I've just joined this group and am excited to participate in the
discussions. As of yet, I'm a bit unfamiliar with the way everything
works - i.e. where this month's discussion topic is listed - so bear with
me.
I just want to briefly respond to some of the recent postings.
Regarding the question of the 'superiority' or betterness between
cooperation and competition, I think the terms are being used too
conservatively. Many, if not most, forms of competition are cooperative
efforts at some level. In the case of chess, or any oranized game,
cooperative priciples are employed in order to fulfill the competitive
aspect of the game (i.e. rules, mutual interest in the other "doing their
best", etc.). In order to sustain a competitive situation, cooperative
principles must be observed.
It seems that the polarity of competition and cooperation is much like that
of static and dynamic. A better way to illustrate this is to look at the
model presented by a "free market". Where static (or cooperative
principles) maintain the market (product improvement without fear of
regression, free market laws or rules) dynamic or competitive principles
drive the market in a manner that (in theory) makes everyone happy. Static
supports are necessary to promote dynamic growth. Pirsig directly states
that both elements (of quality), static and dynamic, are necessary for the
good, moral life. In this respect there is a symbiotic relationship between
the two. The same is true for 'competition' and 'cooperation' (as
illustrated, though minimally, with the example posed by a free market).
Pirsig might say that the terms are two integral concepts within a larger
structure, or quality.
With regards to "power", isn't an implication made throughout both books
that "power" is something that everyone has? I think "gumption", as he uses
it in ZAMM, is the same as the "power" that is being used here. In ZAMM,
Pirsig speaks briefly of "gumption traps" and ways to get out of them.
These traps are destructive to quality. The implication is that gumption
(or power) isn't something to "get a hold of". Rather, it is something that
everyone both has and should learn how to channel, or avoid "gumption
traps". Power literally defined is the capacity to do work. Pirsig would
say that everyone has power. "Empowering" is an adjective that has a good
connotation, but "power" - by definition - really can't be broken into
subclasses as good and bad, etc. The "capacity to do work" is simply this.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Sanchez <wisdom@world-net.net>
To: Lila Squad <lilasquad@moq.org>
Date: Saturday, April 03, 1999 6:34 PM
Subject: Re: LS Power and the MOQ
>Dear John:
>
>
>
> I. Competition, Cooperation, and Dynamic Power
>
>You wrote:
>"I agree with Horse when he says it is not always easy to differentiate
>between destructive and constructive uses of power, and that competitive
>power in particular is "extremely contextual"."
>
>I disagree completely. Competition properly defined is mutually exclusive
>goal attainment. It creates a situation of artificial scarcity (e.g. there
>are two chess players and one winner). Everyone agrees that real scarcity
>is immoral (e.g. starving children in Afirican should be given food). But
>because we are socialized to be competitive (expecially in America!), we
>often carry unknown assumptions which we defend without much questioning.
>So I stick to my original statement, that competition is immoral in all
>instances as compared to cooperation because it moves away from Dynamic
>Quality.
>
>[John]
>"I can't agree with Kev when he says "I can think of no instance in which
>competition should be valued above cooperation ... competition is always
>less Dynamic than cooperation in inter-personal relations." I think the
>area of games is a notable exception. I can't imagine chess being worth
>playing as a cooperative venture. However a closer look at what makes games
>enjoyable might offer a more sophisticated appreciation of the dynamics of
>competitive power. For a start, games are most enjoyable when the power of
>the competitors is most closely matched. No one enjoys grossly mismatched
>contests. As well, games are rule bound, and the rules are accorded a great
>deal of power by the contestants. I personally am not greatly attracted to
>competitive sport, yet there surely are some positive elements in it."
>
>As a civilization, cooperative games are never really introduced to us and
>so we defend the competitive games because they have been our only source
>of fun. The key fun of chess is strategy, yet there is no reason the
>obstacle to be overcome must be a person sitting across from you. Challenge
>doesn't equal competition. (Indeed a small family business named Family
>Pastimes manufactures about fifty indoor games including, you guessed it,
>cooperative chess. If you want to request a catalogue their address is:
>R.R. 4,Perth Ontario, Canada K7H 3C6.)
>
>Additionally, competition isn't always as fun for the loser. Indeed some
>games spark outright agressive rivalry. So automatically cooperative games
>might very well increase the amount of fun among all participants two-fold.
>Plus, I weary of competition which may lead to more destructive forms of
>violence. As Eisenhower once said, "[T]he true mission of American sports
>is to prepare young people for war." Likewise, I think cooperative games
>might make us a more loving and peaceful world, if but in a small way.
>
>As to dynamicism, cooperation is clearly more productive. In relation to
>discussion, one study found "the discussion provess in cooperative gorups
>promotes the discovery and development of higher quality cognitive
>stratergies for learning than does the individual reasoning found in
>competitive and individualistic learning situations." In hundreds of
>studies cooperation has been found to be no different than competition or
>far superior. this occurs because cooperation is a win/win situation - your
>success is linked to everyone elses success. I have specific facts from
>education to business to the legal system to competitive debate to
>journalism, but I think this probably is not the place, except to say in
>summation cooperation is more Dynamic. (Also the synergy analysis below
>will be relavent to this matter.)
>
>[John]
>"Having said all that, I will readily concur that much competitive activity
>harms community, and is of lower quality than much (but not all)
>cooperative activity. I think that it is the purpose and context of the
>activity that influences its quality more than its competitive or
>cooperative aspects, though."
>
>I must again uphold my absolute standard - competition is bad in all
>instances. Clearly, I would be mentally deranged to suggest that it is
>equally bad in all instances, though. Beating someone in a game of chess is
>not the same level as beating someone on a battlefield. But that the same
>reasoning goes into both beatings pains me. Additionally, I will concede
>that in some few instances competition is necessary. War is a good example
>of this. If Hitler is killing millions of Jews, and all options to prevent
>him from continuing fail, then we need to use warfare to stop him. The
>question is how necessary or desirable is it that we turn games, debates,
>and other arenas into stages for warfare. Why would we start a war where we
>don't have to?
>
>[John]
>"Competition would seem to be the very stuff of biological survival, hence
>of great value at that level. It is therefore a threat to higher order
>social structures, hence its strict control within society."
>
>I challenge that even on a biological level competition is undesirable.
>Many argue that natural selection proves that its our nature to compete.
>Yet Stephen Jay Gould put it: "The equation of competition with success in
>natural selection is merely a cultural prejudice. . . . Success defined as
>leaving more offspring can . . . be attained by a large variety of
>strategies - including mutualism and symbiosis - that we could call
>cooperative. There is no a priori preference in the general statement of
>natural selection for either competitive of cooperative behavior."
>
>[John]
>"At an intellectual level it may be quite necessary. Pirsig's story of the
>Indian leader (taken from Ruth Benedict's "Patterns of Culture") is not
>short of both competitive and power issues in the emergence of dynamic
>quality within that society."
>
>I think its clear that was a primitive society. I would hope we have
>reached a level of intellectual civilization that our beneficial
>contrarians aren't banished from our communities.
>
>
> II. The Lila Squad: Cooperative Dialouge or Competitve Debate?
>
>[John]
>"I also suspect that at least some of my motivation for engaging in Lila
>Squad is competitive. While that can be a problem if I allow it to dominate
>my involvement, I think it adds some spice to my input, and probably
>assists me clarify some of what I want to say, which to me is one of the
>great benefits of this activity."
>
>If I thought this Squad was competitive I never would have joined, and if
>you prove to me it is, I intend to leave. Lila Squad is a place of
>cooperative dialouge. While I agree we often disagree, conflict does not
>equal competition. Indeed, diversity of opinion is benefits Truth.
>Competition, however, never does. In a competitive debate, the point is to
>win, not to achieve a fuller understanding of the topic being discussed and
>not to form a consensus or create a solution to common problems. In a
>cooperative debate, even conflict is enjoyable, intellectually valuable,
>and promots tolerance. Competitive debate also leads us to view one another
>as objects to intellectually crush, not subjects whose input should be
>valued and empathized with. I feel that Lila Squad cannot have dialouge if
>compeition preverts it. Happily, no one keeps score here. And if someone is
>proven wrong, s/he shouldn't be embarrased to admit it, because both the
>"loser" and the "winner" have won, since both walk away with greater
>enlightenment.
>
>
> III. Dynamic Quality & Unification of Power
>
>[John]
>"I need to think more about this, and whether it is a fundamental attribute
>of "Quality" (whatever that is). This ties in with your observation that
>"all static power is abusive because it divides and separates ideas, people
>and things". This could be a core statement for this debate."
>
>Dynamic Quality is one and constant. That's the reason we can't define it
>and the intellectual level cannot experience it. All static quality, and
>the intellectual level especially, define themselves by their ability to
>separate and dissect reality. Into subjects and objects, into moral and
>immoral, into higher and lower. The heirarchy of static quality is
>oppressive. Saying this though doesn't mean that intellectual domination
>over society isn't justified, but it still constitutes domination and
>oppression. Dynamic Quality does not oppress because there is no-"thing" to
>oppress (a thing being a separate entity). All is One in true Dynamic
>Quality. Or at least that's my opinion.
>
>Synergy equates with Dynamic Quality because it it an act of unification.
>Its when people cooperate on the social level, become creative on the
>intellectual level, and reach the mystical level. Its brings forth the
>highest in these static levels by pushing them toward the most Dynamic
>possibility. Syngery is manifested in situations like cooperative dialouge,
>love, community, and other instances where the walls between people are
>broken down.
>
>
> IV. Quality as a Catch-all
>
>[John]
>"However, I am suspicious of making Quality a catch-all term which means
>anything or nothing. That is why I think much of the quoting of Pirsig to
>the effect that quality cannot be defined is actually intellectual
>laziness. (Like God in much theology.) While the linguistic philosophers
>were a narrow minded bunch on the whole, they did make the point that when
>a term can mean anything it really means nothing. We can do better than
>that."
>
>I think Quality reinvigorates words which once meaningless. By correlating
>power with Quality, power, once an ambiguous and meaningless word, becomes
>the central force driving reality. Power is the capability to value
>Quality. Unjustified power is that which choose lower paths of Quality when
>higher forms are available.
>
>
> V. Dynamic Power & Static Power
>
>[John]
>"So I can't accept a division into 'bad power' and good power', but
>acknowledge a range of types of power applied more or less well to actual
>situations."
>
>At this current time in our history, we may have evolved beyond controlling
>others and perhaps we need to focus more on controlling ourselves. But
>Horse's comment seems to particular to our current social and intellectual
>state. I would rather define what John calls 'bad power' as static power
>and 'good power' as Dynamic power, realizing that for a long time coming
>both will be absolutely necessary, yet in this static period of reality we
>must strive to be more Dynamic power in everyway possible.
>
>
> VI. Control of Self vs Freedom of Self
>
>[John]
>"Secondly, to equate constructive power with control of self goes
>completely against the grain of my life experience. Certainly loss of
>control is usually seen as destructive, but equally over control is
>immensely damaging to people. Like impotence, it can create violence and
>aggression. So I also view control as something which is neither good nor
>bad, but is well or badly exercised as it relates to a concrete situation.
>(There is also a fascinating argument in exploring just who or what it is
>that controls the self, but that's for another time.)"
>
>To me it seems that control is static power because it simply maintains the
>current static level. Freedom is Dynamic power because it evolves toward
>greater liberation, unification, and creativity. I agree with John, that
>control over oneself seems to mean something destructive because it
>maintains oneself and one's boundaries. Freedom of oneself seems the
>opposite, to liberate onself from static quality, to unify with others in
>love and cooperation, and to create possibilities to achieve greater
>dynamicism. In short, freedom should be valued above control, where
>possible. In the end, however, control seems too ambiguous a term and needs
>to be redefined in terms that we concretely know the meaning of. So, how
>does control relate to Quality?
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
> Kev
>
>
>MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
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