ELEPHANT TO KENNETH IN DEEP GRATITUDE:
ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN:
>> Well, James Lovelock (who invented the Gaia concept, not as a new age
>> religion, but as a scientific hypothesis that explains some strange
>> feed-back loops rather beautifully) doesn't take kindly to the notion that
>> Gaia has ideas. It won't be Nature who gets rid of us when the time comes,
>> because Nature isn't an agent in the relevent (moral) sense. No, it will be
>> ourselves: 'shooting yourself in the foot' is the relevant expression here,
>> and whoever heard of calling a bullet 'conscious'?
>>
>> Also, I don't think it is right to think of Quality as itself a personal
>> force which always gets its way. Anybody who want's to say something
>> about Quality and the problem of evil can jump right in. The triumph of
>> Quality, like the triumph of Good, depends on the decisions we take, doesn't
>> it?
Kenneth WROTE:
> Of course, quite !! But, as a memetisist I ask you the question, do I
> take or do I make my own decisions ? If I ' take' them, I can assume I am
> an egoist, if I ' make ' my decisions, there is a grain of compassion some-
> where...There is a difference...there is a twist and turn....
> In both ways, Quality is not of the same order...the first is not quite a
> triumph, in the second case Quality is not determined....
>
ELEPHANT:
As a first reaction, I'm not sure I understand that take on 'take' here. If
I 'take' compassionate decisons, does that make me an egoist?
But on the other hand, yes, at some deeper level you are on to something,
and maybe right: 'take' suggests selection between pre-existing options:
Choice, if you like. While 'make' would be truer to the pragmatist idea
that we are constructing the (dynamic) good in pursuit of Quality here: a
creative Vision, if you like. This contrast between Vision and Choice is
something Iris Murdoch talks about a lot re subjectivism in Morality. If
you are on the Choice side, then you think that the options present
themselves fully formed, as two developed sets of (possible) facts, between
which we have complete freedom to choose which to value and ennact - this
makes value a function of the choices of the subject, i.e. subjective. On
the Vision side, however, the world is made by us with an eye to, inspired
by a vision of, the good. This makes value separate from the subject:
something we have a vision of and pursue, and which goes into the make-up of
the world we live in: the sun which illumines this whole. So, yes, you are
right: I should have said:
"The triumph of Quality, like the triumph of Good, depends on the decisions
we MAKE, doesn't it?"
And Yes, compassion can only come about through a true vision of the good,
and not just through subjectively taking Choices, which involves some kind
of mythology about the agency of that Choice: the pure and empty 'freedom'
of the existentialist hero. That mythology of self is just what we have to
abandon to be compassionate.
So Kenneth: Thank's for alerting me to the deeper nuances of 'take'!
All the best,
Pzeph.
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