Dear John B.,
I agree to a large extent with what you write in your 22/8 20:58 +1000 post
until:
'In the West we are living in a period when the presuppositions of our
static value systems have been explored and formalised as never before. We
see this most clearly in the sciences, but they permeate all our pursuits
and scholarship. Language and mathematics and intellect are the tools, but
also the straightjacket of this exploration. So the world of common sense is
far more constrained than we care to imagine, and subject to fashions,
including intellectual fashions, to which we are largely oblivious.'
I'd say that our culture has not only 'explored and formalised' 'the
presuppositions of our static value systems', but that is has also enlarged
these patterns of values and made them more complex. Our culture has been
progressive and is still progressive. Maybe this progress will stop when we
don't use the tools of mysticism to remove 'the straightjacket', maybe it
won't.
I'm not sure about your 'as never before'. Say Australian aboriginals have
in a sense also explored and formalised their value systems, but in another
way, in stories and relationship systems. I don't know how to compare such
different ways of exploring and formalising static value systems. Or rather:
I know too many different ways of comparing them, some favoring one, others
the other culture. I won't go further into this. It is not very relevant for
this discussing, I think.
I find your interpretation of the MoQish term 'value' as an
attractor/lure/pull factor à la Whitehead, process theology and ... Wilber
very interesting.
I agree again when you pull your argument together into:
'the value patterns that obtain in a time-constrained world are valid enough
in their own sphere, but become a
prison as they dominate and overwhelm the dynamic values that are
encountered in immediate experience. This occlusion of the dynamic is
assisted by the strong emotional substrate of the static values, and the
warping effect of this on perception.' ('Occlusion' is not in my dictionary,
but I hope I understand its meaning approximately right from this context.)
The problem begins when you go on to say:
'the static has a tendency to overwhelm the dynamic and ... recovery of
access to dynamic quality is not simple'.
The problem is that this supposes static quality, dynamic quality AND a
separate agent trying to access dynamic quality. In the MoQ reality consists
only of (static and dynamic) quality. There is no agent separate from these.
I think that we shouldn't formulate in terms of 'accessing' sq and/or DQ,
but of 'identifying' with one or the other or preferably both. The problem
of conciliating mysticism and activism is the problem of balancing or (even
better) combining identification with sq and DQ.
For me Wilber's stages in (human) growth are different ways of combining
(static) intellectual quality and DQ. (And applying them to non-human growth
doesn't strike me as very relevant for us humans.) I don't agree with you
that 'If he is correct then dynamic quality itself is layered and structured
in ways that can be teased out.' These stages don't go from 'more sq and
less DQ' towards 'less sq and more DQ' according to me, but from 'less sq
and less DQ' towards 'more sq and more DQ', for the static value systems are
also growing and becoming more complex and are providing a progressively
better 'springboard' toward DQ (with the risk, no the certainty, of
eventually falling down after one of your 'jumps for the moon'...).
My brand of mysticism is not one of first going for salvation and then
returning to the 'marketplace'. It implies seeking progressively better ways
of 'living in the world but not of the world' from the very beginning. But I
explained that to you before.
{As for my earlier interest in your Whitehead/Wilber/MoQ-combination, I
wrote 16/6/01 22:46 +0200:
'I am certainly interested in following your approach (top-down
interpretation of Quality, applying Wilber's "analog law") in relation to
the MoQ. Just like you write "Pirsig fails to take seriously the third, or
contemplative, level of knowledge", I always felt that after ZAMM, being a
kind of inquiry into empirical reality, and Lila, being an inquiry into
values/morality (your 'rational knowledge'), Pirsig should have written a
third book inquiring into Meaning.
I offer to write about Quaker methods of testing "divine
inspiration"/experience of Dynamic Quality (if anyone is interested), for I
think they are highly applicable and don't involve a lot of static social
and intellectual patterns unlike a lot of other spiritual traditions.'
You DID notice (and reply 18/6/01 13:21 +1000 to) the last two sentences.
As for general interest: the 'Evolution, Wilber and Whitehead' thread back
then contained 17 posts. It is interesting to look back. Some of the issues
are returning because they apparently weren't resolved back then. On the
other hand the views of the people involved (me, for one) DID evolve in the
meantime.}
Your description 24/8 22:31 +1000 of 'the dialectics of progress' of
Wilber's levels reminds me of our discussion about 'the dialectics of
progress' and about 'the law of the inhibiting lead' in March and April of
this year in the 'Is Society Progressing?' thread. Investing too much in
(attaching too much value to, identifying too much with) the static part of
the combination of intellectual quality and DQ that 'defines' a Wilberite
level/stage may well inhibit progress towards the next level. In that sense
the static indeed can overwhelm the dynamic.
You go on (24/8) to write
'The levels are crystallizations out of the ongoing growth of quality
located in experience, as is the evolving 'self' that climbs the levels.'
I agree with the first part (but I would 'economize' it into 'the levels
crystallize growing quality experience'). I hesitate about a 'self climbing
levels'. Maybe the 'self' is rather the experience of identification with
(growing) quality experience.
Is the way I deal with Hiroshima/Nazi/crime issues from my perspective
becoming clearer? They are (at the intellectual level on which we are
discussing them) essentially problems of too much
investment/attachment/identification in/to/with lower quality intellectual
patterns of values. They are definitely 'real'/important'problems.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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