Andy, Rog, All
Part 2- The MoQ and Sustainablity.
In part one I confessed that at times in my career I felt as if
American society faced with apparently incontrovertible evidence that
it's current way of living and building was not sustainable
continued and continues to act stupidly. But, even if this is so the
first step in correcting this process requires a widespread shift in society's
worldview. And that there is usually a very long time lag between a
shift in worldviews and the manifestation of it in the artifacts society
builds.
My first recollection of the word "sustainablity" is from a 4-H soil
conservation camp I attended on range management in the 1950's. At
that time "sustainablity" was a biological term dealing with how to manage
pasture land for maximum grass production, thus maximizing the number of
livestock the land could support, while minimizing soil erosion. As a
widespread government program, the experiences, observations, and "basic
science" underlying this issue was obviously much older. So one path the
evolution of "sustainablity" took in America starts with the
migration of immigrants onto the plains in the mid 1800's and widespread
introduction of European style husbandry on a scale never before seen in the
world. Soon the over grazing and over tilling led to serious soil
erosion and subsequent farm and ranch failures during the droughts of
the 1930's. Based on these
experiences by the early 40's educational programs were instigated in an
effort to shift
practices to more sustainable ones. In this case it took approximately
100 years for the problem to manifest itself on the plains, 10 or so to
get some understanding
of it and propose some solutions, and 60 odd years of ongoing work to try
and correct the problems. And even though the problems, to some
degree continues, the shear "stupidity" of over grazing and over tilling
has been by and large eliminated. And in evolutionary timeframes,
blindingly fast.
During this same 60 year period, the mid 40's to present, the use of
word "sustainablity" has grown from a theory of managing agricultural practices
to being applied to almost all patterns of value, so this morning I
might read in the paper, "Analyists are divided on whether the current
rally is sustainable." The MoQ recognizes and formalizes this from a
metaphysical standpoint with statements like:
*******
"Quality was value. They were the same thing" Lila-pp 58 "
"There’s a principle in physics that if a thing can’t be distinguished
from anything else it doesn’t exist. To this the metaphysics of quality
adds a second principle: if a thing has no value it isn’t distinguished
from anything else. Then putting the two together, A thing that has no
value does not exist." pg 114
"Static Quality is the class of stable or accepted values, patterns,
laws, customs, and theories that societies have formalized and that
change little over time. Lila-pp 58 "
" A Dynamic advance is meaningless unless it can find some static
pattern with which to protect itself from degeneration back to the
conditions that existed before the advance was made." Lila-pp 146
"Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this world in
which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order,
preserve our world. Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive
without the other." pg. 143
*******
Or anything which exists is a stable, yet changable, (sustainable)
pattern of values.
But this leads directly to the more troublesome axioms of the MoQ.
********
"..although the four systems are exhaustive they are not exclusive. They
all operate at the same time and in ways that are almost independent of
each other." Lila-pp149
"This classification of patterns is not very original, but the
Metaphysics of Quality allows an assertion about them that is unusual.
It says they are not continuous. They are discreet. They have very
little to do with one another. Although each higher level is built on a
lower one it is not an extension of that lover level. Quite the
contrary. The higher level can often be seen to be in opposition to the
lower level, dominating it , controlling it where possible for its own
purposes. " Lila-pp 149
**********
So the $64,000 question becomes not just, "Is it sustainable?" but also
"Is it good that this particular pattern sustains?"
"How do we know?"
3WD
> Kant was the first great Professional Philosopher, finally living Plato's
> dream. He set the intellectual world into seperate spheres (Art, Science,
> and Morality) and set Philosophy as their adjudicator.
> Pirsig initially, in ZMM, dissolves the Kantian value spheres.
> That's where Quality comes in. But then, in Lila, Pirsig, overcome by "Cartesian
> Anxiety" (the inexplicable fear one experiences if your a foundationalist
> without a foundation), erects a new heirarchy that, once again, enthrones
> Philosophy. Science and Art and Morality are all connected now, but they
> still must be adjudicated between. And the Philosophical interpretation of
> the MoQ is what does the adjudication.
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