On 10 May 2002 at 18:13, John Beasley wrote:
> It seems I struck a nerve with my comments on MOQ fundamentalism.
> Good.
John B. and Group.
Nerves are struck all the time at this place, but you took my somewhat
harsh post generously and I am grateful for that. I take the liberty to
change the subject heading as this is a rather different thread.
> 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.
I suspected that.
> 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.
Removing some redundant words: ... the contradiction I am setting up
between advocacy of the MOQ and the very specific understanding that
the MOQ presents" ...My fault maybe, but this evades me.
> 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.
Not so fast. This is far into the Catechism". The very start is the
Quality=Reality postulate and then the Dynamic/Static Quality. Do you
accept those? I don't require acceptance, but that you acknowledge this
initial opening. Your attitude to this crucial point must be determined
first. I guess Platt has asked you these questions before, but please
inform me.
Pirsig's attempts at showing that value is the ground-stuff are difficult to
understand and the "Hot Stove" is grossly misinterpreted (by Gary
Jaron for instance) and was in its time a favourite target for Struan's
attacks. Consequently, I was greatly surprised and pleased when he
presented it in a different form. (The Cold Snow proof) which proved
that he - of all people - had come to understand it.
> 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).
I know the peculiarity that Q-evolution seems to be moving AWAY from
and TOWARDS Quality, but this depends on how you visualize the Q-
development. To me it's waves in a formless ocean where the waves
are "water" yet - as patterns - different from water, and also that water
surrounds the (at any time) wave front. Consequently DQ is at the
centre and at the circumference ...and everywhere.
> 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)
All right Pirsig says this, but who has "written" a metaphysics before?
The obstacle that he calls SOM has no author, but has developed over
the last three millennia (say) and people regard it as something god-
given, intuitive. Notice that the (academical) reviews of the MOQ there
has been, concentrate on there being no SOM.
> 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.
A relief to see you putting an "as I see it" in here :-) and also thanks for
reaching this conclusion because this is the very crux of the matter.
Remember Denis Poisson? He and I ended up on this "brink of the
precipice" position and he left ..in disgust maybe ...and this issue is
now shunned like the plague by the oldies while new-comers bring it up,
believing they are telling us something important (Gary Jaron: The map
is not the terrain)
> 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.
Well, if you promise not to have me strait-jacketed I risk the assertion
that the MOQ "creates the universe". Great theories creates new
realities and the most comprehensive theory there is - a metaphysics in
the SOM/MOQ sense - creates different universes. As told, Denis and I
discussed this: His position was that QUALITY had been there all the
time; In the SOM era divided into mind/matter, by the MOQ divided into
DQ/SQ, but this "creates" a super-something of which the DQ of the
MOQ is a subdivision, and if this is accepted .........? It's like saying that
God is one and have been given different names. That may go for the
Semitic variants, but clearly not for Buddhism and other Eastern
religions. We have been discussing the map-metaphor endlessly: That
the MOQ is a map of a reality beyond, and it is the very same thing.
The map IS the reality if we are willing to draw conclusions.
Heck ...in an age of multiverses, singularities containing everything,
wormholes to other times, and the likes what's so sensational?
Angus called it solipsism and in SOM it IS solipsism, but then when/if
SOM don't count?.
But in the late fifties things were different and this was naturally what
brought Phaedrus to his break-down, and RMP writing the ZAMM in the
seventies did not want to identify completely with P, but became a
"narrator". Even when writing LILA in the eighties he was cautious.
Again, P. came from the SOM "universe" (where else?) and in it there is
no such thing as a metaphysics in the MOQ sense - only different maps
of a S/O terrain, and an insight like P's must necessarily be called
madness. Yet, P. was a pioneer in a totally new territory .... a territory
where the Buddhists have been all the time (according to Alan Watts)
but one that the western mind has been incapable of grasping ..till now
and Australia seems to be super-western in spite of its geographical
position.
> 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.
Yes, yes, I know these level-headed formulations unto vomiting
> "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)
This sounds sound enough and maybe I don't do the MOQ any good
with my ranting, but someone MUST defend the original idea which - in
its time "saved" me by letting me know another person with an insight
like my own - one that threatened my "peace of mind" (to say the least).
Well, let me not get too personal.
> 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.
If it's possible to penetrate your "immune system" John then listen: Your
fault is believing that it's possible to keep outside a static understanding
of reality, relating only to dynamic experience. DQ (in the MOQ sense)
is something terrifying that no-one can encounter without danger of
never recovering and is better left to those who can't let it be no matter
what) But then you don't buy the MOQ, your 'dynamic' is the usual
noble-sounding variety - as noble-sounding as 'value' and as
meaningless. DQ is intimately connected with the rest of the MOQ.
> 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.
Wilber takes us further - ha! Pirsig obviously believed he had taken it
too far in the ZAMM and wanted LILA to be accessible for academic
philosophy and I have repeatedly said that I understand his caution
back then, hammering away at the manuscript - one revelation after
the other dawning on him - but not knowing if anyone would understand.
He simply could not afford to "take it all out", but I know that he
considers it an "enormity".
> 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.
I know only too well what you mean. Hope you give mine a thought
before throwing yourself at the keyboard :-).
Bo
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