Dear Platt,
I'm getting some trouble discussing with you because of the sharp
tone in too many of your postings.
You also seem to discard my 28/10 22:21 +0100 posting addressed
to you with only denigratory remarks:
29/10 13:15 -0500 you write in a side note "An 'amorphous soup
of
sentiments' such as justice, brotherhood, and peace doesn't give
us much to go on."
3/11 14:27 -0500 you write to someone else "many on this site who
criticize Pirsig haven't specified a source for their moral
outlook other than an 'vague, amorphous soup of sentiments' like
love, justice, peace and 'dialogue'."
You do indeed act a little bit like a dim bulb when in your 28/10
11:05 -0500 posting you
1) confuse the "issue of whether the free enterprise system
works"
with the issue as you put it 24/10 14:36 -0400:
"What evidence can you present" for the truth of "the statement
... 'that ... free enterprise global economics is a system of
ideas developed on behalf of the privileged to legitimize their
(my and your) privileges?'"
(implicitly confusing a system of ideas with the reality it
inaccurately describes and
"legitimizing" with "explaining"),
2) mistake a list of economists who "first developed
neo-classical economics at the end of the 19th century" for a
list of "'authorities' who have written about the virtues of free
enterprise"
On the other hand I am aware of my own hideous habit of wanting
to say too much with too few words. I have that problem even in
my Dutch mother tongue, which is less than American a "sound-bite
language". I don't want to take the time to correct this habit of
mine in my postings on this list, however, for it would compound
the imbalance between available time and what I want to say even
more and ... would induce someone like you to reply even faster,
leaving me even more breathless :-).
So, I ask you to take your time pondering my postings before you
reply. It might also to be helpful to reply to the general drift
before going into details. Your replies give the impression, that
you haven't read the whole of my posting when you write your
reply to the first bit.
Back to your 29/10 13:15 -0500 posting.
My point was, that Pirsig (in "Lila") was not consistent enough
in his changeover from SOM to a MoQ. He didn't need to, as he was
indeed writing a novel and not an academic paper. He was only
"pointing to the moon" and would have been less persuasive and
less widely read otherwise.
Everyday language makes "writing MoQite" difficult, because of
nouns that are either subjects or direct objects and because of
(transitive) verbs that presuppose a direct object. It doesn't
make "writing MoQite" impossible, however. Some nouns however,
while they can technically be the subject of a sentence, can
hardly be misunderstood for a subject in a subject-object pair.
"Quality" is such a noun. And intransitive verbs don't presuppose
a direct object. E.g. "quality" cannot "act" and cannot do
something to something else. "Quality" is experience and
experience is "quality". The only tricky thing with "quality" is,
that in SOM language one can say that "something has quality (or
not)". A MoQ states that "quality" precedes the (deduction of)
"something" (for the "something" would not be experienced if it
would not "have quality"). So "something having quality" confuses
SOM and MoQ, because it logically presupposes a something and it
strongly suggests that this something is valued by a someone.
So we should try to avoid using "quality" as a direct object in
sentences and we should try to avoid transitive verbs.
This stays true if we analyze Quality, distinguishing it first in
static and dynamic quality, in patterns-staying-as-they-are and
patterns-changing, and then distinguishing these patterns in 4
different types. These patterns are still Quality, experience,
and neither a subject nor an object. Neither a pattern of values
(static quality) nor change in such a pattern (Dynamic Quality)
is a "thing" (the word I use to denote both subjects and
objects), even if we use the same word for a "thing" and for such
a pattern.
A table is a thing (obviously). But this word can also be used to
denote the pattern of values a toddler experiences when it bumps
its head every time it rises to its feet at approximately the
same spot.
England is a thing that should or shouldn't have defended itself
from annexation by Germany (and that may have had far more
options than surrendering and all-out war...). But this word can
also be used to denote the pattern of values one experiences when
one sees a certain flag on different places, certain behavior in
different people etc.
When the toddler grows, its will learn that this experience also
is part of a wider experience that artifacts which elevate a
roughly horizontal surface between 0,5 and 1,5 metres from ground
level tend to be used by
humans to deposit things on to save them the trouble of stooping
(and should not be used to sit on, as parents and teachers will
conspire to impart to it).
Likewise the "England-experience" is part of a wider experience
that groups of people calling themselves "nations" resist change
in their habits by excluding others (criminals, spies, soldiers
etc.) in one way or another. What they do to resist change (for
instance annexation by another "nation") is "moral" in the sense
that the pattern stays as it is and "immoral" in the sense that
it doesn't change.
A pattern can be stronger (more resistant to change) than another
pattern (and England proved to be stronger than Germany, although
... neither remained unchanged by W.W.II...). The survival of the
strongest patterns of any type (on a certain level) is "moral" in
the sense that these are better static latches of Quality AND
"immoral" in the sense that they better prevent change.
The morality of the MoQ, of static patterns of value migrating
towards Dynamic Quality (changing and becoming more and more
complex), is another kind of morality than the SOM morality that
makes certain kinds of action by subjects legitimate and other
kinds of action illegitimate. The MoQ has nothing whatsoever to
say about the question whether (thing) England should have simply
surrendered to (thing) Hitler or not.
The fact that "Pirsigs metaphysical somersault" (Bo 6/12 9:04
+0100) wasn't complete and that he still confused things and
patterns at the end of "Lila" doesn't excuse us for making the
same mistake.
Hope this clarifies somewhat my 27/10 22:11 +0100 posting, which
admittedly doesn't seem to somersault completely either on
hindsight. As said before: everyday language makes "writing
MoQite" difficult.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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