From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Mar 24 2003 - 20:35:53 GMT
HI Rick, thanks for responding.
>If you honestly can't perceive any
>substantial difference between two courses of action other than that one
>seems somehow more Dynamic than the other, the Metaphysics of Quality would
>urge you to make the Dynamic choice.
I think it is axiomatic that you should do what you should do, right? If by
"more dynamic" you mean one choice seems better, then that's what one would
expect anyone to do and hence should be done, but if by "more Dynamic" you
mean it involves more change, ie, change for change's sake, then I think
that is an artifical imperative and the opposite of morality. If neither
choice seems better, the pattern should not be broken for change's sake.
>JOHNNY
> > And I think even if it could be determined that something was "more
> > dynamic", it still would be immoral if it involved breaking established
> > patterns.
>
>RICK
> Your point of view would mean that Rosa Parks was immoral for not
>going
>to the back of the bus; Socrates was immoral for choosing reason over the
>mythos; Phaedrus was immoral for rejecting SOM and turning to Quality;
>Copernicus was immoral for rejecting the idea that the sun goes round the
>Earth; James Madison was immoral for supporting revolution against the
>British monarchy; Martin Luther was immoral for protesting against the
>church; etc. Preposterous.
It's not preposterous at all: those things were all immoral at the time, in
and of themselves. That's why those people all risked life or jail or
electroshock therapy. I pointed out that what is moral is not necessarily
what is best, it is simply what is expected. And I'm not saying, a la Trent
Lott, that we'd be better off if those things hadn't happened, to the
contrary. Those changes happened because other patterns developed that led
to those people feeling that what was expected of them was to follow the new
pattern and be immoral regarding the old one. Perhaps they felt, like all
revolutionaries, that in the future they would be exonerated, but that would
happen only if the new pattern continued to overtake the old until the new
pattern did indeed become moral. Many revolutions don't get that stamp of
approval, I noticed you didn't include Lenin or the French Revolution, for
example, or one's we've never even heard of.
>JOHNNY
>The patterns are moral, each one of them, and they shouldn't be broken.
>
>RICK
>Which patterns are moral and shouldn't be broken? Apartheid? Slavery?
>Monarchy? The 'flat-Earth' theory? The Spanish Inquisition? McCarthyism?
>The geocentric model of the universe? The Earth as a lifeless ball of
>molten rock?
Patterns in general are moral and shouldn't be broken. Why is that hard to
swallow? There's no need for equivocation, the word 'should' takes care of
everything, it leaves an opening for not following a pattern when some other
pattern seems to take precedence. Those over-riding patterns may be
intellectual or social or biological or inorganic. If you are starving, you
might feel it was more expected to steal for food than to follow the social
pattern of not stealing. It would still be immoral to steal in general,
unless most people started stealing.
>JOHNNY
>Indeed, I think Pirsig is on the wrong track when he says higher level
>patterns are fighting lower level patterns and keeping them in check them.
>I believe they nurture them and depend on them.
>
>RICK
>Actually Johnny, Pirsig says both (see LILA ch9 p139). But all this is
>really neither here nor there on the issue of the "burden of proof".
I bring it up because of the danger of presuming that lower level patterns
are bad and need changing. That is false, patterns as a rule should be
followed, that is fundamental to morality being substantive and the
continuing existence of the world.
>So far, in our 2 brief exchanges, you've asserted that static patterns
>precede the Dynamic events that generate them,
Is the universe continuous or isn't it? Does the future emerge reasonably
from the past or is every moment like changing to a different television
channel? Dynamic events have no choice, they do what static patterns cause
them to do. Every event has a reason, right? They would be entirely
predictable if every static pattern was known, instead, because we can't
know everything, they can be only expected. There can be no dynamic events
that don't fit reasonably with static patterns, even if the fit doesn't seem
to become reasonable until sometime later.
>that static patterns should
>be given the benefit of the doubt over Dynamic change,
Absolutely. Dynamic change will happen when it should happen, it doesn't
need any urging or extra benefit. Morality is to be respected, not viewed
suspiciously and changed for change's sake.
>and that higher
>levels exist to serve lower levels;
If I said this, I misspoke, or was over-eager in defending lower level
patterns from change for change's sake. I do think that many higher level
patterns exist to nurture lower level patterns, but only those that are
useful to higher level patterns. For the most part, patterns serve
themselves.
>all of which is in direct contradiction
>to the MoQ as developed and described by Pirsig. If you're seriously
>trying
>to understand what Pirsig wrote, I strongly recommend you read LILA again
>and this time pay more attention to what it actually says.
I read it pretty often, and glean more from it all the time, but I don't
think it is quite right, I think it has the same problems that simple-minded
religious belief has, namely that of a God (DQ) that is more in our image
than we are in its.
>If you do understand Pirsig's MoQ but have chosen to disagree with it
>and borrow the vocabulary for your own "moq", then let me suggest that your
>own "moq" is a logical absurdity. You've placed the wake in front of the
>boat,
I dislike the idea that the "boat" is independent of the wake and ahead of
it. The wake creates a notion of a boat, but there is no boat. In my moq,
there is only Love, which is the power that turns what is expected into
reality, the force that carries patterns forward, and expectation itself. I
think they are the same, there can be no exectation without love to assure
us that expectations come true, and there can be no love without an
expectation to attend to.
>declared that the preservative is more valuable than the preserved
I don't think I declare SQ is more valuable than DQ, if I translate that
right. I just don't declare SQ as bad and needing changing.
>and in doing so, you've created an evolutionary metaphysics in which
>evolution
>is presumptively, if not totally, immoral.
>
>I prefer Pirsig's vision.
>
Evolution is amoral in my moq, the only reason I would agree that evolution
is making the world better is because saying that is morally expected of us.
Immoral things happen. But it's OK, they only happen because some other
pattern causes them to happen. And if they start to happen most of the
time, that changes morality, for "better" or "worse", and an evolution has
occured.
Preferences are a product of static patterns and a force of change.
In summary, respect morality, don't consider it a necessary evil that needs
changing. We don't need to be freed from morality, we need morality in
order to be free.
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