Hi Zykaine, all,
As has been pointed out, there have been a number of discussions on this
recently, and you might find it helpful to look at my post Re: MD Emotions
revisited (Fri Jul 06 2001 - 11:33:33 BST) which discusses the Damasio book
that Clay refers to. There are of course other good posts in there ;-) but
it's good to blow one's own trumpet occasionally, and I think it is
relevant.
However, your specific question was: can any of you recognise the difference
between pursuing DQ and pursuing emotions?
It seems to me that you need to be a little clearer about what 'pursuing
emotions' amounts to. There is a danger of falling into a circular
argument - that you posit a) we do things for emotional satisfaction, then
talk about b) lets pursue DQ, and then get stuck into a debate about how DQ
might be different from emotional satisfaction. You (we) need to be clearer
about what a) amounts to.
Two things. The first is that emotion is a necessary part of our discernment
and decision making capability. The second is that our emotional
intelligence can be developed - we therefore need to talk about levels of
emotion, and what happens when different emotions conflict with each other.
I would be happy talking about emotional levels corresponding to each level
of the MoQ above the biological, so that, for example, the aesthetic
satisfaction a mathematician might gain from resolving a theorem is
significantly distinct from the emotional satisfaction of eating when you're
hungry.
It seems to me that DQ can be experienced at all these levels AND BEYOND -
in other words DQ is the 'lure' that draws you forward. So if you're
hungry, you get emotional satisfaction when you eat - but that level of
satisfaction is itself open to a law of diminishing returns, and you won't
always get the same emotional payoff from a full stomach. (Think of Abraham
Maslow's levels of human development). So you seek something further.
So my answer to your question would be this: we are emotional creatures,
that's how we're made, and we'll never get away from it. But just as with
aesthetics, the emotional component in the satisfaction we seek becomes more
and more sublimated or absorbed into the higher level satisfactions, which
still use the emotional equipment to work, but are not governed or
determined by them. So to say that we pursue emotions is IMHO false as a
simple description of the pursuit of DQ.
Hope that's helpful. Gotta dash (it's a busy time of year for hireling
ministers)
Sam
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:42 BST