Scott, Bo,
I hope you don't mind my intruding on your debate, which I have been
following with increasing interest. Some of your recent reformulations of
your SOLAQI theory (eg "the ability to divide what is objective from what is
subjective is
REASON") have been beginning to make sense to me Bo, though I still have
problems with your original formulation of it. Scott's latest input has
certainly made the whole topic much more interesting and challenging for me.
Scott, you say you have a problem with "the idea that each q-level *came
into
existence at some point in time* from the next lower level". I have always
thought that Pirsig's thought was confused here too. His mistake, in the
most general sense, is to take evolutionary theory as an explanatory
principle, which it certainly is, but to apply it to quality issues which
are more fundamental to reality than any scientific theory can ever be. In
my view Pirsig is prone to take science in general, evolution in particular,
and metaphysical thinking generally, as adequate vehicles to express what is
just not expressible in those modalities. Much of the awkwardness of his MOQ
derives from this misplaced 'objectivity'. It's hard enough to get language
to work for us in talking about quality, without using the very language
which epitomises the SOM worldview.
You go on to say "for consciousness to happen *requires* a
non-spatio-temporal reality of some sort. Another way to state it is that to
be aware of time passing, we have to be outside of time -- which is what
mystics have been saying all along." I agree.
Then you say "our inability to understand consciousness was the same problem
as our inability to understand God (as the mystics would have it) or to
understand Quality". Again I agree.
You summarise as follows "our intellect is S/O thinking, and with that we
cannot
understand the source of S/O thinking. But we *can* understand -- and this
is the MoQ -- that subjects and objects are not primary, rather they are
created in each instance of our awareness, and Quality is the driver of that
creation".
Here I have some concerns, mainly with the word 'understand' above, since it
can refer to the S/O activity of thinking, which as you say is not adequate
to examine what underlies the S/O realm. But you go on to say "Reason is the
same non-thing as Quality, just a different name when we are focused on
intellect", and with this I agree. So we need to take the word 'understand'
as implying something more than reasoning, or thinking. In my view it comes
very close to the meaning of the word intelligence, as Krishnamurti used it,
and which David Bohm pointed out means literally 'the ability to read
between the lines'. This is dynamic.
What I found really challenging was your assertion that "SOM didn't really
happen until about 400 years ago". I have read Jaynes, with great enjoyment,
but am not familiar with Owen Barfield. I must get hold of his books. But
your comment stirred my memory of a peculiar little book by Francis Barker,
entitled 'The Tremulous Private Body - Essays on Subjection'. This is, shall
I say, a typically dense post-structuralist dissertation. It can be opened
at random and any paragraph is almost guaranteed to be unintelligible. Yet
almost by osmosis, his theme emerges, that "In the seventeenth century there
was a profound change in the conditions and representation of the body ...
The new regime separates the body from the soul and divides the body into
two components: the 'absent' body whose desires and appetites are denied,
and the 'positive' body which is eventually reinscribed as an object of
rational knowledge"(from the cover notes). This seems to me to overlap with
your theme, and specifically with your comment that "without SO thinking,
there is no "inorganic"." Not only is the concept of 'inorganic' unthinkable
until "the development of the subject", in your words, but our very bodies,
our corporeal substance, have been objectified. Barker refers to Rembrandt's
painting 'The Anatomy Lesson' in which a group of eminant Dutch doctors
surround the body of a recently executed criminal, which is being dissected.
He makes the point that not one of these observers examines the body. Rather
their eyes are fixed on an anatomy text propped up at its feet. Even more
oddly, the arm being dissected is anatomically incorrect ( with a right hand
on a distorted left arm), further emphasising the loss of immediate
experience of the objective world. "It is not so much that modernity invents
script, but rather that it masks the scripting of what it takes to be real."
(p 82) The body becomes "an object of discourse" in which "knowledge becomes
the essential form of its mastery" (p 97)
So while the change in understanding that Barker refers to is somewhat
different to what Barfield describes, it may be no coincidence that they
occur in the same era, and they may have a complex interrelationship.
"Barfield also makes the point, as I believe you do in the SOLAQI, that SOL
is a necessary stage on the way to the next stage, which he calls "final
participation" and which mystics call the transcendence of subject-object
duality"
I thought Bo was very opposed to the mystic inclusion in the levels, though
from my point of view it is absolutely clear that the MOQ is an attempt to
integrate values that are fundamentally accessed through mystic experience
into a metaphysics. I think the attempt is valid, but unlikely to have a
satisfying outcome since the intellectual level (at which metaphysics
resides) is by definition incompetent to incorporate a higher level, but
that does not mean that it is not possible to talk about mysticism. Insofar
as Pirsig talks about values, and thereby validates the interior realm from
which values arise, his metaphysics has the valuable effect of 'pointing to
the moon' of a way of life (mysticism) where the subject/object divide is
genuinely transcended. Insofar as his emphasis is on intellectual system
building, which it largely is, it is in fact a regressive attempt to contain
new wine in old bottles.
The other aspect of all this that your post neglects is that each individual
life, if Wilber is correct, passes through similar stages to the historic
transformations you allude to. You suggest this when you say "even though we
are more out of touch with Reality (Quality) than those in "original
participation" (as of course Pirsig is saying in Lila) we are in a
progression of some sort". Hence the development of an egoic self in infancy
allows for subject/object discrimination, and I suspect has done so for much
longer than 400 years. I am in fact very suspicious of claims that
'primitive' tribes had no concept of individuality, or in this case could
not discriminate between subject and object. My experience in such cultures
leads me to think the opposite, that individualism was highly developed in
some senses, but with areas we would find deficient. Every infant learns the
difference between subjects and objects when it bites its thumb instead of
its bedding, or mother, or something else. Whether the culture supports this
discrimination in ways we in the West today find axiomatic is another
question.
I have greatly enjoyed your recent debate, and hope my comments might add to
it.
Regards
John B
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