Hi John, Platt, Squonk, DMB
thank you all, very much
=========
JOHN:
I liked Marco's first three moral principles.
1. Better something than nothing.
2. Better alive than dead.
3. Better together than alone.
There are in my view three level 4 moral principles
4(a) Better beauty than ugliness.
4(b) Better understanding than ignorance.
4(c) Better compassion than indifference.
MARCO:
Hi John, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Well, even at the other levels we
could find more than one "better....". My intention was to find the decisive
one. In my opinion, individuality can help society (and even my "social
life") more than a blind obedience. And, I'll repeat for the nth time,
individuality is not individualism. It is not in opposition to cooperation,
compassion, socialization.
About your three suggestions, I'd say that I love the first one. I think
also that the most beautiful things humans have produced came from GREAT
INDIVIDUALS. Even when the Popes *used* Michelangelo's art to increase the
prestige of Rome, well, the immensity of the artist was (IMHO) that he has
been able to put in the artwork something very personal and unique.
Allowing the artist the individual right to create his/her own art is IMO a
good way to create beauty. So I don't see my point, "individual is better
than the mass" in any contradiction with 4(a)
4(b). Yes, and again I see too many times (not always) leaders of social
organizations managing to keep the mass in ignorance, as you can tell the
ignorant what you want and convince him you are right. So, again, a good way
to win ignorance is IMO to give people the chance to know, and possibly
understand, what they want to know.
4(c) I think it falls in the social level. Better together than alone.
Better sharing. The new level should not delete the lower, so a 3rd level
high quality pattern as compassion should be regarded as one of the most
important. As well as biological life.
J:
5. Better to be.
M:
Well, according to the MOQ, TO BE=TO HAVE VALUE, or, better, TO BE=VALUE.
So it falls in the first moral principle: Better something than nothing.
"Something" IS.
J:
A level 5 metaphysics would be an absurdity.
M:
You bet it is!
=================
SQUONK:
But each level coincides with the previous, so:
1. Better something than nothing.
2. Better something than nothing and to be alive than dead.
3. Better something than nothing and to be alive than dead, together than
alone.
MARCO
Complete agreement. It fits also with my "birth" idea! Anyway, I think
there's no need to repeat the previous. It is well obvious that it is
impossible to be alive if you are not something....
S:
Better something than nothing and to be alive than dead, together than
alone and imitating, creatively.
M:
Creativity is individual. Even when working in team, there is always someone
who has the first idea. Hardly many creative people can work together, but,
believe me, if you have the chance to be involved in a *working* group of
creative people, in which everyone can add something new to the overall
design... well, it's great. I think that's the essence of Jazz.
==================
PLATT
For the 4th level I suggest:
4. Better thinking than feeling
. . . based on Pirsig's criteria for the indispensable intellectual pattern
of truth--"logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy
of explanation." Emotions need not apply.
MARCO
Pirsig suggests a pragmatic excellent test for truth. Never says that truth
runs out the whole level. And anyway never says that there's coincidence
between "thinking" and "truth". Thinking is, after all, a biological
activity, just like feeling. It is well possible to think something
wrong...
In my opinion, the inner feeling for knowledge, curiosity, is as important
as rational thinking in our quest for truth.
As Pirsig writes in the end of the SODAV paper (well, up to now, the last
official words he has written)
« But if the Conceptually Unknown were not aesthetic why should the
scientific community be so attracted to it? If you think about it you will
see that science would lose all meaning without this attraction to the
unknown. A good word for the attraction is "curiosity." Without this
curiosity there would never have been any science. try to imagine a
scientist who has no curiosity whatsoever and estimate what his output will
be. »
[...]
«... one of the reasons I have spent so much time in this paper describing
the personal relationship of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in the
development of quantum theory is that although the world views science as a
sort of plodding, logical methodical advancement of knowledge, what I saw
here were two artists in the throes of creative discovery. They were at the
cutting edge of knowledge plunging into the unknown trying to bring
something out of that unknown into a static form that would be of value to
everyone. As Bohr might have loved to observe, science and art are just two
different complementary ways of looking at the same thing. In the largest
sense it is really unnecessary to create a meeting of the arts and sciences
because in actual practice, at the most immediate level they have never
really been separated. They have always been different aspects of the same
human purpose. »
=============
DMB, Erin
(I've just visited classicalradio site... Colorado? I thought you were from
the "city that doesn't sleep...")
thanks for your good comments on my posts.
Especially I liked these lines:
DMB
"Its immoral to restrain intellectual freedom not just because it nice to
let people say and think what ever they like, but because it would be the
restraint of evolution itself. In the MOQ, intellectual static patterns are
the most evolved and so supressing would restrain their migration toward
Dynamic Quality itself. Fighting against human rights is as irrational as
making a law against invention or innovation"
MARCO
Exactly. Societies where human rights are granted are a better environment
for intellect, and therefore are more quickly and effectively migrating
toward DQ.
DMB
...In my book you're batting 1000, but on one point I think you failed to
get a hit. You didn't stike out, but didn't get a hit either.
You walked because none of the pitches went over the plate. Or something
like that......
M
Baseball, such a strange sport. Not very popular here, but I've been once at
a baseball match. Rimini defeated Parma and won the Italian championship.
And I loved that movie, starring Kevin Costner.... in Italian it is "L'uomo
dei sogni" [don't know the original title, maybe "The man of dreams" or
something like that? ] ... great movie. A man with his dream: to play an
impossible baseball match with all those dead champions, and with his
father. He had to fight for his impossible dream, against everyone. Family,
neighbourhood... . Really great.
Erin says something about baseball as a metaphor of life. The individual
cooperating in team.... this is true for many sports (football, basket
and so on... ) but there is a BIG difference! Hey, isn't baseball the sport
where one player is *alone* against nine?
DMB
While I appreciate you attempts to carefully qualify this 4th moral
principle by trying to make a distinction between individuality and
individualism, I think it still doesn't work very well. If I may impersonate
Bo for a moment, there's a SOM ghost in the idea of setting the individual
up against the collective....
M
But it is all but my intention.
[you have introduced baseball, not me! :-) ]
I'm not against the collective. I just want the collective is not against
me, and, let me reassure... them, my individuality can be a great resource
for my community! Remember the 3rd principle I've suggested together is
better than alone. Individual does not mean solitary. Individual means free.
It has only a positive connotation. It is not against anything. Not against
atoms, not against life, not against society. As SQUONK writes, the
principles operate simoulaneously. An individual simply *against* society
would be like a society against life. It would kill its own foundation. This
was more or less the conclusion of the "Overdoing the Dynamic" thread...
decay for decay's sake is a nonsense.
DMB
My point. Painting the 4th moral principle as a contest between the one and
the many only leads to confusion. That's just not what its about.
M
It was not my intention to paint the principle that way. And, at least
according to my MOQ vision, there is no confusion. It seems to me that at
the contrary the diffused *fear* of a free individuality smells of old
social values.... Let me claim, my fellows...
DON'T BE AFRAID OF YOUR INDIVIDUALITY. AND DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE OTHER'S
INDIVIDUALITY.
Let the children walk on their own feet...
DMB
How about this instead... 4th moral principle "Rights are better than "the
law".
M
hmmmm. Well, there's no contradiction. Rights are individual, so you point
to my same conclusion. Just, I find a dissonance with the other principles I
have sketched. I've not written "The Law is better than the jungle law"....
so I don't take this one. It doesn't square with the others, more matter of
aesthetics than of substance.
About the political debate, I'll let you the pleasure of discussing with our
friend Platt.
[strangely :-) I've the impression you are going to have long and hot
discussions].
Last year political debates have been very popular on this forum, and I
enjoyed them, but I could not enter again those discussions. (Clinton a
cryptocommunist? Oh, God.... )
Just a question, for you and all American readers out there. How would you
rate politically "Newsweek"? Right, Center, Left....? I'm curious, after
your eventual answer I'll tell you why.
Anyway, here is my political compass result:
Economic Left/Right: -1.50
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.26
That is more or less what I was expecting. Not far from center, just a bit
left and moderately libertarian. Few months ago Roger suggested a similar
test (was it the same site? I don't remember) and I resulted exactly on the
borderline between "centrist" and "leftist". Anyway, I find that current
politicians do not represent my ideals (if any). What is good (and again I
thank Roger for this point) is that despite these disastrous politicians the
system works.
=======================
Thank you all,
Marco
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