Hi John
You opened your message (to Rod) thus:
> A very interesting topic. I hate talking about my spirituality since
> the word is so mired with 'airy-fairy' 'religious' connotations, on
> one side, and mindless 'new age' associations on the other, that the
> moment it is used it seems necessary to defend it by explaining that I
> don't mean either. This seems to be something like your experience,
> too.
> The problem is that there does not seem to be an acceptable
> alternative, at least in English. While I see a large overlap between
> the realm of 'quality' and the realm of spirituality, they are hardly
> synonyms. If anyone can come up with an appropriate term and weave it
> into a story about Zen and such like, there should be a small fortune
> to be made from it.
...and who can question such a reasonable view? Like Platt I would also
equalize "spirituality" with DQ (if hard pressed) even if I believe that dynamic
quality is something much more awesome - frightening.
> In very broad terms I see 'spiritual' as shorthand for the highest
> level of quality I can encounter. This goes against a tendency in the
> MOQ to see dynamic quality as homogeneous, and hence not something
> that can be discriminated into higher and lower levels
The levels are static patterns in the dynamic continuum, like waves in an
ocean. Whether they are dynamic at the bottom ...? It's the static aspect
that counts so DQ can very much be discriminated into higher and lower
patterns or levels.
>, but I have
> long argued that this is simplistic. Dynamic quality operates
> differently at the different static levels.
Seems like we agree, but why call it DQ, the levels are static.
> For example, at the level
> of the biological organism, it is all about finding food, shelter and
> mates, and avoiding predators and harmful environments. These values
> are generally 'hard-wired' into the neural systems of the organisms,
> including ourselves.
I must stress that biological value spawned patterns which from our
intellectual-SOM view looks hard-wired, but no more so than social values
are "hard-wired". I agree very much that we - human beings as biology - are
organisms like any other, it is the social and intellectual values that makes
us human. Admittedly there are enormous differences inside a level - say -
between an amoeba and a mammal, but that is of biological refinement.
> And at this level Pirsig's assumption that
> whatever is without quality, be that high or low value quality, cannot
> be experienced, holds true. Our perceptual systems are
> 'quality-seeking' structures at this biological level. However, the
> fact that I can attend to the capital H that begins this sentence is
> in my view sufficient evidence that Pirsig's assumption is not valid
> at other levels.
All quality systems (levels) are perception of value, I may be as obstinate as
you dear John in my sensing-emotion-reason definition, but it is the only way
of making sense. Otherwise it leads to all these strange "discoveries" from
various people about levels being ...superfluous, pseudo, or that various
items are wrongly placed, or - to top it all - that everything REALLY is
intellect. The last the most ominous because it is SOM in a thin Q-guise.
The logic about attending to the capital H disproving Pirsig eludes me.
> I cannot agree that Pirsig's static quality hierarchy is so structured
> that it includes everything in experience except dynamic quality. The
> categories are not discrete.
W have discussed this unto exhaustion, my take is that any level's
uppermost pattern, the one that went off "on a purpose of its own" and
became a new level can only be seen as such in retrospect. You are a
gestalt psychologist? It's the famous black vase/two faces example over
again, they can't be perceived both ways simultaneously, only discrete. This
is the nature of the intermediate patterns.
The rest about Wilber I can't really judge, in your opinion he has some
bearing on the MOQ, in mine he just messes up its beauty.
Bo
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