Hi Squad,
I didn't expect the dialog to take this direction but it seems we have
uncovered another potential synonym for Quality. Power seems to be the
same thing as energy or even just beingness. If quality is what created
reality then it is the ultimate enabler, the power that makes things be --
a thing that has no power does not exist.
But it's not surprising that Pirsig didn't call it the metaphysics of power
because that would almost certainly be taken to be about social or
political power which is how the word is most commonly used.
And to get back to the question, that is the aspect of power that we were
asked about:
>H.N.Brailsford has said "the crude issue of power... is always the
>last of the realities that sensitive and reasonable men can bring
>themselves to face".
>
>What, if anything, does the Metaphysics of Quality have to say about
>the realities of power?
If would have been nice to see the context of the quote, because at first
sight it seems wrong. Of course people confront power, they confront it all
the time. But I imagine that what this quote means is that the people who
have the power don't confront it. You don't see many men at feminist
rallies, campaigns for homosexual rights are generally run by gays, blacks
are more worried about racism than whites are. It's not that the
non-oppressed don't care about the oppressed, quite often they genuinely
do, but they seldom care about it as much. So I would say that issues of
power are the last things that those *in power* confront. The other thing
that occurs to me is that even though the powerless confront power more
often they don't do it quite as much as they should. The powerless often
accept their raw deal as if it's just the way things are, or even worse,
that they deserve it.
And what does the MOQ tell us about it? Well, understanding the social
level - the way social patterns are constructed and perpetuated helps a
lot. When you see that the patterns of repression often exist in the minds
of the repressed as well as the repressors' then you can deal with them
more effectively. If, instead of blaming Evil Men for all their problems,
women can see that the social patterns of sex roles are perpetuated by
both men and women and this process is largely subconscious, then they can
isolate the problems and do something about them. The ultimate oppressor
Hitler often comes up on the LS, but he's really a red herring. Social
patterns of anti-semiticism had been around for centuries. I mean, it's not
as if people were actually nice to Jews before WWII and then one guy came
along and decided to murder them all and bullied the poor little germans
into doing it for him. That's just so ridiculous it's astounding, yet you
often hear it told that way, and the worst of it is, the real culprits -
the social patterns of racism - get away free.
What I'm trying to say is that if you want to solve a problem you have to
correctly identify the source of that problem. The MOQ helps us understand
how power works and so it can help us find better solutions to abuses of it.
Diana
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
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