BOOK CLUB: Lila Part II (Patreon)

[Pictured: Nyack Marina, just North upriver of Manhattan]

This is a discussion thread to post quotes and feelings and thoughts on the second part of Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals.

Phaedrus makes incredible headway on his formal Metaphysics of Quality, whilst also being confronted with Lila's dark backstory and passionate nature.

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I'm going to break form a bit here. Instead of posting quotes without commentary, I will restate the 4-tiered Metaphysics of Quality in my own words.

The reason I'm doing this is because these ideas are not introduced linearly or clearly at all, in my experience and the experience of others I have seen discuss this. He starts casually using terms like "inorganic patterns" and "socio-intellectual patterns" and then proceeds as though this has all been stated very clearly and concisely, as opposed to buried in the middle of many paragraphs.

So: This is, to my understanding, a faithful summary.

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Reality consists of 4 static layers of value, each layer giving birth to an entirely independent, new emergent kind of value. 

Dynamic Quality is the 5th layer that rules over all, always, forever and ever, amen.

The 4 static levels of quality are:

1. Inorganic value patterns (non-living things)

2. Biological value patterns (living things, defined by DNA)

3. Social value patterns (society, culture, institutions)

4. Intellectual value patterns (ideas)

and...

5. DYNAMIC QUALITY. The unknowable, endlessly definable and undefinable, intuitive, cutting edge of reality pre-intellectual sense of Quality that pulls everything forward towards it, usurping and inventing all Static patterns of Quality.

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On top of this, Pirsig radically proposes that understanding these emerging levels of static quality are also MORAL levels. As in, the higher the emergent layer of value, the more moral it is. It is immoral for lower levels to conquer higher levels.

After all, what's the difference between "more valuable", "better" and "right"?

"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." (p. 161)

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"As Phaedrus had gotten into them he had seen that the isolation of these static moral codes was important. They were really little moral empires all their own, as separate from one another as the static levels whose conflicts they resolved:

First, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of biological life over inanimate nature. Second, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of the social order over biological life conventional morals—proscriptions against drugs, murder, adultery, theft and the like. Third, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of the intellectual order over the social order—democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. Finally there's a fourth Dynamic morality which isn't a code. He supposed you could call it a "Code of Art" or something like that, but art is usually thought of as such a frill that that title undercuts its importance. The morality of the brujo in Zuni—that was Dynamic morality." (p. 163)

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This is a theory that Pirsig/Phaedrus thinks explains reality and morality much better than a Subject/Object metaphysics or anything else out there. Maybe not perfectly, but better.

It was tempting to take all the moral conflicts of the world and, one by one, see how they fit this kind of analysis, but Phaedrus realized that if he started to get into that he would never finish. Wherever he looked, whatever examples came to mind, he always seemed to be able to lay them out within this framework, and the nature of the conflicts usually seemed to be clearer when he did so. (p. 161)

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Okay. That's my shot at elucidating the fundamental fabric of the web that was spun in the first half of this book. Haven't even touched the interpersonal stuff between Lila and Phaedrus, or either of their emo doomer internal monologues. 

I'm so looking forward to what others make of all of this.

I will be responding to almost all comments, in perpetuity, whenever you make your way to this checkpoint!

Now post your static intellectual thoughts and dynamic intuitive feelings below!