Mary, Andrea, Platt, Angus and who it may concern.
Mary wrote:
> Another question.
> Since Pirsig says that everything fits into one of the 4 levels, and
> a spirit world doesn't seem to, does that imply that the spirit world
> resides somehow within DQ? Where would that be? Is the nature of DQ
> a spirit? I thought DQ was the driving force for 'the good' or
> 'Quality' in the universe - sort of the opposite of entropy. I didn't
> know it had spirits in it. I'm not trying to be facetious, just
> ignorant...
Hi Mary
Slowly I have been thinking how to approach this most sensitive
matter. The head-on is probably the only way. "Spirit/Body" is one
of the countless S/O offshoots so this question of yours goes to
the very heart of the Quality Metaphysics and its good-bye to
Subject/Object Metaphysics.
Andrea ha critta: (my Italian is improving :-)
> the 4
> levels are a way to describe how are *static patterns of value*
> related to each other, to classify them, etc. (Pure) experience, DQ,
> and so on, don't fit in. It is (IMO) highly misleading to say that
> "everything fits in the 4 levels", unless with that you mean
> "everything in this world around me", which could be considered more
> or less the same as "every static pattern".
With all respect Andrea No, and no again! If the MoQ is to replace
the SOM and "spiritual" is one of SOM's subjectivities then -
naturally - it gets a place inside MoQ's STATIC sequence. The
misconception that Dynamic Quality is the spiritual realm of SOM
leaves it just a messy SOM.
SOM's place inside the MoQ is (according to Pirsig) the two lower
levels as "objective" and the two upper as "subjective". This goes a
long way but I find it instrumental to view the S/O divide as the Q-
intellectual level itself and don't regard this as any "heresy", while
saying that DQ=spiritual and SQ=everything else is one.
> About the word "spirit": my usual way of dealing with such esoteric
> concepts, which are well-know to be vague, underdefined, and generally
> dangerous for the free thinker, is a 2 step approach: at first, I take
> them metaphorically. I often happen to like these metaphors. After
> I've appreciated these metaphors for some time, I try to clarify to
> myself what truth is behind the metaphor; and very often, I find out
> that I really don't need to use a different word than the original,
> "esoteric" one. It's a "hey, that wasn't all this metaphoric after
> all" experience. After all, the boundary between a good metaphor and a
> "truth" is *extremely* blurred, isn't it?
> Having followed this process a bit, I might want to say, yes, DQ *is*
> one spirit (that is, at least it is a very good metaphor).
"Metaphorical vs non-metaphorical" is another SOM duality.
Treating language as something outside of experience ...no!.
Please Andrea, I am not out to mindf... you (ref. Killerblade:-), but
this issue is important and obviously as unsolved as it was when
we started this discussion.
Finally to Mary's last line:
> Please explain your view of how spirits fit into this. I
> always thought that when you die you are dead. End of story. What
> does the MOQ have to say about this? I don't recall Pirsig saying
> anything about it.
According to the MoQ we human beings are of all values. The
question of identity has been raised many times, but for now I'll
just say that the MoQ also overturns SOM's most subtle offspring:
the "Survival after death/End of story" quandary. A metaphysics
worth it's fee must CHANGE EVERYTHING!
The eternal SOM-spotter
Bo
PS
Re. Platt's
> "On the death of any living creature, the spirit returns to the
> spiritual world, the body to the bodily world. In this, however, only
> the body is subject to change. The spiritual world is one single
> spirit who stands like unto light behind the bodily world and who,
> when any single creature comes into being, shines through it as
> through a window. According to the kind and size of the window less or
> more light enters the world. The light itself however remains
> unchanged.
If the intellectual level is the S/O divide (and the humans look
down at existence from there) the spirit/body "fate" is as above
described, but again: If the MoQ replaces S/OM it follows that it
also changes this view.
PPS
I also noticed in another post that Angus lectured someone about
a "trinity" MoQ: QUALITY+DQ/SQ. This is a misconception too,
there can't be anything outside Dynamic Quality. Denis Poisson an
I fought long over that, so long that Denis dropped out.
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