RISKYBIZ9 wrote on Sun, 1 Nov 1998
> Bo,
> I have always had the utmost respect for you and your ideas. In fact you hold
> a special place in my mind because your writings over the web were the first
> that I was able to find of another that felt like I did about Lila and the
> MOQ. The connection is cool.
> My request is to find more about SOTAQI which you mention so frequently. Where
> can I read or find more about these ideas in a structured , comprehensive
> way?......Or have most of these (just) been developed in past Lila Squad
> posts?
> I would ask privately, and I fear I have even missed something obvious, but I
> suspect others in the Squad may have similar questions.
> Roger
Roger and Lilacs
Many thanks for your kind words about my contribution, and for asking
me to bring the background for my so-called SOTAQI idea.I'll try to
comply with your request .....as shortly as possible, but.....
I have tried to trace the development (of the SOTAQI) from the first
posts, but Magnus' search engine brings up too many hits if I just
enter 'Intellect' or 'Mind' or any other single word, and I can't
recall the expressions or sentences used, so it'll have to be by
memory.
It started when we were on a thread of defining the Intellectual
level. You know, the Inorganic level is pretty straightforward: it is
"Matter" as we know it from SOM, so is the Organic (Life) and the
Social (the Collective), but the top notch is not so easily defined.
"Mind" comes to mind(!), but if so we have the old everything-in-the-
mind-problem of SOM back in force. Many use the ZMM where Phaedrus
asks where gravity was before Newton as a demonstration for the
idealist argument, but I'm not happy with it.
No, the MOQ isn't idealism, it rejects the subject-object
(mind-matter) division as fundamental, so - really - the Q-Inorganic
is not SOM's matter, nor is Q-Intellect SOM's mind. They really have
nothing in common ---- except as Pirsig claims that the SOM is
"contained" by the MOQ. At this first stage, however, we weren't so
deep into it, but tried to find what characterized the Intellectual
level.
It somehow ended in rationality, mathematics, language, but under it
all lurked the notion of "thinking itself" of ...MIND. I believe it
was Diana who hinted to the coincidence between the events described
in the last part of ZMM (which we interpret as the birth of
subject-object metaphysics) and the emergence of the Intellectual
level as described in LILA. The two looks identical. Subject-Object
metaphysics as the Intellect of MOQ!!!!
It struck me as correct and abbreviated it SAIOM and started to sell
it to the group :-). But there was a certain resistance to the M
(metaphysics) part, so I removed that and replaced it with
S-O-thinking (or logic), something which was understood and accepted
by most. However Anthony McWatt wasn't convinced and in a letter to
Pirsig he asked for his opinion, but either because it was presented
in the SAIOM form, or he - principally - won't take sides, Pirsig's
answer wasn't easily interpreted. At least I could not take it as an
affirmation for my idea :-(.
As said, Pirsig asserts that SOM is contained by the MOQ in the
sense that the Inorganic & Organic levels are "matter", while the
Social & Intellectual are "mind". I am not saying that this is wrong,
but a little "feeble" and felt that it was to accommodate for the
unprepared audience at the conference in Bruxelles, but someone
pointed to it being said in LILA too. So much for me as a quality
"scholar" :-).
Yet, Inorganic and Organic value as matter doesn't quite jell with
me. Life is made up of matter all right, but it is supposed to be a
realm of its own. Likewise Social value as mind!? It could with as
much reason be said to be matter too as it is made up of living
organisms made up of matter. Also - and this is my gravest -
objection: Subject-objectivism cannot - and should not - be gotten
rid of, it's VALUABLE; it has given us civilization as we know it.
Seeing it as the Static Intellectual Pattern of Value solved it all
for me. It was the highest GOOD, but being static it was still
subordinate to the overall Dynamic Quality; it was not a
metaphysics any more; the subject-object division is not fundamental;
AS IT IS, but a mere STAGE in the unending quality climb towards
betterness.
Besides, it is an important MOQ tenet that each level grows from the
previous which is easily demonstrated up to Society, but how can
Intellect in the "thinking itself" sense have originated from Social
value? It sounds much more like the good old SOM notion of mind out
of matter (or at least from the brain). Jonathan Marder once compared
Q-Intellect with a video camera trained upon a screen of its own
picture. That's pretty good "picture" and demonstrates the difficulty
of how anything can enter such a solipsistic loop, or how anything
can develop FROM it.
No, the MOQ rejects objects as a (fundamental) realm, but - even more
important: it rejects subjects as well: There is nothing objective
about the reality we observe from the Intellectual perch: we don't
see reality as it is, but are merely conscious of the subject-object
STAGE of VALUE (in the same way as we - when such focussed - are
conscious of social, biological and inorganic (?) values. It's of
course not anything "mere" about it, it's a realm of its own, but it
is STATIC all the same and Dynamic Quality will try to work itself
free of that straitjacket too. And I wonder if not the Quality idea
is such a first revolt....an attempt at it anyway.
Hope this was intelligible to you Roger.
Bodvar
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