From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Sat Dec 07 2002 - 22:11:57 GMT
Dear Sam,
You asked 7 Dec 2002 08:47:46 -0000:
'is Meaning restricted to level 5 or does it recast all the levels in its
light?'
I wrote most extensively about the role of 'Meaning' in my version of the
MoQ in my posting of 9 Feb 2002 19:56:28 +0100. You find a long quote at the
end of this posting. In short: 'Meaning' is the 4th level 'finger' that
points to the moon of DQ, to the potential 5th level that has not yet come
into existence. It doesn't exist at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd level. Only with a
fully formed 4th level can we understand 'Meaning' as a metaphor for
something different than 4th level static quality. This usage of 'Meaning'
metaphorically compares 'the meaning of a text' (the
'truth'/'story'/'experience' which that text refers to and that 'creates'
the text 'in its image and after its likeness') with the Dynamic Quality (or
God) that creates all patterned experience.
So a 5th level (stable patterns of value beyond the 4th level) doesn't exist
according to me. I don't know what you mean with 'recasting all the levels
in its light'. 'Meaning' only points 'upwards'.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
From my posting of 9 Feb 2002 19:56:28 +0100
'How then to choose between alternative intellectual patterns of
values in order to chose the best one to use as a reference for
harmonization of social patterns of values?
An intellectual pattern of values migrates toward Dynamic Quality
by balanced maximization of stability and versatility plus
harmonization with ... Dynamic Quality itself (for lack of higher
level patterns of values).
- Maximizing its stability implies enlarging the set of "common
denominator" ideas that are difficult to dispute.
- Maximizing its versatility implies leaving or creating enough
"room for dispute", a large enough range of alternative sets of
ideas that can be combined with the "common denominator" ideas,
to stimulate creativity, but not too much "room for dispute" to
make every "truth" seem arbitrary and relative and consensus
apparently beyond reach.
- The balance can be experienced as absolute Dynamic Quality.
In order to get an idea about how to experience that balance,
harmony with higher level value that has not formed static
patterns yet, we need to imagine the situation in which humanity
was outgrowing the social level, when intellectual patterns of
values were beginning to form.
In chapter 30 of "Lila" Pirsig traces back the transition from
social to intellectual patterns of value, from "mythos" to
"logos" ... the "birth of the intellectual level" that is
occasionally debated on this list. He goes back first to the
Greek word "aretê" of the Sophists and then to the morpheme "rt"
from the proto-Indo-European language. By connecting "rt" with
the Sanskrit word "rta", meaning both "ritual" and "cosmic order"
(physical order AND moral order!), he then deduces that rituals,
from which the first intellectual truths could have been deduced,
probably were the connecting link between the social and
intellectual levels of evolution. (p. 442 of my Bantam paperback,
end of chapter 30:) "He could only guess how far back this
ritual-cosmos relationship went, maybe fifty or hundred thousand
years. ... stone age people were probably bound by ritual all day
long ... so much so that the division between "ritual" and
"knowledge" becomes indistinct. In cultures without books ritual
seems to be a public library for teaching the young and
preserving common values and information".
So early humans probably experienced harmony with "truth" as a
higher level value which had not yet formed static patterns
through rituals from which they derived a dim understanding of
"cosmic order" beyond the social order which they did understand.
Art and religion were (on hindsight) the kinds of activity in
which early humans explored the "cosmic order" [primitive truths] beyond
"social order".
In due course the exploration of "cosmic order" would give
rise to the exploration of "laws of nature" and science, which
left art and religion to explore DQ beyond even intellectual
quality (truth).
That's were we are now: the intellectual level has fully formed
as an independent level of values and in order to experience even
higher level value we have to return to art and religion.
I propose to indicate ("point to") the higher level value beyond
truth as "Meaning", capitalizing it to distinguish it from the
"meaning" of a "text" in a certain "context" which defines its
"truth", the "fit" of that "text" with "reality". If we
experience harmony with DQ in a work of art or in a religious
experience, we say "it is Meaningful" without being able to
define a "truth" that explains that experience of "Meaning". This
culminates in the experience that there must be a "Meaning of
life" or "... of my life" even if no amount of science can tell
me where life is eventually heading for or originally originating
from and "Who" could have given life that "Meaning".'
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