David, Bruce, others
Just a few words in reply.
WALTER SAID
To have a Quality whole, you have to have Quality parts first. If you're
in control of the Quality parts, like when you're arranging your living-room
with design elements, the proces of ordering the parts taking into account the
relationships, is a Quality proces. It is bottom-up. It would be top-down if
someone told you how your room should be like. Pirsig would never state that
"it is only the whole that determines which parts are necessary". It's the
other way around. He realized that every whole is built of quality parts and that
these parts are further built of parts and so on. The Quality of the whole
depends on the quality (incl. structure and relationships) of it's parts.
This is the basis of what I mean with Bottom-up Morality!
DMB SAYS
Clearly the issue here is the relationship between the parts and the whole.
As you say, it's "the basis of what I mean with Bottom up Morality!". If
that is the case, then why do you call it "Bottom up" morality. In what
sense does it start at the bottom?
WALTER RESPONDS
Everything's a Part and at the same time a Whole too. So in the
continuum of all parts/wholes (value) there's no bottom-up or top-down.
Bottom-up or top-down only enters the picture when you take the
perspective of such a Part/Whole (pattern of Value).
You ask in what sense Morality starts at the bottom. It starts at the
bottom in the sense that in the proces of judgement you value not
only the whole or even how the whole SHOULD BE, but you realize
(feel) the value of the parts underlying the whole and without which there
wouldn't be a whole.
This all started when Cntrfrc made a judgement about
people taking the effort to rase money for a baseball team, while they should
ask money for all the people that are starving around the world.
The distinction between bottom-up and top-down Morality is not so much
a static mindset, rather an *approach* you take in everyday judgement.
Do you start from HOW IT SHOULD BE and disvalue (if that's a word) all
THAT IS, or do you start with giving value to that what IS and
following that strive for the better. I wrote this before:
'Pirsig's whole struggle with Rigel's judgement of Lila's lack of Quality is
exactly about this!. Rigel denies Lila's Quality and Pirsig doesn't have a
right away answer, because from the intellectual viewpoint or even social
perspective it's hard to see. When he wants to answer he's trapped in the
static perspective of social and intellectual values Rigel positioned the
question in. He needed to 'open his mind' to 'see' the answer to Rigel's
question in the Bottom-up structure of the Morality within the MoQ.'
DAVID
It seems that the parts-vs-the-whole issue isn't about the hierarchy of
static patterns at all. Its about the classic/romantic split of ZAMM.
Classical understanding is about concrete detail and Romantic understanding
is about the big picture. And isn't the aim of ZAMM to reconcile and join
the two ways of understanding? "Assembley of Japanese bicycle requires great
peace of mind."
WALTER SAYS
With classical and romantic this is taking a turn I didn't want to take,
though I see what you mean distinguishing bottom up - classical and
the parts versus top down - romantic and the whole. The aim would be
to reconcile the two opposites. This point is much like Bruces point.
BRUCE WROTE
With what does government "effect" change? Well, take Social Security.
Government leaders established a program that provides government
checks, administered by government employees. It seems a stretch to
argue that this is primarily a "bottom up" initiative. And it's hard to
argue that the program didn't make a real change -- for one thing, it
significantly reduced poverty among the elderly.
[...]
More fundamentally, even to the extent that we can agree on what is the
"top" and what is the "bottom", in most cases the top affects the bottom
and the bottom affects the top. There's no way to isolate the impact of
one without the other, and it's not especially useful to claim that one
is primary. They're just two sides of the same coin.
WALTER SAYS
In an earlier post you see that I was confronting myself with exactly this
issue. I wrote:
> I'm asking myself how this bottom-up Morality relates to the value of rules and
> laws in society, because it seems to contradict it. I want to argue that it doesn't,
> though it's not easy.
I agree with Bruce that my statement was somewhat blunt, though I want to
remark that I wrote: 'all REAL change ...' in stead of 'all change ...'. I see that
a government can "effect" change in the population by executing programs
and supplying laws. If a government for example changes the taxes a few percent,
it would certainly influence the lives of many.
The change I'm talking about is of a different order. It's about lifting a social
structure up to a higher (better) plane. Like the change in the radiology-
department of Mark S. Lerner's hospital. But it's also about lifting an
'individual's structure' up to a higher plane. The opening up of a persons mind
can be supported, but it's the individual self that finally does the changing.
Thanks for your comments.
Dtchgrtngs
Walter
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