Hi Wim,
I am happy to continue and to learn from/with you. This may be the longest
post of the year, but it is a good one.
WIM:
'Strengthening the immune system etc. of the impoverished and
disintegrated societies on which terrorism feeds and to which
terrorism restores bits of self-esteem, by sharing our wealth
(and maybe even our political power) might be the wisest road.'
you agree 'that ... status difference (both national and global)
contributes to terrorism and otherdysfunctional patterns' and
agree
that 'the attack of fundamentalists on intellectual freedom can
derail progress until the problem is fixed (and [that] the fix
may need to be to reduce inequality between nations)'.
Which leaves us with the question how 'to assist the
dysfunctionals to create a better society for themselves'.
Would you also agree that reducing inequality between nations
might also require change in (our) high quality patterns? Not a
quality reduction of course. Changing them so as to allow
'dysfunctionals' more social quality would enhance the (absolute)
quality of our patterns, don't you think?
ROG:
Yes, I believe I agree with you on all counts. Of course, I am not endorsing
subsidizing dysfunctionality, but I assume you aren't either.
W:
In what situations is reduction of global inequality needed to
put progress back on the rails according to you?
R:
I wouldn't say social progress is totally arrested. It is multi-dimensional.
I would say that progress in part of the world creates opportunity and
problems around it. To use an analogy of Karl Popper, every solution leads
to new problems and to new, as yet unsolved, opportunities. In this case the
impact of social progress on inequality leads to some disfunctional responses
in already disfunctional cultures. Progress also leads to opportunities, for
example, it sets a standard to which lower quality cultures can aspire and in
some ways emulate.
I don't know if I really answered the Q though. I would say that both
advanced and disfunctional cultures should strive to advance. Progressive
cultures should not slow down to wait for their neighbors, but they should
lend a hand.
W:
I would now add a second crucial point of disagreement: 'Is
social quality only relative or also absolute?'.
R:
I will go along that it can be both.
W:
I am no cultural relativist. I only hold that experiencing the
absolute quality of social patterns is not an experience of
SOCIAL quality but of DYNAMIC Quality. Maybe that's just a
difference in terminology now that we have dropped wealth as the
principal measure of social quality?
R:
Let's try to avoid this path unless we have to. I would agree that social
quality is dynamic as well as static.
W:
Every society is held together by BOTH win/win interactions
between its constituent entities AND by win/lose or even
lose/lose interactions between constituent and external entities.
R:
I do not agree with lose/lose interactions as being constructive or of
holding anything together. Interactions where all parties benefit is better
than interactions which are exploitive, but the latter may contribute in some
ways to social cohesion -- I think? Certainly the competition of win/lose can
contribute to social progress, though. In fact, social and intellectual
competition can benefit both parties in the struggle. (to get good at a
sport, play people better than yourself -- to improve your theories, offer
them to critical analysis)
W:
The benefits of win/win interactions (and the losses of lose/lose
interactions) are unequally distributed. Whether the result of
interaction for relative losers in unequal distribution counts as
'winning' or as 'losing' depends on the experience of those
relative losers. Their experience involves a comparison with the
social quality which external entities experience. When they
experience less social quality as internal relative losers than
(they think they would) as external losers, they will opt out of
that society. Societies are held together by discouraging opting
out. The lure of a better deal in internal interactions is one
side of the coin. The other side is damaging or even destroying
alternative social patterns of value that could provide those who
opt out with social quality from another source.
R:
I agree. I would add that this isn't the only issue that holds societies
together. Another relevent issue is that participants in society must feel
their contributions are also equitable to their contribution. There is a bit
of a dilemma in the field of fairness -- equality of outcome vs equitability
to contribution. Societies need to balance these.
W:
Pirsig's 'immune systems' are just another, more metaphorical,
way of describing this. Your 'The greater harmony achieved in
society does indeed come from coercion.' (13/1 12:43 -0500) also
indicates that win/lose-interactions are also 'part of the game'
(i.e. part of the social patterns of values that hold a
society -local, national or global- together). Coercion is a type
of interaction in which one side at least loses, at least
initially.
R:
Well said. Cooperation requires that neither party exploits/cheats the other.
To protect against exploitation, there must be a penalty/reward system that
encourages continued cooperation and discourages exploitation. You cannot
get the benefits of society while stealing, raping, cheating, etc. It is the
threat of coercion -- and the rewards of cooperation -- that enables win/win
interactions from decaying into the chaos of mutual exploitation aka 'the law
of the jungle." The benefit in coercion is not in its punishment, it is in
its reinforcement to avoid disfunctional behavior.
As for your distinction between criminals and terrorists and whether they are
internal or external to the presently defined society, I would agree that you
can legitimately define them either way, depending upon the context used to
define society.
W:
The above 'story' may seem relativist and from a social level
viewpoint it is. Social values are not absolute. Being just a
brand of static quality, social quality (social values) just
implies 'the value of preserving/reproducing the social pattern
of values of which it is an element'. The absolute value of a
social value depends on the value of this social pattern of
values as a whole.
We can attach absolute values to different social patterns of
values from an intellectual level viewpoint. That means creating
a story that can (potentially) take into account all existing and
possible social patterns of values and comparing their
intellectual (!) value, i.e. their 'fit' with an ideal, an
intellectually constructed optimum.
Intellectual values are not absolute either however. Being also
just a brand of static quality ... etc.
The only way out of relativism is Dynamic Quality. That is what
Pirsig refers to with 'Cultures can be graded and judged morally
according to their contribution to the evolution of life.'
Absolute social quality does not exist.
R:
Pirsig of course contradicts this conjecture (two times!) in the sentence
immediately following the above quote. He uses the term "absolutely superior
culture" throughout Ch 24. I still don't know why this point is important one
way or another though. (I notice that you use the "A" word later in this
letter too.)
W:
So how to define the path of a society toward Dynamic Quality?
In accordance with your provisional conclusions in the 'Overdoing
the Dynamic'-thread I would define the path of any static pattern
of values toward Dynamic Quality as balanced maximization of
stability and versatility plus harmonization with higher level
patterns of values.
Preserving or reproducing a society, holding together its
constituent entities, is a social pattern of values.
- Maximizing its stability implies better deals in internal
interactions for relative losers to lure them away from opting
out (more equal distribution of benefits) and worse deals in
external interactions for external entities (to make opting out
less attractive as an alternative).
- Maximizing its versatility implies leaving or creating enough
difference in social quality (status) between its constituent
entities to motivate the underprivileged to emulate the
privileged and the privileged to stay ahead of them by creating
new or more status symbols (e.g. wealth, art, enlightenment), but
not too much difference in social quality on pain of making the
underprivileged apathetic and the privileged lazy.
R:
Agree 100%
W:
The balance depends on the intellectual pattern of values that
is the reference for harmonization.
This is where the intellectual level gets involved that is needed
to grade and judge societies: the intellectual value of a society
depends on its balance between stability and versatility. Judging
that balance (or harmony) implies (selectively) describing a
society and comparing that story of how that society works with
stories about other societies.
R:
All right...
I also agree with your discussion of paradigms (social stories), and the
importance of context to quality.
W:
Without competing social patterns of values, the intellectual
level is hardly distinguishable from the social level.
A social pattern of values is reproduced by people copying
behavior of other people over generations; its
static latch is reproduced behavior or 'culture', 'accumulated
ways to do things'. Without win/lose interactions with external
entities (even if only with the predators an isolated
hunter/gatherer society meets in its natural environment) there
is no need for internal win/win interactions, no drive to
meticulously copy 'ways of doing things' that have proven
conducive to survival.
R:
I could not have said it better myself.
W:
An intellectual pattern of values is reproduced by people copying
motives from other people (their reasoning that is supposedly
'behind' consciously motivated actions); its static latch is
reproduced motives or 'ideology' (in a non-derogatory sense),
'accumulated ways to justify actions'. In a stable social pattern
of values without serious competitors nearly all behavior is
'normal' and needs no conscious justification. Motivation and
copying motives from others is unnecessary.
R:
I am starting to understand your use of the "J" word now.
W:
It will be clear that I agree with David B. when he writes
'social values no longer represent evolutionary progress. Their
work is done ... If you want to talk about progress, the
intellectual level is where it's at. As the other Pirsig quote
says, a culture that supports intellectual values is absolutely
superior to one that does not. So to answer Roger's question, one
has to measure the extent to which a society, or a person,
supports intellectual values. That's why I say this is the battle
that really matters. Its not really about health or wealth. The
widespread availability of creature comforts doesn't really say
much about intellectual evolution, but the expansion of rights
and freedoms certainly does.'
R:
Health, wealth, education and opportunity are the underlying plarforms of the
more important and dynamic intellectual level. Yes. I will add though that
I agree with David only in regards to advanced cultures. This is not true in
societies (or subcultures) that have yet to get beyond racism,
fundamentalism, sexism, totalitarianism, "overpopulationism," environmental
canibalizationism, etc. In modern cultures,though, excessive emphasis on
social values can retard progress on the axis of intellectual values.
W:
An intellectual pattern of values facilitates non-biological
competition between societies (discouraging opting-out and
encouraging opting-in with words rather than weapons).
Recognition of an intellectual pattern of values (and thus of
alternative social patterns of values, alternative patterns of
behavior) implies both the need and the possibility to
consciously justify one's behavior. It is necessary because one
has to choose between those competing patterns of possible
behavior. It is possible because the intellectual pattern of
values contains not only stories about 'what exists' at lower
levels of value, but also ways to justify behavior with those
stories. Consciously justified/motivated behavior (which I
further call 'acting' or 'action') implies (relatively free)
choice and the possibility to break, change or at least make
exceptions to social patterns of values. The main 'trump card'
(as Angus calls it) at the social level is not DQ itself, but
intellectual quality. An intellectual pattern of values should
not be interpreted as a set of ideas that directly interferes in
the social level, changing lower quality social patterns of
values into higher quality patterns of values. It is rather a
pattern of ways in which social patterns of values migrate 'of
themselves' toward Dynamic Quality as mediated by intellectual
quality: by competition, by disputing the 'truth' of the
justification of those opting in and out of societies, 'is this
society really, objectively, better than that one?'...
R:
I am fine with all this.
W:
What I have been doing until now, is giving interpretations of
'social pattern of values' and 'intellectual pattern of values'
that seem to contradict Pirsig's interpretations.
I told you that a society (family, country, group of people
subscribed to a mailing list, etc.) is not in itself a social
pattern of values. It is the way in which its constituent
entities are held together that constitutes the social pattern of
values that is associated with that society.
I told you that a system of ideas or an idea (the ideas in the
head of a chemistry professor, the idea that freedom is good, the
ideas contained in 'Lila', etc.) is not in itself an intellectual
pattern of values. It is the way in which these ideas are passed
on and reproduced (as justification of alternative courses of
action) that constitutes the intellectual pattern of values.
R:
I see value in the distinction between the values and their forces, but I am
not sure where you are going here...
W:
One should however beware of indicating a social pattern of
values with a society that is only a part of the society that is
held together by that pattern (e.g. associating capitalism -a
social pattern of values that operates on a global scale- only
with countries like America and the Netherlands. Capitalism
includes also the countries they have substantial business
relations with and the win/lose interactions and lose/lose
interactions with areas that are excluded from global
capitalism.) You should not use the name of a society for only a
part of a social pattern of values (e.g. only for the internal
win/win interactions forgetting the win/lose and lose/lose
interactions between constituent and external entities that are
an essential part of the same social pattern of values).
A social pattern of values usually operates with minor variations
in more societies of the same type. So it is usually better to
indicate it by naming the type of societies rather than an
individual society.
R:
And?
W:
Disputing the truth of alternative sets of ideas presupposes a
common denominator. E.g. disputing whether decentralized
distributed control or central control of the economy produces
most wealth presupposes that producing wealth is an important
goal of any society.
Alternative intellectual patterns of values have different
'common denominators' for disputes and therefore can't be
reconciled by appealing to 'truth'.
R:
This is an offshoot of the old "you can't derive an ought from an is
argument." Again, this one could lead us way off topic. Let me just say that
I agree that values are certainly at least somewhat dependent upon one's
goal and or context.
W:
How then to choose between alternative intellectual patterns of
values in order to chose the best one to use as a reference for
harmonization of social patterns of values?
An intellectual pattern of values migrates toward Dynamic Quality
by balanced maximization of stability and versatility plus
harmonization with ... Dynamic Quality itself (for lack of higher
level patterns of values).
- Maximizing its stability implies enlarging the set of 'common
denominator' ideas that are difficult to dispute.
- Maximizing its versatility implies leaving or creating enough
'room for dispute', a large enough range of alternative sets of
ideas that can be combined with the 'common denominator' ideas,
to stimulate creativity, but not too much 'room for dispute' to
make every 'truth' seem arbitrary and relative and consensus
apparently beyond reach.
- The balance can be experienced as absolute Dynamic Quality.
R:
Well said.
W:
I propose to indicate ('point to') the higher level value beyond
truth as 'Meaning', capitalizing it to distinguish it from the
'meaning' of a 'text' in a certain 'context' which defines its
'truth', the 'fit' of that 'text' with 'reality'. If we
experience harmony with DQ in a work of art of in a religious
experience, we say 'it is Meaningful' without being able to
define a 'truth' that explains that experience of 'Meaning'. This
culminates in the experience that there must be a 'Meaning of
life' or '... of my life' even if no amount of science can tell
me where life is eventually heading for or originally originating
from and 'Who' could have given life that 'Meaning'.
Let me summarize what I have been doing in this post until now:
1. I accept your suggestion (13/1 12:57 -0500) to formulate as
key question 'How to define the path toward absolute quality?'.
2. I also accept your suggestion (implicit in the title of this
thread) to ask ourselves next whether society is making progress
along that path.
3. Given your agreement with the idea that international
inequality contributes to terrorism and may need reducing, the
next question is how to assist people in other parts of the world
to make progress along that path.
Sub-questions would be:
3a. Would that also require change in our patterns of values?
3b. Where and to what extent is reduction of global inequality
needed and reduction of what inequality between what entities?
R:
Okey dokey smokey. (American slang for what the Dutch know of as "I agree")
W:
I have interpreted 'absolute quality' in question 1 as 'Dynamic
Quality' instead of as 'social quality'. Do you agree with that
step?
R:
Not exactly. As I wrote above, we need to consider social and intellectual
quality in regards to context. But the goal is DQ. I see no dispute on this
tangent.
W:
I have implicitly split question 1 in two sub-questions:
1a By what method should we define the path toward DQ?
1b What path toward DQ follows from applying that method?
R:
And I found no disagreement with you on this matter yet.
W:
My method to define the path toward DQ of a social pattern of
values (that holds together a society) is thus:
a) Choose from the available intellectual patterns of value the
one that is most Meaningful. That requires religious experience
and/or aesthetic judgement.
Be aware that every intellectual pattern of values (as a sine qua
non for its stability) rules out discussion about its core ideas
('common denominator' ideas that enable discussing 'truth'). So
it may be necessary to create a new intellectual pattern of
values at a higher level of abstraction in which the
'indisputable' core of the best available intellectual pattern of
values becomes disputable. Pirsig paved the way for us by
creating a MoQ that makes disputable the
subject/object-distinction that is part of the 'indisputable'
core of most modern Western intellectual patterns of values. It
is impossible to conceive of and compare all available
intellectual patterns of values without such an intellectual
pattern of values at the highest level of abstraction.
You will choose the intellectual pattern of values that has the
'right' balance between stability and versatility, between the
size of its 'indisputable' core and its 'room for dispute'.
R:
Hmmm. I guess so...
W:
b) Use the chosen intellectual pattern of values to judge how the
balance can be enhanced between stability and versatility of the
social pattern of values concerned.
Be aware that this path may not be same for every social pattern
of values. It depends at least on inorganic and biological
circumstances and to some extent also on its social environment.
It is also useful to distinguish between
- the 'path of migration' which that social pattern of values
would take of itself without any intervention from the
intellectual level,
- the path it would take under influence of the already present
intellectual patterns of values and
- the path it can take under influence of the intellectual
pattern of values of your choice.
Take into account the limits that are set by the (required
stability of) biological and inorganic patterns of values that
underpin the social pattern of values concerned. The path to be
defined will have to within those limits and will have to be
better than the path of migration without the proposed
intervention applying the best available intellectual pattern of
values.
It will be a path which combines:
- a relatively better share of 'fame and fortune' for internal
relative losers to more effectively lure them away from opting
out and becoming external entities,
- a relatively worse share of 'fame and fortune' losses for
external entities in external win/lose or lose/lose interactions
to more effectively lure them into opting in and becoming
internal entities,
- more motivation for relative losers to emulate the relative
winners and
- more motivation for relative winners to stay ahead.
R:
Yes. I agree. (and I think I addressed your concerns on over-focus upon
wealth too, but wealth has never been a central term to me in this
discussion)
W:
I am not a relativist. I believe that DQ, the source of Meaning,
is the same for everyone. Even if the path to DQ for a given
social pattern of values may be different from that of another
social pattern of values, for any social pattern of values (at a
definite position relative to DQ) there is only one best path
toward it.
R:
Agree that there are many paths. I would even state that there may be
multiple best paths. But I don't really know. There is a near infinite
supply of bad paths though!
W:
I do not pretend to know or be able to know that one best path
for any social pattern of values. My ability to take into account
all possibilities and judge them is too limited for that. Only
collectively can we hope to define The path to DQ for a specific
social pattern of values (after eliminating misunderstandings
about exactly what social pattern of values we mean). Until then
I consider everything I write as provisional (and even after that
we might be wise to do so, as possibilities may change).
R:
That goes for me too. Great discussion. You are very insightful. I look
forward to your response (but I know better than to hold my breath! :^)
Rog
"So far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain.
And so far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality"
Albert Einstein - Geometry and Experience
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