From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Tue Nov 08 2005 - 08:49:47 GMT
Mike, DMB, All.
4 Nov. DMB wrote:
> Michael Hamilton asked:
> I'm asking a very personal question to everyone who rejects SOL. Have
> you seriously shed your subjectivity, in your day-to-day life? Or do
> you still experience your thinking as the product of an islanded
> subject (albeit an islanded subject with a million and one outside
> influences)? 'Cos I do.
Mike have some formulations that ...well , I hope it's just
superficial. The 4th. is not the subject level in the sense that pre-
4th level mankind had no sense of being different from other.
> dmb replies:
> Are you suggesting that a person has to shed subjectivity in order to
> reject SOL? I think a person might have to "shed" subjectivity in a
> certain sense in order to become enlightened,
See DMB seized on that point.
> but rejecting the idea
> that intellect is intrinsically tied up with SOM only an act of
> intellectual discrimination or discernment.
Here DMB seemingly joins the "intellect=mind" (or consciousness
or even Quality) club, and from this viewpoint the 4th level can't
be SOM, however all examples that LILA gives of intellectual
patterns are S/O ones.
> And even those enlightened
> ones are still going to have experience, they're still going to need
> some kind of ego consciousness to function in life. I mean, your
> question seems to confuse the mystical state of consciousness with
> intellectual beliefs and it seems to assume that the end of
> subjectivity means the end of one's experience. Hold that thought...
I agree that self or ego is something ancient, but we must not
confuse this with the independent subject (that sees itself) facing
an objective reality. This is the 4th. level.
> Mike continued:
> Thanks to the likes of Pirsig, we can dream up metaphysics in which
> the subject/object divide is not fundamental. We can spend as long as
> we like thinking about a time and a place in which the subject/object
> divide never existed. But we're still thinking as subjects, and any
> attempt to wipe subjectivity from one's life entirely would be a
> regression, not a progression.
Right, the MOQ is a metaphysics "in which the S/O divide is'nt
fundamental" and if Mike by "we're still thinking as subjects"
means that the intellectual - or 4th. - level was necessary for
reaching the MOQ, I agree.
> I'm all in favour of dissolving one's
> subjectivity every so often, in fact I think it should be done
> regularly, in some way or another. But to dissolve subjectivity
> forever would be to eradicate one of DQ's most wonderful creations, I
> think.
Again, if "subjectivity forever" means dissolving the S/O
distinction, I agree, a static level can't be dissolved, but from
MOQ's meta-position we see it as a static - as not absolute.
> dmb says:
> Dream up a metaphysics and think about a time and a place where the
> subject-object divide never existed? The first thing I would point out
> is that the MOQ does not make subjects and objects disagppear, they
> just lose their status as the primary ontological categories. We still
> have a self and the self still has experience, but the self is
> concieved quite differently. The subjective self is said to be the
> static self, the little self. This is the common sense, everyday self.
> But then there is the Big Self, the one that creates the little self.
When it comes to the Big Self it sounds like another name for
Quality.
> Also I would point out that Pirsig is not dreaming up a metaphysical
> system with some hypothetical entity, the MOQ echoes the perennial
> philosophy and so in some sense it is very ancient, and that time and
> place where the subject-object divide does not exist isn't just some
> place in the distanct past. This is from ZAMM, the beginning of
> chapter 25.
> "Phaedrus felt that at the moment of pure Quality perception, or not
> even perception, at the moment of pure Quality, there is no subject
> and there is no object. There is only a sense of Quality that produces
> a later awareness of subjects and objects. .....
(snip)
Right, and later he finds that this is "pre-intellectual perception"
thus intellect is the S/O generator and should have been carried
over to MOQ's intellectual level. Which is the reason for my year-
long struggle to get ZMM and LILA harmonized.
> dmb resumes:
> Despite the idea that SOM and technological alienation are a huge
> hinderance, people still have this experience, this sense of identity
> that dissovles the subject-object divide is still common enough to
> have slang labels for it. Despite our inherited cultural blindspot, it
> survives in the undercurrents, in the counter culture and in
> esoterica. You don't have to be a bohemian artist or a hippie tripper
> to understand what these slang terms refer to, but it certainly helps.
While not directly wrong this is mystification. The MOQ is a
bridge that spans the East/West chasm and is neither mysticism
nor philosophy. In the Paul Turner letter Pirsig says:
From a philosophic idealist viewpoint there is nothing but intellect.
From a Zen viewpoint it is a part of the world of everyday
affairs that one leaves behind upon becoming enlightened
and then rediscovers from a Buddha's point of view.
Had Pirsig "translated" this to MOQian it would have become:
"From a MOQ viewpoint it (intellect) is part of the static
hierarchy that one leaves behind upon understanding the
MOQ and then rediscovers from a Quality's point of
view".
End of part 1
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