From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Jun 15 2005 - 13:23:19 BST
Hi All,
Ever since Bo, one of the original MD'ers, rose like Phoenix from the
ashes with an essay in the Forum and began debating again in the MD,
there's been a lot of thinking about thinking going on.
So as I thinking about all this thinking about thinking, I suddenly had a
thought. The MOQ, a pillar of thinking if there ever was one, is not about
thinking. It's about what occurs before thought, namely, valuing.
All talk about the intellect and the intellectual level amounts to nothing
more than an attempt to tell others, "Here's what I think about that."
Likewise in ZMM, Lila, Lila's Child, the SODV paper and elsewhere, Pirsig
tells us, "Here's what I think about reality."
So what does the great Author think about thinking?
"I don't think the subject-object level is identical with intellect.
Intellect is simply thinking, and one can think without involving the
subject-object relationship. Computer language is no primarily structured
into subjects and objects. Algebra has no subjects and objects." (LC, note
95)
There you have it. "Intellect is simply thinking." It includes subject-
object thinking, logical thinking, scientific thinking, computer language
thinking, mathematical thinking, oriental thinking, imaginative thinking,
experimental thinking, metaphysical thinking, and all other forms of
thinking. But thinking is not the essence of reality.
According to the MOQ, thinking is a Johnny-come-lately-aspect of reality.
Before thinking, before society, before microbes, before atomic particles
there was Quality, i.e., value, morality.
Pirsig tells us that Quality is a creative force, an energy. Like physical
energy that science thinks is the source of all things, Pirsig thinks the
Quality force is the source of all things, an energy that has left in it's
wake all that we have come to think of as our world.
Static patterns of value are manifestations of the Quality force, not
manifestations of intellect except indirectly, after the fact. Thoughts
themselves are static value patterns. But, as we learned in Semantics 101,
thoughts are not the same as reality.
Reality is our direct, unadulterated, pure, prior-to-any-thought
experience of the Quality force. Any creative thoughts (ideas) are
responses to that force. Normal, everyday thinking such as experienced on
this site is static, i.e., manipulating symbols to tell others our less-
than-world-shaking thoughts (including this post, of course). Here we are
imprisoned in the intellectual level, taking our everyday experience of
Quality pretty much for granted. At least that's better than being stuck
in the social level or biological levels as so many people are.
What's new in MOQ is the thought that before thought, before a word is
spoken, before language, before symbol-making and symbol manipulation
(semiotics) there stands a reality that cannot be defined but is known
even by a new born baby, a reality of value.
Shakespeare may have thrown us off by his aphorism, "Nothing is good or
bad, but thinking makes it so," agreed to by a panoply of psychologists
who for decades have preached that happiness depends on what you think.
Tell that to Nick Berg as he was being decapitated by Arab terrorists, or
to a victim of Saddam's tyranny as he was being thrown into a wood
chipper. No, our thoughts may influence our behavior, but before
everything comes the value of the present moment, good, bad or indifferent
-- the cutting edge of Quality.
I think we think thinking is paramount because we depend on it for
survival and can no more stop thinking than we can stop breathing except
in deep meditative moments that few of us practice or during deep sleep.
We are also give thinking top billing because we're unaware of our value
reaction to experience that precedes our thoughts. Our value reaction is
hidden by the nearly simultaneous emergence of thought in response to
Quality. But, Bo has pointed out an experiment by Benjamin Libet
demonstrated that our nervous system reacts to values a half second or so
before the value registers as a thought. Only Pirsig's metaphysics
accounts for this phenomena.
So yes, thinking is part of reality, a static pattern of symbol
manipulation following assumptions and grammatical rules of the language
one is using whether verbal, mathematical, oriental or whatever. In the
West, the subject-object assumption dominates verbal thinking. But, Pirsig
has demonstrated (conclusively to my way of thinking) that the core of
reality from which everything else comes into being, including thought, is
Quality - the creative force, the primary, pure experience of value that's
right in front of our noses, every waking moment.
Best,
Platt
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