[MD] The need for quality

Dan Glover daneglover at gmail.com
Tue Sep 5 16:02:03 PDT 2017


Wes, all,

Quality exists in thought and deed. Sure. The future? No idea about
that. I'd say there's an even chance no matter what we project the
future to be, we'll be wrong. But even that supposition is apt to be
mistaken. This moment so fleeting, I do my best to keep close to it
and not worry too much about the past or bother with the future. I
look at both as malleable, dependent upon this moment to exist.

I met a couple from New Mexico while watching the eclipse last month.
New agers. They had their crystals laid out on a prayer rug to soak in
the energy from the eclipse and when I went to pick one up they damned
near stroked out. Don't touch it! she hollers, like I'm about to reach
out and stroke a live rattlesnake. Apparently my negative energy'd
wreck havoc with the crystal. I'm the only person who has ever handled
it, she says, as a means of apology I think. I wanted to explain to
her that unless she dug a cave into the side of a mountain to burrow
on her belly and extract the crystal and then polished it to a high
sheen, odds were somebody else definitely touched the stone somewhere
along the way, but hey.

I think we many times become blind to other than that which we value.
Like that woman with the crystal, we become defensive about the
choices we make. We work a job we hate on account of culture informing
us how we have to earn a living - somehow. It isn't that money is
evil. Rather, often times we tend to overlook what we have to do in
order to accrue it. The value of having a fine home and driving a
shiny car obscure the feelings of remorse in how we spend our days
earning it. Until it is too late.

One of my favorite parts in ZMM is when the narrator and Chris are
tooling down the highway in a rainstorm and the bike is slowly
petering out 50mph 40 30 20 and as they are coasting along in a
torrential downpour some lady is staring out her car window at them in
horror and that's how I feel when I hear people hating on their jobs.
Only I'm not the lady in the car, oh no. I'm the guy on the bike doing
me some living. So there's that...

On Sun, Sep 3, 2017 at 12:58 AM, WES STEWART <wesstt at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Hello Dan;
>
> What did Pirsig think was more of a reality, truth or quality? The sophists and Plato insisted quality was and so did Pirsig, there is nothing vague about it. All of his students could not define it, they could also measure it and agree. Truth should have never usurped quality (or the good) as the reality, for its subject object based. Pirsig swaps things around; the present state is a horse and carriage, the future state is the automobile. Now what is the state that you would define that is in between them? He cannot analyze the point that is in between both, all he knows is that it is defined as quality. Why it should exist this ratcheting we do not know? The space in between the betterment is what was the cause of Pirsigs first breakdown. That space is undefinable, why it even exists who knows.
>
> I can say that quality exists in what Andrew thought, ask me as to the space in between past employer and present employer what is it? I do not know.
>
>
>
> From: "Dan Glover" <daneglover at gmail.com>
> To: "moq discuss" <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2017 9:30:04 PM
> Subject: Re: [MD] The need for quality
>
> Wes, all,
>
> I'm unsure what you strongly disagree with. That the MOQ states there
> is no true reality? From Lila:
>
> "Historically mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of
> reality metaphysics is too "scientific." Metaphysics is not reality.
> Metaphysics is names about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where
> they give you a thirty-thousand page menu and no food."
>
> "The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had
> called "Quality" in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece.
> Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without
> definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience
> independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions."
>
> "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 know­ able, 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."
>
> A logical absurdity, yes. In this sense, Robert Pirsig defined static
> quality but kept Dynamic Quality concept free. So no. Pirsig did not
> define exactitude as in absolute truth. More from Lila:
>
> "There's a principle in physics that if a thing can't be distinguished
> from anything else it doesn't exist. To this the Metaphysics of
> Quality adds a second principle: if a thing has no value it isn't
> distinguished from anything else. Then, putting the two together, a
> thing that has no value does not exist. The thing has not created the
> value. The value has created the thing. When it is seen that value is
> the front edge of experience, there is no problem for empiricists
> here. It simply restates the empiricists' belief that experience is
> the starting point of all reality. The only problem is for a
> subject-object metaphysics that calls itself empiricism.
>
> " This may sound as though a purpose of the Metaphysics of Quality is
> to trash all subject-object thought but that's not true. Unlike
> sub­ject-object metaphysics the Metaphysics of Quality does not insist
> on a single exclusive truth. If subjects and objects are held to be
> the ultimate reality then we're permitted only one construction of
> things-that which corresponds to the "objective" world-and all other
> constructions are unreal. But if Quality or excellence is seen as the
> ultimate reality then it becomes possible for more than one set of
> truths to exist.
>
> "Then one doesn't seek the absolute "Truth."
>
> "One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of
> things with the knowledge that if the past is any guide to the future
> this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until
> something better comes along. One can then examine intellectual
> realities the same way he examines paintings in an art gallery, not
> with an effort to find out which one is the "real" painting, but
> simply to enjoy and keep those that are of value. There are many sets
> of intellectual reality in existence and we can perceive some to have
> more quality than others, but that we do so is, in part, the result of
> our history and current patterns of values."
>
> Let's stop here for now. If you are still feeling disagreeable, please
> specify why.
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 2, 2017 at 1:28 AM, WES STEWART <wesstt at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> Hello Dan;
>>
>> I disagree strongly, Pirsig defines an exactitude, Andrew is there, he is making the world a better place,he is a quality thinker. Quality is the reality, if I can look at my twenty year old work boots or hockey skates that is a static pattern of quality, in 2017 we have something entirely different.
>>
>>
>>
>> From: "Dan Glover" <daneglover at gmail.com>
>> To: "moq discuss" <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
>> Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2017 12:08:28 AM
>> Subject: Re: [MD] The need for quality
>>
>> Wes, all,
>>
>> I'm pretty sure the MOQ says how there is no 'true' reality. I think
>> it was John Carl who said someone developed a mirror to show a person
>> their 'true' image. Only if you stop and consider how we view reality
>> through the lens of our own personal history, it becomes apparent what
>> is true for one person isn't for another.
>>
>> Interacting with others is not biological quality but rather social
>> quality patterns. That isn't to say social quality is composed of
>> biological beings, however. Rather it is the relationships existing
>> between people which comprise social patterns. So it behooves us all
>> to take care with who we interact no matter the circumstances.
>>
>> Biological quality has nothing to do with intellectual quality.
>> Meaning and purpose are intellectual patterns which can indeed rely on
>> comfort and money. What's the old saying? It is hard to remember how
>> you're original intention was to drain the swamp when you're up to
>> your ass in alligators. In other words, when a person is beset by
>> poverty, their primary goal in life is to feed house and clothe their
>> family. Not doing philosophy.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 11:01 PM, WES STEWART <wesstt at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>> Hello Andrew and Dan,
>>>
>>> There are two realities that we feel. The intellectual reality and our biological reality. Pursig defined the only true reality, and he was right, you have to bring morality and classical scientific thought together. Its not all about the physics of bowling balls and the trajectory of a missile that are the only things we can measure.
>>>
>>> We can measure honesty, fairness, respect and kindness, its not subjective, and is inherent and part of our reality.
>>>
>>> It is difficult to build quality into ones own biological life, because it is highly dependent on those who surround you, the ones you interact with. It would be very difficult for a World War ll concentration camp prisoner to find meaning and purpose from his biological side, however it is possible that quality was found from the higher intellectual side, because meaning and purpose, like you have already said Andrew, does not rely on comfort level or money.
>>>
>>> Money could have easily bought your way out of a concentration camp at that time; according to the utmost scholar of holocaust studies Raul Hilberg.
>>>
>>
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>
>
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