Hello everyone
>From: "Wim Nusselder" <wim.nusselder@antenna.nl>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Subject: Re: MD True Libertarians Please Stand Up
>Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 22:35:28 +0200
>
>Dear Dan,
>
>I wrote 16/6 21:59 +0200
>"My interpretation of the MoQ would be that social patterns OPERATE under
>their own set of moral codes and EVOLVE because of interaction with other
>levels.
>Pirsig writes in ch. 11 of Lila 'Biological evolution can be seen as a
>process by which weak Dynamic forces at a subatomic level discover
>stratagems for overcoming huge static inorganic forces at a superatomic
>level.'
>By analogy I would say 'Social evolution can be seen as a process by which
>weak Dynamic forces at a subcellular level discover stratagems for
>overcoming huge static biological forces at a supercellular level.' and
>'Intellectual evolution can be seen as a process by which weak Dynamic
>forces at an individual level discover stratagems for overcoming huge
>static social forces at a collective level.'"
>
>You reply 17/6 10:45 -0500
>"I believe Lila may contradict your analogy though I find it very
>intriguing... With your analogy ... one gets the impression that each of
>the four levels operates on the same underlying principle but Phaedrus
>clearly states the laws of the upper levels cannot be derived from the laws
>of the lower nor are they related."
>
>As our own Quality-experience is the ultimate test of ... Quality (truth on
>the intellectual level, wisdom on the next level?), quotes from Lila do not
>immediately refute my analogy. Your being intrigued lends the analogy some
>Quality...
>Lila contains lots of contradictions if you interpret them only
>intellectually. As I wrote 9/6 21:54 +0200 ("Migration towards Dynamic
>Quality"-thread): "an intellectual pattern that alternatively describes DQ
>as "pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality", the goal of migrating
>patterns and the background of all static patterns (last one from Pirsig's
>SODV-paper, www.moq.org/forum/emmpaper.html p.13) is outright ridiculous
>from a narrow intellectual point of view." Being metaphysics the MoQ aims
>higher than intellect though. As Rog wrote 16/6 11:41 -0400 in reply to
>John B. "I do see Pirsig using Paradox to make much of the point." Even
>Lila p. 183 which you quote contains a paradox: after having explained the
>independence of levels with the analogy of flip-flops, software and novels,
>Pirsig identifies different moralities each implying direct competition of
>the values of a higher level and those of a lower level ("biology triumphs
>over the inorganic forces of starvation and death... social patterns
>triumph over biology ... intellectual morality ... is still struggling in
>its attempt to control society") and goes on to ... compare the
>unrelatedness of different moral codes (each relating two supposedly
>independent levels) to the unrelatedness of flip-flops and novels. And we
>already discussed how Pirsig explains in ch. 24 how intellect instructs
>society how to control biology... Unrelated moral codes? How do you mean???
>I know "it only seems like that to intellect", as you write, but still my
>limited intellect is entangling itself in quite a lot of paradox when I try
>to square all this.
>In this case intellect may still find a way out of the apparent
>contradiction: I distinguished between moral codes under which a level
>operates (the law of the jungle on the biological level, competition for
>status or "the law" according to Lila p. 183 on the social level,
>competition for veracity on the intellectual level) and the way in which
>levels evolve. The ways in which levels evolve are analogous, but don't
>follow a law. They're just all being pushed/pulled by Dynamic Quality to
>migrate.
Hi Wim
Thank you for your reply. You have given me much to ponder.
As far as the "goal of migrating patterns" goes, I found this from Ant
McWatt in the old LS archives:
“Hunting for weaknesses, [in your paper] I find that on page one, paragraph
four, there is a sentence, ‘Fundamentally Pirsig’s term is a MYSTIC one, and
refers to the undifferentiated, indeterminate, reality from which the
universe has evolved (or grown) from.’ Although this is true at a Buddha’s
level of understanding, it would be confusing and illogical in the world of
everyday affairs to say that the world is evolving both from and toward the
same thing. I have had some reader mail that has pointed out at one place I
seem to imply that Quality and chaos are the same and at another that they
are different, so I haven’t been clear on this myself and have left an
opening to attack. To close it up, let us say that the universe is evolving
from a condition of low quality (quantum forces only, no atoms, pre Big
Bang) toward a higher one (birds, trees, societies and thoughts) and that in
a static sense (world of everyday affairs) these two are not the same.”
(Letter from Robert Pirsig, March 29, 1997. The word “mystic” originally in
bold not caps.)
Now allow me add a quote from Michael Nagler's "Reading the Upanishads":
"In Upanishadic psychology, the inner demand all humans feel for freedom is
ultimately a drive to free ourselves from the inherited and acquired
compulsions in our own physical makeup. The Upanishads do not deny the need
for political freedom; they simply claim that inner freedom comes first and
is really the only reliable guarantee of all other forms."
If we understand this "inner freedom" as a process of self-reflection of
intellect then self is simply self reflecting self. "Thou art that." And so
that which is being reflected by the reflected is not the same yet is taken
to be the same in the process of reflection; the level of understand being
the process of reflection and an understanding at a Buddha's level not being
the same as on the level of everyday affairs.
Quality doesn't reside in the subject exclusively, nor does it reside in the
object. Quality is in the relation between subject and object; relation
gives rise to subject/object distinction, which is all our world of everyday
affairs we call Western culture (being a subject/object culture) recognizes
as having value (see Pirsig's SODV). Being trapped in a mode of
subject/object processing as we all find ourselves to be (whether we care to
recognize it or not) subject vs objects is all intellect recognizes. Period.
So it seems that intellect controls society but it only seems like that to
the reflective subject/object intellect.
The MOQ allows one a more expansive point of view--one that recognizes the
validity of the subject/object reflective processing as a high quality set
of static patterns of value but *not the only set*. Instead of seeking for
the cause of action (which is the only search conducted in subject/object
processing: doctor searching to correct the cause of disease, police locking
up criminals) the MOQ qualifies all actions according to the preconditions
that action values (seeking to address the preconditions that value disease
and crime).
I see the MOQ as set of static quality intellectual patterns of value better
representative of reality than is subject/object metaphysics (which is
itself not a position held by anyone but rather representative of our
Western cultural processing inclination to view reality from a
subject/object perspective with heavy emphasis on the scientific objective).
My interpretation of the MOQ sees it as a complete metaphysics with
evolutionary forces of value guiding each of the four levels being Dynamic
and therefore unpredictable.
Thank you for reading.
Dan
"Before the world was created, the Self Alone existed; nothing whatsoever
stirred." (Aitareya Upanishad, translated by Eknath Easwaran)
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