From: Ron Winchester (phaedruswolff@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Dec 11 2004 - 01:25:33 GMT
Hi Ham,
Forgive me if this double posts, but I'm not having too much luck with my
emails at the moment.
Thanks for the well thought out reply. It gives me a better understanding of
where you are coming from. Maybe I can come up with something that shows a
bit how I do not see Quality coming from your individual efforts, and
Quality can come from everything around you.
The creation you are looking for is outside current boundaries of man's
understanding. As best as I can get at it, there was this something,
nothingness, or absolute, or maybe just particles and waves. Where this
something, nothingness, absolute or particles and waves came from is way
beyond any comprehension (of the human mind). This first something may have
dreamed thoughts to the infinity of creating the world around us, and it is
using us to create this world, and what it will become in the future. Or, it
could have as you said negated itself in order to become something else it
desired to be. Or, some little something like the particles and waves just
formed into something, and continued forming into something elses, until
they became something of tangibility, one thing right after another that
went their separate ways, and created the biological from the inorganic from
whatever, which continued to evolve to what all these different somethings
are today, and will be in the future.
However you look at it, the beginning somethings had to have a desire (of
lack of a better word) to be something else. These desires, or thoughts,
thought their own thoughts, and became something else, and these something
else's thought their own thoughts, and . . . Or, this original thinker
thought its own thoughts, and all the things that evolved from this original
thinker was in tune with the original thinker's thoughts, and thought to the
point that they became what this original thinker had designed. Or, these
original particles and waves just interacted with each other, and from
observing each other and evolving into other things from each other from
this observance, just continued to observe, and change, and observe, and
change . . .
At the beginning of it all, there was some consciousness of desire, and all
of space and time, all thoughts and objects, all environments and dimensions
just exploded into an infinite realm of possibilities beyond that beginning
of nothingness, somethingness, or absolute thinker. Each of these actions
created different objects and different thoughts and different forms of
intelligence. Nothing remains the same, and everything evolves into
something more than it is, as we have become more than we were, no matter
how you look at it. From this, you could conclude that your meaning
(purpose) in life is to continue to grow into something 'Better than' what
we are now; bring Mother Earth to something 'Better than' it is now, as well
as maybe even the universe.
In the Question of "Who are we?' we have to come to some conclusions as to
why we were the chosen one, or the ones that evolved either biologically or
chaotically into the higher of intelligence, or maybe even if we really are,
but that again is a dimension so far removed it is not humanly capable of
understanding.
What I offered as you seeking "Creative excellence," is not bad if you think
in the realm of possibilities of 'Better than.' As an academic philosopher,
you have to consider the whole realm of philosophology in order to know that
you have considered everything offerable as an argument against your
hypothesis; the new, but still the old static patterns that have outdated
themselves. By the time you have proven your thesis, it has become a static
pattern. If you think in the realm of creative excellence as opposed to
academic excellence, you may manage to find what you are looking for as the
engineer does; stumble across it. :o)
If we think that we are this higher intelligence, then we must think there
is some universal principle involved that caused us to be so, whether you
take it as God's plan, or the result of chaos happening in this manner. If
we do have intelligence, we have to reason as to what meaning this has to
the continued evolving of the human, and if this continued evolving has to
do with the evolving of all other nothings, somethings, or particles and
waves (or strings) of the universe. So whether it simple chaotic evolvement
or systematic evolvement from a plan, in one way or the other, it is our
thoughts that create the world around us. If it is our thoughts, and we
depend on static patterns, then we go nowhere; we couldn't even have ended
up here.
I think a lot of the respect Pirsig shows to Buddhism, is that Buddhism was
Quantum Physics before science discovered Quantum Physics. Quantum Physics
is denied credibility by the static patterns of the present, but as our mind
evolves, and new minds enter into the realm of time and space, then it is
quite possible Quantum Physics will be looked at in the same light as
gravity. This opens up a whole new outlook on thought. Whether our thought
process causes our physical actions to change the world around us or our
thought process can actually change the world through the observance, or the
circular observance of everything to everything, it will take high Quality
thought to advance.
The idea that SQ and DQ are intercorellated comes from this idea that SQ
equals DQ in a circular motion as mentioned about the discussions we had,
and someone (msh?) mentioned rising circles. As the 'Better than' thoughts
enter into our thought processing, the less than better thoughts drop out or
become less focused on., the high Quality thoughs continue to give rise.
The art part of this comes 'Not' from becoming skilled at what you do from
repetitious actions or thoughts, but letting go of the idea that it takes
repetition to become artful. It may just take a new way of looking at our
relation to ourselves and the universe around us. It does not take an ego to
drive us, but a realization that everything in the universe is doing exactly
as we are doing, trying to create a better universe; desiring to become
something we are not; something better; something of a higher Quality. If
we can correlate our desires to the desires of everything around us; this
would be true art.
Like time and space, maybe everything changes from the point from which, or
maybe even how, you observe it.
As best as I can offer, that is pretty close to my thoughts on what is the
purpose of life. I could go further, but the further I go, the less sense it
would make to someone who does not see things the way I do. I must respect
that someone, but I must respect what has entered into my though process as
well.
Good luck at making sense of any of this. :o)
Chin
>From: <hampday@earthlink.net>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Subject: Re: Ham; Re: MD Is Morality Relative?
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 13:40:27 -0500
>
>
>Dear Chin --
>
>Yes, you are quite right. I'll admit I jumped to the concluding part of
>your paragraph, giving short shrift to the line about "performing a task"
>There is joy in achievement, and we do realize a certain value (Quality?)
>in
>a task well done, whether this is accomplishing it effectively or coming up
>with something original in the process. It seems to me, though, that the
>joy we feel in doing something well is as much 'personal pride' as it is
>the
>experience of Quality -- in other words, ego gratification. How do you
>distinguish the two feelings, and how does either of them afford us
>meaning?
>
>All of us are beset with mundane tasks that we learn to do almost
>automatically -- house-cleaning, washing dishes, taking out the garbage,
>shaving, etc. We don't want to have to think about them; they are routines
>best gotten "out of the way" so that we may concentrate on more meaningful
>things.
>
>I can see that creating something original -- a work of art, for example --
>is a different and more fulfilling kind of task, In that case, we are
>expressing something of ourselves, and the result is of value because it
>reflects whatever meaning we wish to give it. I think what you are
>advocating is living one's entire life as if it were a work of art; and
>that's an idealistic concept that's rarely, if ever, achieved in today's
>materialistic, fast-paced world. If you can manage to live such an ideal
>existence, more power to you.
>
>As a philosopher, the problem I see with ANY kind of life-experience is
>that
>it provides no insight or meaning in itself. One must have a
>'weltanschauung' or world-view that encompasses teleology in order to find
>meaning in existence. For the Western intellect, such a perspective can
>only come through a rational understanding of the physical world and man's
>place in it (ontology). Empirical knowledge is inadequate for this
>understanding; such concepts must be arrived at intuitively, or as some
>will
>always say, by a 'leap of faith'. Many cling to religion as the answer to
>everything. This, to my thinking, is simply avoiding the issue by taking
>someone else's ideas or stategy and adopting them for our own. In life we
>are free to choose and we take full responsibility for actions on our own
>behalf. If our actions are not rooted in a personal philosophy -- not just
>a set of rules handed down to us from an assumed authority -- then we have
>failed life's responsibility to find the meaning of our own existence.
>
>Responding to this thread a while back, Marsha said,
> > What I read in ZMM and Lila, was a new perspective. Quality! Wow!!!
>Reading ZMM made me want to
> > experience the wind in my face, and quality in my actions.
>
>I wonder whether this ecstatic outburst has any real substance to it. Has
>Marsha experienced an epiphany over the concept "Quality = Existence"?
>That's doubtful. Is all this parsing of Mr. Pirsig's enigmatic 'levels'
>leading us any closer to an ultimate Truth (or Morality)? I don't think
>so.
>By avoiding (or outright rejecting) a supernatural, primary Source on the
>grounds that it is some kind of intellectual regression, we are left with
>meaningless debates aimed at seeing who can express MoQ in more 'creative'
>prose. Nihilism is the view that existence and values are unfounded.
>Quality is just another word.for 'Goodness'. We can go round and round
>defining what Goodness means -- everybody does -- but it's not a
>metaphysical concept. It's just the latest expression of philosophical
>nihilism.
>
>That's why I'm disappointed.
>
>But stay happy, Chin
>--Ham
>
>
>
>
>
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