."
>>>>
>>>> Dan comments:
>>>> I think this paragraph answers your questions about guitars and
>>>> clothes and how they can be strictly inorganic patterns or inorganic
>>>> and biological patterns simultaneously depending upon the origins of
>>>> materials used to construct said patterns. Also it shows how social
>>>> and intellectual patterns, although discrete systems in their own
>>>> right, cannot exist without the underlying inorganic and biological
>>>> patterns that uphold them. In essence, when we walk out of a room, it
>>>> cannot be said to exist or to not exist. The room. The story ends. And
>>>> yeah, then we can perhaps walk back into the room and reassure
>>>> ourselves that it does indeed exist. The room. Or not. If something
>>>> has occurred in our absence to destroy the room.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>> The room will keep existing in our memory, just like hairs are
>>> categorized
>>> as biological in our minds even though we haven't tested the hairs we
>>> encounter for DNA.
>>>
>> Dan:
>> Whether the room exists in memory or not has nothing to do with saying
>> the room exists or not. Map and territory.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Remind me why we're talking about this?
>
>
>
>>
>>>
>>>> Maybe, if an inorganic pattern accumulates value as the extension of a
>>>>>>> biological pattern, it simply retains the value.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Come to think of it, even in my current model the inorganic level can
>>>>>>> have
>>>>>>> more value than the biological if the biological level has negative
>>>>>>> value
>>>>>>> and a biological pattern uses an inorganic pattern to do something
>>>>>>> good.
>>>>>>> Perhaps I have to measure value here so that it never has negative
>>>>>>> value.
>>>>>>> Yeah, that would seem to work.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dan:
>>>>>> If there is no negative value, then what impetus drives progress and
>>>>>> evolution?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Tuukka:
>>>>>
>>>>> What I meant is that we have to measure value without negative values
>>>>> in
>>>>> this context because of the following problem:
>>>>>
>>>>> Suppose a biological pattern Jane of a value of -5 playing a guitar of
>>>>> 0
>>>>> value so that 3 units of value are accumulated. In this case the
>>>>> biological
>>>>> level would have a value of -2 whereas the inorganic level would have a
>>>>> value of 3. This makes the pattern language contradict Pirsig because
>>>>> Pirsig
>>>>> says the biological level has more value than the inorganic level.
>>>>>
>>>>> We can resolve the contradiction in the following way:
>>>>>
>>>>> Negative value and positive value accumulate as biological patterns
>>>>> make
>>>>> choices. However, we have to store the negative and positive value to
>>>>> different variables. If we sum these variables, we get the relative
>>>>> value
>>>>> of
>>>>> the pattern. The aforementioned problem features relative values.
>>>>> However,
>>>>> if we sum the absolute values of these variables, we get the absolute
>>>>> value
>>>>> of the pattern, which would be 3 for the guitar and 7 for Jane. When
>>>>> Pirsig
>>>>> writes that the biological level has more quality than the inorganic
>>>>> level
>>>>> he means that it has more absolute value.
>>>>>
>>>>> Relative value drives progress and evolution.
>>>>>
>>>> Dan:
>>>> The way I understand it, there are no absolute values in the MOQ. You
>>>> seem to be arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and then making
>>>> assumptions on those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying, see!
>>>> Here is a contradiction.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>>
>>> That's exactly what I'm doing because I'm developing a pattern language
>>> and
>>> I don't want the pattern language to contradict Pirsig. My goal is a
>>> system
>>> in which I can't do "arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and then
>>> making
>>> assumptions on those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying, see!
>>> Here
>>> is a contradiction." And it seems to me I just reached that goal
>>> regarding
>>> negative values by introducing the notion of absolute value.
>>>
>>> If you don't like the notion of absolute value, the goal apparently can
>>> also
>>> be reached with a MOQ that has no negative value. Looks like you want a
>>> MOQ
>>> with negative value but without absolute value. And I'm curious how
>>> you're
>>> going to get that, because I don't know how to do that without leaving
>>> room
>>> for "arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and then making assumptions
>>> on
>>> those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying, see! Here is a
>>> contradiction."
>>>
>>> I think there's a name for "arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and
>>> then
>>> making assumptions on those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying,
>>> see! Here is a contradiction". The name is "reductio ad absurdum".
>>>
>> Dan:
>> And so remind me again why we are talking?
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> We're talking about this because you argued that there are no absolute
> values in the MOQ. The most likely explanation for your stance is you're
> using the Two Truths Doctrine (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine) to formulate the
> distinction between the relative and the absolute. But I don't mean
> absolute value in that sense. I mean absolute value in the mathematical
> sense. That is, the absolute value of x is |x|. These are all "relative
> truths" in the Buddhist sense.
>
>
>
>>
>>> Do you see what I'm aiming at? In everyday life it doesn't matter
>>>>>>>>> whether
>>>>>>>>> an
>>>>>>>>> article of clothing is made from synthetic fibres or human hair.
>>>>>>>>> It's
>>>>>>>>> still
>>>>>>>>> an article of clothing. It's an object. It doesn't walk around on
>>>>>>>>> its
>>>>>>>>> own
>>>>>>>>> and it doesn't breathe, and so on. I just think this kind of a
>>>>>>>>> division
>>>>>>>>> between the inorganic and the biological is more in accord with
>>>>>>>>> everyday
>>>>>>>>> common sense use of language than focusing on the point that
>>>>>>>>> clothes
>>>>>>>>> made
>>>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>>>> human hair contain DNA. Who cares about that? And why?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Dan:
>>>>>>>> First of all, it is okay to use subject/object terminology as long
>>>>>>>> as
>>>>>>>> it is remembered that those terms stand for patterns of value.
>>>>>>>> Second,
>>>>>>>> we are discussing the MOQ and its terminology, which may or may not
>>>>>>>> differ from everyday terminology. Is blood a biological pattern? It
>>>>>>>> doesn't walk around and breathe. How about organs awaiting
>>>>>>>> transplant?
>>>>>>>> A heart, or a set of lungs? Kidneys? Are those biological patterns?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Tuukka:
>>>>>>> Well, they're *parts* of a biological pattern.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dan:
>>>>>> So is a baby part of a biological pattern too?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Tuukka:
>>>>> Whichever it is, the pattern that decides that is an intellectual
>>>>> pattern.
>>>>>
>>>> Dan:
>>>> Ah. So we throw up our hands?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>>
>>> I meant that I don't particularly want to discuss this because I'm not
>>> very
>>> sure of how this thing goes, but there are other things of which I'm more
>>> sure and they seem all the more important for me when you question their
>>> importance by questioning whether it is even possible to resolve issues.
>>>
>>> But I can answer the question anyway. I think the baby is part of a
>>> biological pattern before birth and a biological pattern in its own right
>>> after birth.
>>>
>> Dan:
>> So before birth the baby is part of mother and after baby is a
>> separate and independent being. Is that what you're saying?
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Yes. The baby is physically separate from the mother after birth.
>
>
>> Tuukka:
>>> Yeah, well I'm a pensioner so I have all day for this.
>>>
>> Dan:
>> Ah. So the negative quality that tends to drive me, namely, the need
>> to earn a living, is absent with your life, though, of course, perhaps
>> it's debatable whether or not it is really negative quality, the need
>> to work every day. Some people, like me, enjoy it. The working. Even
>> though I'd rather not be doing it. The working. If I had my druthers,
>> that is. Which I don't. And maybe that's where the conundrum exists.
>> Interesting. I often wonder if I would be nearly as productive if I
>> wasn't driven the way I am. Instead my habit of working and writing
>> every single day, I might instead be tempted to take a day off now and
>> again. And that now and again might indeed grow into the habit of not
>> writing and not working every day. I'm just not sure.
>>
>
> Tuukka:
>
> Work's a duty I thought to fulfill. Since Pirsig made academic philosophy
> seem like a waste of time I thought to become a machinist. Or a welder. I
> really liked welding although I didn't want to do that for a living. And
> the teacher said I was the best technical drawer he's ever had. I completed
> the assignments faster than my classmates and had nothing to do for most of
> the time. But a guy on our class thought I don't fit in and I had nothing
> to prove so one day I walked away for good.
>
> I'd be able to work a little. But I can't make much money or I'll lose my
> pension. Work isn't a kind of a "let's see what you can do" thing for a
> Finnish pensioner. It's a "let's see what the welfare state allows you to
> do" kind of thing. Since working feels like concession to begin with,
> having to beg to make that concession turns the whole affair so repulsive I
> don't want to have anything to do with it.
>
> Not having to go to work gave me time to work on the MOQ but it also
> isolated me. My home is my work place. I have a hard time relaxing here.
> I'm anxious right now. I'm alone under the authority of a demanding
> superego that used to require me to work all the time and is having a hard
> time not burning myself out. But even my work doesn't progress if I can't
> relax or have fun. I'm not organized enough to meditate regularly. I need
> something intense to direct my attention away from work stuff and then,
> when I relax, the answers to my questions pop out of nowhere. But all that
> intense stuff costs money.
>
> I've spent more than I earn for years and one day I mightn't be able to do
> that anymore. Mentally, I cringe when I think of that day. My first
> reaction to the idea is that that's a day when I'll kill myself. But
> suicide doesn't really feel like my cup of tea. Suicide sucks because the
> one who dies that way tends to disgrace the things he stood for. Petri
> Walli was an ingenious Finnish rock musician who killed himself, and
> someone wrote that with him died the modern hippie dream.
>
> The near-impossibility of suicide makes me afraid of ending up living
> without wanting to live. I'm so bad at living that if I'm hungry I might
> just ignore it instead of eating. Pirsig wrote he lives out of habit but my
> habits suck. I'm too high-strung to be able to go for a walk in the park. I
> smoke because that's so addictive it's easy to do. And when I don't have
> cigarettes I go to my ashtray and roll my own from what's left in the butts
> there. At least those butts don't cost money.
>
> I have lots of respect for Robert Pirsig. He managed to have a job in
> addition to writing. I don't feel like I'm very good at writing. I used to
> be better but I kind of lost focus. I can still get good ideas but I
> express them when they're not finished because I've been at this for over a
> decade and this never seems to get finished anyway, although I wished that
> it would. But if this got finished now I don't know what else I'd do, so it
> doesn't matter.
>
> I feel hard but brittle, like glass. And I want to feel young and supple.
> I've been trying to figure out what's wrong. Maybe I should live more
> communally so that the presence of other people would help in grounding me.
> It sure looks like I'm turning into some kind of a hippie anyway. There's
> life in that direction, life that isn't expensive. Unconditional love
> intrigues me because that's the antithesis of how I lived when my
> productivity was the measure of my worth. It's not peace and love I'm
> usually thinking about but I'd like to.
>
> I wish I had a girlfriend.
>
>
>
>> So why do I care? I care on account of the possibility that those
>>>> words I saw on the ceiling in that hospital room really did mean
>>>> something. That those words are inside me, somewhere, waiting to be
>>>> born. And maybe these words right here are part of them. Those words I
>>>> saw but couldn't quite read. Or maybe this is all just a bunch of
>>>> silly shite and none of it means a thing. Either way, caring seems
>>>> better than not caring.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dan:
>>>>>>>> But isn't that so for the universe in general? When the story stops,
>>>>>>>> so does the universe.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Tuukka:
>>>>>>> Yeah. Quality is modeled by the mind, and the mind is biological.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dan:
>>>>>> Ideas come first. Then comes the biological mind.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Tuukka:
>>>>> What do you mean? Intellectual patterns come first? In a temporal sense
>>>>> or
>>>>> in a priority order? Do you mean that the biological mind is an idea?
>>>>>
>>>> Dan:
>>>> What else can it be but an idea?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>>
>>> It can be the source of an idea. Pirsig writes biological patterns are
>>> the
>>> source of intellectual patterns.
>>>
>> Dan:
>> Could you offer a quote where he, Robert Pirsig, says this?
>>
>
> Sure. Chapter 13 of LILA.
>
> "When a society is not itself threatened, as in the execution of individual
> criminals, the issue becomes more complex.  In the case of treason or
> insurrection or war a criminal's threat to a society can be very real.  But
> if an established social structure is not seriously threatened by a
> criminal, then an evolutionary morality would argue that there is no moral
> justification for killing him.
>
> What makes killing him immoral is that a criminal is not just a biological
> organism.  He is not even just a defective unit of society. Whenever you
> kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too.  A human being
> is a collection of ideas, and these ideas take moral precedence over a
> society.  Ideas are patterns of value.  They are at a higher level of
> evolution than social patterns of value.  Just as it is more moral for a
> doctor to kill a germ than a patient, so it is more moral for an idea to
> kill a society than it is for a society to kill an idea."
>
>
>
>> I noticed these bits in Lila that might or might not pertain:
>>
>> "You made a statement in your book that everyone knows and agrees to
>> what 'Quality' is. Obviously everyone does not! You refused to define
>> 'Quality,' thus preventing any argument on the subject. You tell us
>> that 'dialecticians' who debate these matters are scoundrels. I guess
>> that would include lawyers too. That's pretty good. You carefully tie
>> your critics' hands and feet so that they cannot give you any
>> opposition, tar their reputations for good measure, and then you say,
>> 'Okay, come on out and fight.' Very brave. Very brave."
>>
>> "May I come out and fight?" the author said. "My exact statement was
>> that people do disagree as to what Quality is, but their disagreement
>> is only on the objects in which they think Quality inheres."
>>
>> "What's the difference?"
>>
>> "Quality, on which there is complete agreement, is a universal source
>> of things. The objects about which people disagree are merely
>> transitory. " [Lila, discussion between Rigel and Phaedrus]
>>
>> ",,, with a Metaphysics of Quality the empirical experience is not an
>> experience of "objects." It's an experience of value patterns produced
>> by a number of sources, not just inorganic patterns." [Lila, Robert
>> Pirsig]
>>
>
> Tuukka:
>
> The later quote reminds me of the age-old story of a Westerner going to
> Japan and hearing that a certain temple is thousand or so years old. But
> the temple is made of wood, so the Japanese have to rebuild it once in one
> or two centuries, and the Westerner concludes that the temple is not the
> same as it was a thousand years ago because the planks (inorganic patterns)
> have been changed.
>
> Anyway, the discussion we're having here - at least this part of it -
> seems to be about whether biological patterns are intellectual or
> intellectual patterns biological. I don't know how we could speak of
> "emergence" if intellectual patterns weren't biological in the sense of
> emerging from biological patterns. But you seem to keep going about the
> admittedly factual fact that the notion of biological pattern is an
> intellectual one. I agree about that but I dare say that individual
> biological patterns are not necessarily intellectual. That is to say, they
> can be perceived without proper intellect.
>
> Regards,
> Tuk
>
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