Hullo Bo,
It seems I struck a nerve with my comments on MOQ fundamentalism. Good.
You say that I "have never grasped the very first thing" about Pirsig's
ideas. You are welcome to your opinion on that, but when you say that my
input is "never for the purpose of highlighting the MOQ" you are indeed
quite correct. My understanding of a metaphysics is that it is a "collection
of the most general statements of a hierarchical structure of thought". You
seem oblivious to the contradiction you are setting up between advocacy of a
particular metaphysics, in your case the MOQ, or your SOLAQI variant, which
is fine as far as it goes, and the very specific understanding of our
reality that the MOQ presents.
According to the MOQ static patterns of value can be arranged
hierarchically. While I have problems with the detail of how Pirsig has done
this, I do accept that a hierarchical structure is essential to a
metaphysics, and this is one of the areas where Wilber offers IMO a useful
alternative structure. But the MOQ posits that beyond the four static levels
"there's a fourth Dynamic morality which isn't a code" (Lila Ch 13) Hence in
the basic divide that Pirsig postulates between static and dynamic quality,
the dynamic is both prior to the static in experience, and superior to it in
value (see Lila Ch 9). Hence Pirsig can concede that "trying to create a
perfect metaphysics is like trying to create a perfect chess strategy, one
that will win every time. You can't do it." (Ch 9)
Your mistake, Bo, as I see it, is to put the metaphysics ahead of the
dynamic. This is why I would call it a fundamentalism. Your truth is in the
formula, yet even Pirsig admits no formula can be perfect. The reason that I
do not try to 'highlight' the MOQ is simply that the MOQ is a metaphysics,
more or less adequate to make some sense of our reality, but always
inferior, in its own assessment, to my dynamic encounter with what is. The
MOQ is ultimately static. OK, it is a high quality static pattern, as is
science, and it does a good job of explaining many things, but it is always
subject to amendment as my dynamic encounter with what is causes me to
reassess the value of what it says. I am not wanting to say that only the
dynamic has value; good explanatory schemes have their own kind of value,
but they are always subject to modification. The MOQ did not create the
universe. The universe permits the formulation of a MOQ, but that
formulation is always less than what it seeks to chart. And it is in my
immediate experience of quality that I encounter what is more valuable than
the MOQ, capable of modifying or even denying the MOQ.
"A subject-object metaphysics presumes that this kind of Dynamic action
without thought is rare and ignores it when possible. But mystic learning
goes in the opposite direction and tries to hold to the ongoing Dynamic edge
of all experience, both positive and negative, even the Dynamic ongoing edge
of thought itself ... The purpose of mystic meditation is not to remove
oneself from experience but to bring one's self closer to it by eliminating
stale, confusing, static intellectual attachments of the past." (Lila Ch 9)
So my commitment is to what is, which is ultimately known through dynamic
experience. The metaphysical kind of knowing is fine as a guide to what is,
and can help in my education, but if I allow it to become my Bible I am
lost. While I enjoy arguing about metaphysics, it's just a game, compared
with the real business of bringing one's self closer to what is, by
eliminating the static patterns of the past through greater openness to what
is in immediate experience. I agree completely with Pirsig in the section I
quote above, but I wish he had gone further and delved into the very thought
structures that we require to create a metaphysics, and how they too create
the staleness. Even further, I wish he had gone into the whole business of
memory and fantasy, and how so much of our experience is self-created, as in
projection. That is where the exciting and challenging issues arise, IMO,
and that is where Wilber takes us further.
No doubt this has been boring for you, but I am always hopeful that if I
take things point by point perhaps the message may get through.
John B
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