From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jun 08 2003 - 20:27:46 BST
Sam and all:
About cold, emotionless, Spockish intellect, dmb said:
The sterotype is not completely without foundation, but it only applies to
"freshmen" intellectuals and, more to the point, does not reflect the MOQ's
4th level accurately. It more precisely describes SOM, Pirsig's great white
whale.
Sam replied:
OK, then this really moves us forward. I completely agree that it is his
main point in ZMM; my disagreement is that I think the presentation in Lila
more or less undercuts that which is presented in ZMM. If you can persuade
me that Phaedrus (the character in Lila) is not intended to be more-or-less
Spock-like, and in particular, that Pirsig includes emotional awareness in
his
understanding of level 4, then we'll have really got somewhere!
dmb says:
(1)Phaedrus is Spock-like? Umm. Wouldn't that make Spock an outsider, a
contrarian and a mystical Buddha-seeker on the verge of insanity? I just
don't know how or where you ever got the idea that Phaedrus and Spock are
the same. How cold could Pirsig be? He sails, rides motorcycles, eats
peyote, drinks beer and picks up bar ladies, he writes novels and compares
philosophical systems to works of art. Its hard to see how that lone wolf
could be any more different from Spock than he already is. (2) If Pirsig had
written a book on developmental psychology it might be reasonable to expect
some detail about the relationship between emotion and intellect, but he
didn't write that book. He wrote a philosophical novel. All I can suggest
here is that there is nothing in Pirsig to suggest he'd contradict the
finding of psychologists, who understand this relationship. (Again, one the
main reasons I find Wilber so helpful is precisely because it does include
that kind of detail, it does include the findings of developmental
psychologists. Its funny that you reject him because he answers so many of
your questions and dissolve your objections.)
Sam said:
Values exist everywhere, according to the MoQ, and if you take 'morals' to
be the same then fine. But ethics I see as level 3, and as that was the
first, I was taking them to be synonyms, and not MoQ specific terms. I think
we do actually agree on that point.....
dmb says:
Right. Words like "values, morals" and "ethics" can pretty much be used as
synonyms. And since this is what the universe is made of, it seems quite
absurd to suggest the 4th level is some kind of isolated exception. Let me
repeat myself from a previous post; All static patterns, including
intellectual static patterns, are manifestations of and reflections of the
same divine force behind the rest of creation. Which brings us to the point
I was trying to make with this...
dmb quotes from chapter 30 of Lila - AGAIN:
"Within the Hindu tradition DHARMA is relative and dependent on the
conditions of society. It always has a social implication. It is the bond
which holds society together. This is fitting to the ancient origins of the
terms. But within modern Buddhist thought DHARMA becomes the phenomenal
world - the object of perception, thought or understanding. A chair, for
example, is not composed of atoms of substance, it is composed of DHARMAS.
dmb continues:
Chapter 30 brings it all home. This is the source of the quote that we
started so long ago. You remember the ones about social level religion and
its tendency to grow stale and cover up the DQ it was originally meant to
reveal? He says the same thing happened in the past way back in pre-historic
India. But he points out that the old ideas about the "cosmic order of
things" were re-invigorated by modern Buddhist thought. He saw the original
meaning before all the clap-trap and non-sense got started and his MOQ is
meant to reinvigorate the same idea, the oldest idea known to man, by way of
a post-modern metaphysical system. The MOQ is an intellectual description of
a divine universe that is still in the process of creation, with intellect
being the most recently and highly evolved level of static values. That just
doesn't look anything like Spock to me. Please chew on these for a while...
Chapter 30 of Lila:
"The physical order of the universe is also the moral order of the universe.
RTA is both. This was exactly what the MOQ was claiming. It was not a new
idea. It was the oldest idea known to man."
"If you ask a Catholic priest if the wafer he holds at at mass is really the
flesh of Jesus Christ, he will say yes. If you ask, "Do you mean
SYMBOLICALLY?" he will answer, "No, I mean actually." Similarly if you ask
Lila whether the doll she holds is a dead baby she will say yes."
"The MOQ associates religious mysticism with DQ but it would be a mistaketo
think that the MOQ endorses the static beliefs of any particular religious
sect. Phaedrus thought sectarian religion was a static social fallout from
DQ and that while some sects had fallen less than others, none of them told
the whole truth."
"In all religions bishops tend to gild DQ with all sorts of static
interpretations because their cultures requite it. But these interpretations
become like golden vines that cling to a tree, shut out its sunlight and
eventually strangle it."
"But what made the Hindu experience so profound was that this decay of DQ
into static quality was not the end of the story. Following the period of
the Brahmanas came the Upanisadic period and the flowering of Indian
philosophy. DQ re-emerged within the static patterns of Indian thought."
Thanks,
DMB
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