Lila-this is one veritable trove of thought provoking theories. I’m preserving some of these for later reference by recording them here. I could write them down somewhere else too, but the process of presenting it to my (few!) readers and eliciting some comments and the riding on the thought trains engendered by those comments is delectable.
Firstly for a brief summary of the theory Pirsig puts forth. This is a very skeletal picture and on the quality scale would probably rank in the medium value scale.
Pirsig says that the knife of classification currently runs through the world separating it into subjects and objects and all things are seen from its framework. Quality, being neither the subject nor the object but something that precedes the identification itself is thence indefinable. So, he suggests we classify on the basis of quality. There’s static quality and dynamic quality. Static quality is something that has been established as having ‘value’ through ages of evolution so far. The current framework of value that exists, the rules we abide by, that is static quality. Dynamic quality is some value that we perceive for the first time or may be a few times, but it still hasn’t had the stamp of approval of value upon it and hasn’t become immured into the static framework. It can’t be precisely defined as the definition would itself make it static. It’s what we perceive in our mind before the yoke of human language envelopes it. (Here, as an aside, we note that Dynamic Quality is only a term representative of something we know exists but cant define unlike the words Subject and Object that seem to be independent entities.)
Static quality is further subdivided into inorganic, biological, social and intellectual quality, their ranks on the ‘value’ scale being in ascending order. Intellectual quality has a higher value in the evolutionary scheme than inorganic quality (and also has been around for a much lesser time). It is ‘moral’ for a quality of a higher value to suppress or dominate over a quality at a lower value scale. For example it is ‘moral’ for a doctor to kill the germs(part of the biological quality scale) rather than allow the germs to kill the patient as long as both want to live. But dynamic quality doesn’t fall into this ladder of values and has the most importance because it is what leads to evolution, when static frameworks are challenged periodically by new ideas coming in. It’s analogous to statistical theory of information where the element with the least probability has the most information and hence is given the most representation.
It is also pertinent to note that a higher quality usually preys upon on or restricts the elements at a lower quality. This is why the biological ‘man’ as always been suppressed in his liking for booze, drugs, sex by society, because they have high biological value but very low social value as they lead to broken homes and are threats to social stability and peace. This rule is considered ‘moral’ as it follows the value scale. But when we think of the intellectual man, he is higher up on the value scale than the social quality norms. If at the intellectual level, man feels the need for a stimulant for his expression, would it become ‘moral’ to use these same drugs that are banned today? If it were proven that marijuana would lead to better dynamic quality in the form of superior quality art and science, would it become moral to allow for its usage to be legal. The other dimension to this would be the effects of these drugs on the longevity of man. If the value added to the dynamic quality by these were found to be lesser than the value that exists in man as his dynamic ability and if these drugs were found to be harmful to his health, then it would become a different issue. These drugs aid man to reach moments of mystic beauty that adds quality to his life, but they are not the only means to do so. If they were, the problem would be between the survival of the biological quality of man vs. his intellectual value and would be easy to decide in favour of the intellectual quality thus making drugs completely legal. But since no case is ever a simple binary one, the decisions of value are complicated and hazy. Similarly, if the drug is found to be inoffensive to the biological quality of man in the long run and is also found to add to the intellectual quality, even if momentarily or in uncontrolled bursts, it would be moral for them to become a part of the social quality framework.
Man at the biological quality level finds sex to have a high quality value. But societal quality is at a higher value scale and hence it was ‘moral’ for society to place a restriction on the ‘biological’ quality of sex by the institution of marriage. And this dominance of society over the individual in the case of marriage would be moral as long as it was a case of a society quality dominating over a biological quality. But, the institution of marriage is increasingly being perceived not merely an attempt to attain better biological quality but as having the added dimension of intellectual quality. People are looking for more than biological compatibility when they marry, their mental resonance is also a consideration, often overriding the social norms. And since societal quality is at a lower rung of evolution that intellectual quality, it is immoral for societal static quality to deny intellectual quality its right to dominance.
This generation of the twentieth century is a case of evolution of the intellectual quality. Societal norms are getting trodden upon to make way for the intellect to occupy its throne. But the rise of this dynamic intellectual quality also leads to the degeneration of the static social quality that exists. This is always the case with evolution, dynamic quality seems to eat through the static quality that exists and static quality tries to remain rigid enough to prevent the dynamic quality from gaining stronghold. Also there is the dimension that dynamic quality is all very well initially, but it requires to settle down into a structure of static framework for it to survive. So, any dynamic quality requires to make inroads into the static framework and to lose its dynamism to be able to be of any ‘substance’.
There is also the consideration that not every dynamic quality adds to the value scale or that every change necessarily leads to a better order of things. But this judgment of whether the change is a step forward can only be made once it has been allowed to propagate for a long enough time and has been awarded a fair trial. We currently see this happening in the metros of the city where existing social norms are being discarded left and right and new ideas and lifestyles are springing up. We often hear ourselves termed as going straight to hell, but it is also visible that though this has been the prediction for quite a while, hell stil seems a long way off and we might be just making for a new, and hopefully better, order of things.
Change is indeed inevitable. There! A static statement to describe a dynamic quality and here this thought train shall pull up.
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