Dear John,
Your conclusions (27/6 05:11 +1000) from what I sent you about Quakers (24/6 23:07 +0200) are correct I think.
I have some doubts about "the final decision is communal rather than individual (contrary to Pirsig)". The descriptions of what happens seem to justify this conclusion, yet it doesn't fit my experience. Somehow it doesn't feel right to distinguish between the communal and the individual decision. In religious language: it is God's decision and (depending on how you "point at" indefinable God, which Quakers do in diverse ways) neither communal nor individual or both communal and individual.
A couple of years ago I have been involved in argument about the nature of the decision that someone becomes a member of the Religious Society of Friends at a time that the guidelines (not rules!) of Netherlands Yearly Meeting were under revision. Before that they stated something to the effect that Monthly Meeting decides to "recognise" the decision by the candidate to become a member if it has the impression that he/she fits. I proposed to stress that the decision is a decision of the candidate only, that the traditional procedure of delegating two visiting Friends should be interpreted as a way of helping the candidate in his/her decision and that Monthly Meeting has no other choice than to recognise this decision when the visiting Friends report back that the candidate still wants to join. The guidelines were revised into: "Member of the Religious Society of Friends in the Netherlands is he or she who speaks out for our faith community and who is admitted by minute of a Monthly Meeting" leaving the question open whether these decisions are independent or not.
"Discernment" (of divine guidance ~ DQ) is a concept that is much thought about by Quakers. I could give you much more to read about it. It all seems to boil down however to: experience (both individual and communal), practice ("take heed ... to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts ... Bring the whole of your life under the ordering of the spirit of Christ. ... Cherish that of God within you ... Let your worship and your daily life enrich each other. Treasure your experience of God, however it comes to you.") and ... don't get stuck on statical quality ("Remember that Christianity is not a notion but a way. ... Are you open to new light, from whatever source it may come?").
You write "The test of this process to me would be an issue that divides the group almost equally, with no quick resolution possible. Has this happened?". Often enough. Decision is usually postponed. Meanwhile either some sort of compromise or the status quo comes/stays temporarily in effect. A case in point is slavery. This was put on the agenda of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting almost from the beginning of the presence of Quakers there ... year after year. Decision-making was postponed almost endlessly, because quite a few Quakers were themselves slave-owners. Activity between (yearly) gatherings of Yearly Meeting by individual Friends who were very outspoken against slavery to convince their fellow Quakers, in the end made it possible to unite on a common renouncement. And Quakers were still among the first to do so collectively...
Contrarians, those whose opinions are regularly at variance with those of the majority in the group, are just taken seriously, like everybody else. When they do not act according to a group decision (a sense of the meeting supposedly representing the will of God for the group) they are free to do so. Quakers do not (in my experience) "disown" their members (= unilaterally end their membership) anymore for any kind of transgression. They may be "eldered" (= spoken to by someone in the group whom they respect). Because of the conditioning to "be open to new light, from whatever source it may come" Quakers may actually listen better to someone stubbornly expressing opinions who are at variance with those of everybody else. The inner (possibly religious ~ DQ) experience motivating him/her to do so must surely be very strong to be so stubborn!
You write:
"What I would like to explore more fully is how individuals discern quality, for example in ideas or politics or art. Wilber has recently said that 'everyone is right', or some such, and this I quite understand. I would translate this to mean that the quality that I can discern at a given point in time is limited by my development at that time. As I develop so what is quality to me will vary. The question I have is how do I choose from among an infinite set of possibilities those which will lead to the greatest potential for improved quality. If one takes Wilber's point to be that our experience of quality is an unfolding, how is it that so few achieve excellence? In a finite world, how do I know in advance of experience which paths lead to increased quality and which are dead ends? There are simply thousands of paths on offer; how do I discern those that might save me from those that are degenerate? This is Pirsig's question about discriminating the saviours from the degenerates posed as an existential choice."
My provisional thoughts about that:
Individuals discern quality simply by experiencing. Experience = quality experience because (according to a MoQ) something without quality cannot be distinguished from nothing (cannot be discerned/experienced). Different people have different experience even if they are part of the same event because they identify with different static patterns of value (developed over time) to distinguish the experience from.
The greatest potential for improved quality lies in ... the new, for the old consists of static patterns of value that become less exciting every next time you re-experience them. The new is now, for the past is memory of static patterns and the future is only extrapolation of the past. Your "infinite set of possibilities" consists of extrapolations of the past. Forget about them.
What do you mean with "few achieving excellence" (which can only be determined by grading people) if "everyone is right"?
You won't know in advance. Just trust your sense of Dynamic Quality. You can train that sense by not clinging to the past, to static patterns.
But ... be grateful for the static quality you have and don't be ashamed to fall back on it, for changing and improving all the time is too tiring.
With friendly greetings,
Wim Nusselder
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