Hi Wim, and Scott,
Sorry about the confusing posts. I sent one a week or more back which
disappeared. I resent it a few days ago and again it didn't appear, so I
re-wrote it as 'Value and Time'. Now one of the missing posts has appeared,
perhaps the other will too.
WIM (re Whitehead): "Please note that I DID react with interest the first
time (as I did the second time)."
I seem to have missed that. Sorry.
WIM: "3) explanation from the next higher level
Would this last type of explanation be a way to 'include how we are "guided
towards" what is of more value' (à la Whitehead/Wilber's 'illuminat[ing] the
lower by the higher')?"
As I read Wilber this would be so. I would not use the word 'explanation',
though, as it seems to me too analytic. I am very vague here, but it seems
that I am able to experience to a limited extent what is in the next higher
level. This is probably linked to Wilber's understanding that each level
resolves a fundamental cleavage of the previous level, but brings a new
uncertainty with it, which may take some time to become apparent. As the new
schism appears, it seems likely that it's resolution at an even higher level
also becomes imaginable. So each level resolves one difficulty, opens a new
difficulty, and allows the growth in our experience to make possible an
intuition of how this new difficulty might be resolved. Hence the lure of
the higher level. But this is probably all in reverse. The levels are
crystallizations out of the ongoing growth of quality located in experience,
as is the evolving 'self' that climbs the levels.
WIM: 'The idea of Free Will finally has pragmatic value spiritually (in our
striving to break free from all, even intellectual, static patterns of
values to reach for the moon of DQ). Just 'find' something you want which is
not within your reach (preferably something put upon your path by a Higher
Being) and your life gets Meaning in striving for it.'
In this case I tried to illuminate the intellectual quality of the IDEA OF
free will by the DQ/nascent 5th level's quality of giving/getting Meaning."
I have a lot of confusion around this. Which may indicate that I am
approaching a level change, and am presently stuck; or it may mean that our
language is inadequate to communicate clearly. As I understand you the
'idea' of free will is true insofar as it is helpful in providing meaning
for my life. I am struggling with this. It seems to me that at this level of
rarification there is a real risk of language breaking down. (or semantics,
as Scott argues.)
This seems to tie in with your comment in another recent post, (which I may
have trouble responding to, as I seem to have erased the original posts from
you and Squonk) where you say
WIM: "I just think that the question whether 'free will', 'self' and
'agency' 'really exist' (apart from our experience of valuing the ideas) is
irrelevant or even misleading."
I suspect that from the point of view of the mystic you are right. Would a
mystic 'value ideas'? I'm not sure. As I attempt to comprehend mysticism
from the outside, I almost certainly will get it wrong. However I share with
Pirsig a distinct unease with the morality that asserts that Hiroshima is
not significant.
The problem is, the Nazis valued the idea of a 'master race'. Is it
irrelevant whether or not it 'really exists'? If 'we' are simply our current
value aggregations, then is the world as we experience it a sort of shadow
play, just a background to our evolving sense of meaning?
Pirsig is arguing that our moral decisions demand action. Pirsig sees the
Zuni Indian of the story as somehow 'better' than his compatriots. He talks
of saviours and degenerates and worries about Nazi ideology, crime in
America, and so on. I just wonder how you can deal with this level of issue
from the perspective you are adopting.
SCOTT: "The mistake is to assume that rationality is a tool to describe
reality. Instead it is *more* reality (and, being closer to the Logos, more
real, if one accepts that neo-Platonist position)."
WIM (previously): "The next type of evolution might imply the discovery of
stratagems employing the "logic of contradictory identity" and "metaphors,
paradoxes and experience that isn't immediately translated into an opinion"
SCOTT: "It seems to me the only way for this to happen is to drop the idea
that metaphysics is a description of reality, and is instead an art form. I
realize that I don't know how to do this, that I am still describing."
I seem to be pushed, kicking and struggling, towards accepting that nothing
can really be said to exist outside of our valuing of it. I feel like the
famous Dr Johnson, who struck a rock with his boot and said "I refute it
thus".
Confused.
John B
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