BO SUMS UP THE MORAL DEBATE, AND TRIES TO GET THE QUALITY TO BEAR. HE
ALSO ADDS A FEW COMMENTS AND THANKS TO VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS.
Dear
Lila Squad! This month's theme has been stressful to the squad, not
only did it result in an attempted "coup d'etat" from Fintan, but
also in a lot of dead ends and dejected moods. For instance did
DIANA write:
> After going over and over it I still feel that using intellectual
> arguments you could make Pirsig's moral codes support
> anything you want,
This declaration of impotence is valid, but it is of no relevance to
the MOQ's purpose which has never been to provide a rule for
"good/right" conduct for social configurations. It's scope is
immensely greater; social morals is merely one subgroup of its four
static layers
MAGNUS
warned the group at the beginning of the impossibility of the moral
(in the ethics sense) debate by pointing out that value and
morals are equal, so the discussion would be similar to asking
why value is valuable or - my favourite saying - why pain hurts. I
agree totally. As I do with..
DONNY
who once wrote that if we need guidance whether to shoot or not to
shoot classmates or stay out of mischief generally we have
some serious defect. Not to sound superior, but in my daily doings I
never consult any moral rules - consciously at least - perhaps I'm
just timid and don't want to be exposed to embarrassing situations.
My social component takes care of that therefore I am amused by the
JONATHAN/PLATT
discussion going on over at the other end (a perfect demonstration of
the SOM/MOQ difference though). In SOM "society" has no metaphysical
reality; it is an arbitrary assemby of people that necessarily
need enforced rules for its members to keep their noses clean, and
consequently its a constant and great fear that society goes to
pieces any time rules are broken.
In the MOQ the Social moral plane is one of reality's four
dimensions, (almost) as strong as gravity. I use to tease my visiting
Jehovah's witnesses who see the world (no less) going to hell every
day, by pointing to the fact that the Devil and his gang can't be all
bad; there's order in hell too: love, loyalty, observance of rules
etc. No, the social values we need not worry about.
What the two gentlemen are discussing is of course the ethics of an
Intellect value dominated culture versus a society value dominated
culture. It was Jonathan's "be good to the needy" and Richard Rigel as
more moral than Phædrus allusion that irritated the true MOQ scholar
Platt, but before delving into that another big surveillance has to
be made.
I mentioned the SOM/MOQ difference. As we now ought to know it rests
upon the subject-object versus the Dynamic-Static shift and it makes a
lot of difference. In SOM there is no room for the D/S conflict,
it only looks threatening; you are either a good citizen or a bad
one; living in a good country/culture or in a bad. The MOQ lets us
see the dynamism of the Intellect's struggle with Society and how its
FREEDOM has come to dominate Western culture, while the old social
(Tora(?), Bible and Koran) commandments exist beneath the modern
FREEDOM & RIGHTS.
This must be observed to make sense of the seemingly impossible moral
mess that Diana sighs over, what P&J are at each other's throats
over and what the Islam and the West are in an impossible hostile
counterposition over, and why we seem unable to understand the
Far East (except Donny and I :-)) that has resolved the
Dynamic/Static conflict by observing the static social rules to the
extent that they are totally sublimated and left behind. This I hope
will be the result of Pirsig's ideas ... but we obviously have a long
way to go ;-)
ROGER.
Please disregard my suggestion about "brain" as inorganic in your
splendid MOQ/morality chart. I must have been more than distracted
saying so. Looking forward to see it again - as a picture possibly?
FINTAN.
It's difficult to distance oneself from your MoM (if its supposed to
be a competitor to the MOQ) and simultaneously praise your writings,
but I guess we'll have to learn to "love the bomb". If it is to be a
book I will be the first to purchase it.
MARY
Thanks for your "LS Book and Link list" it's very good and helpful.
Must have cost a lot of time and effort to make, have you read them
all? To my great dismay I have discovered that I have almost
stopped reading science/philosophy since joining the squad, just
bedtime books; right now Robert Musil's "Man Without Qualities". Does
anyone know it?
Bodvar
homepage - http://www.moq.org
queries - mailto:moq@moq.org
unsubscribe - mailto:majordomo@moq.org with UNSUBSCRIBE MOQ_DISCUSS in
body of email
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:40 BST