Greetings, Platt
I've been modeling social evolution for the last couple of decades, and
still wrestle with this question. I think you are right about de Chardin; he
posits an Omega Point but leaves the force driving toward 'it' ambiguous, or
at least he uses wording that don't produce much recognition in me. It is
intriguing to think that Pirsig may be proposing a driver of social
evolution. Without having to answer the question of how this all 'got
started,' we can examine what might be driving it now, besides the old
biological dynamics. Perhaps one way to look at static patterns is that
people and societies embrace predictability, without realizing that it is an
embrace that will cost us in the long run, cost us the flexibility and
desire to pursue new opportunities and to respond effectively to new
challenges. If we were to free ourselves from this desire for
predictability, we might find social evolution accelerated. We have talked
on this list about aesthetics, value, and quality as evolutionary
attractants, and my own view is that that may be sufficient, but when I put
my systems analyst hat on, I wonder whether there might not also be some
intrinsic systems dynamics at work, that have to do with things like
complexity, miniaturization, energy efficiency, etc. Perhaps the MOQ
coupled with these systems dynamics takes us to what de Chardin called his
Omega Point. Salk also looked at this and did some interesting thinking
about it, compatible, I think, with the MOQ + systems dynamics view.
Interesting....
I'm off for the holidays. Cheers to all.
Lawry
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
> [mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk]On Behalf Of Platt Holden
> Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 5:47 PM
> To: moq_discuss@moq.org
> Subject: RE: MD Overdoing the dynamic
>
>
> Hi Lawry:
>
> You asked:
>
> > Could you say a bit more about your phrase, an 'evolutionary
> moral force'?
> > Anything like de Chardin, or his notion that human evolution is
> leading us
> > to 'God' or to be 'God-like', with or without the religious
> connotations or
> > language? Or is the force a self-created moral one?
>
> Pirsig explains his revolutionary view of evolution in Chapter 11 of LILA
> so I won't repeat a lot of it here. He mentions Lamarck, de Chardin and
> other proponents of teleology, saying their theories are acceptable
> under the umbrella of the MOQ but pointing out they have been unable
> to come up with any mechanism that accounts for their "Omega Point"
> finalism.
>
> I've done a little research on Chardin and can find no reference in his
> work or in summaries of his work that he attributed evolution as Pirsig
> does to "forces of value." Chardin said all energy is psychic in nature
> which might be interpreted broadly as including the central role in the
> MOQ of "experience." He also divides his psychic energy into tangential
> energy and radial energy, corresponding in a loose way with static and
> Dynamic Quality. But I have not been able to detect in Chardin any
> thought that, as Pirsig says, " ... what is evolving isn't patterns of
> atoms. What is evolving is static patterns of value." The idea that
> atoms, molecules, jellyfish and human beings are moral patterns that
> were created by moral force called Dynamic Quality is unique to Pirsig
> as far as I know.
>
> As to your question about DQ being self-created, I can only point out
> that ultimate beginnings are shrouded in mystery beyond the ken of us
> mere mortals. Underneath questions like "Who made God?" are a
> whole series of assumptions about causes, mechanisms, space/time,
> etc. So my best answer to you question would be that DQ is infinite and
> that, like physicists tell us about the nature of energy, it can
> neither be
> created nor destroyed.
>
> Thanks for an interesting question. What do you think?
>
> Platt
>
>
>
>
>
>
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