>Rich and I questioned the inconsistency between Pirsig's free will and the
>concept being isolated to living beings, and Horse answered:
>
>Horse:
><<<<<<
>But a city or a culture does not exist without the people that inhabit
>them - in an anthropcentric sense. The social patterns of the city or
>the culture exert an influence upon their members which in turn
>affects the patterns. Similarly with thoughts, principles and theories.
>They require a means by which to manifest themselves. The patterns
>themselves are static but they change and evolve by interaction and
>emergence. The means by which they interact and emerge is the
>network of humans which they (partially) create and influence.
>Cities and cultures may respond dynamically but do they _perceive_
>Dynamic Quality? The patterns don't perceive - that's a property of
>what they create.>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>
>Roger Replies:
>
>I am not buying it, Horse. Something is still amiss. Let me try to spell
>out my concern.
>
>1) The "extent to which one follows DQ" is Pirsig's definition of freedom.
>2) Societies and Intellectual concepts are more dynamic and higher forms of
>evolution than is any biological pattern.
>3) Society and intellect "are not properties of man any more than cats are
a
>property of cat food" (p. 303)
>4) Therefore I think according to the MOQ, the higher two levels are more
>free than is a "living being".
>
>Now I agree that this is not FREE WILL as commonly understood in SOM-land,
>but cultures and stock markets and theories are more free per the MOQ than
>are those of us that thought we controlled these higher patterns. Let me
know
>what I am missing. (Or is Pirsig missing something?)
I've been lurking for a few days and have been meaning to dip in for a while
now. This is going to be short and confused as I'm at work.
I think that you are still questioning all this from an SOM perspective.
Free Will has a lot of intellectual baggage to go with it. Can a city have
free will? Surely the same thing goes for all levels - that a response to
reality (ie DQ) breeds a certain unpredictability/ freedom. (Sorry these are
really clumsy sentences). But as far as describing any level as 'more free'
than the other; this must surely be nonsense. The Free Will that a man has
is going to be on a Social/ intellectual level anyway. Mans free will is
surely nothing to do with his cells or digestive system. I think that you
are still viewing a mans mind as possesing a body or vice versa and so on an
so forth (?!). I'm not sure that it really works like that at all (ie like
SOM).
The short version of what I'm saying is that I think you should unask the
question - you've gone wrong somewhere and a confusion has arisen.
love and snogs
Richard Chamberlain
Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
>Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
>Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
>MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
>
>
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:56 BST