From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jun 09 2003 - 20:30:39 BST
Hi Platt,
>Immediately below Quality are not subjects and objects but static and
>Dynamic Quality. Immediately below static Quality are four levels of
>static patterns consisting of inorganic, biological, social and
>intellectual values. Those values plus DQ cover everything, so there's no
>need to go back to SOM. Of course, you can if you want to except I guess
>you can't because you claim you have no free will. :-)
Why isn't SOM allowed to have Quality at the top, too? There has to be
something at the top. In ZMM, Pirsig says that the quality creates the
subject and object, but in Lila he wants to set up SOM as a straw man, so he
removes the connection to quality. I think SOM can be fixed by restoring
the quality at the top. (and accounting for time somehow. MoQ is neat
because the first split is between present and future, but again, I think it
is pretty tautological. I account for time by substituting the word
Expectation for Quality, expectation contains the same moral push to the
future that DQ does, but connects it explicitly with OUR expectation, it
doesn't leave it otherworldly and undefined but puts it squarely in our
world and visible.
> > Look in Bibles, listen to your family at dinner, listen to your teacher
>or
> > preacher or neighbor, read Shakespeare, you'll find lots of morals.
>What,
> > these instruments aren't objective enough? Well, you just need to
> > calibrate them better, adjust them for historical skew. An uncalibrated
> > microscope won't give you very objective results either.
>
>If I follow your advice, what will I hear or see? Words. Words without
>reference to anything tangible. A picture of the Ten Commandments hardly
>qualifies as "objective." If you can invent an instrument that will detect
>a moral, please let me know so I can invest all my money in it. :-)
There will be lots of references to tangible things. Too many, maybe. You
can't get away from all the references. You aren't using the right kind of
instruments. You can't detect an amoeba with a culture, and you can't
detect a moral with a microscope. But you CAN detect a moral with a
culture, that's what cultures are - moral detectors.
> > >There aren't any there. They are all in your head. They exist only in
>your
> > >imagination.
> >
> > Yes, but they were put there by real things which are visible if you
>look
> > in the right place. The moral pattern has to be propogated by
>something,
> > Pirsig says they are propogated and supported by the level underneath
>them.
>
>Show me.
http://www.zpub.com/un/pope/papaeast.jpg
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/fatherknows/fatherknowsIMAGE/fatherknows.jpg
http://www.bradyworld.com/art/photo.gif
http://www.jonathanedwards.com/images/jesml.jpg
>Language doesn't give value. Value is inherent in things. DQ doesn't give
>purpose. DQ is a symbol for the force that creates things and makes them
>better.
You are using vivid SOM language here: "Value is inherent in things"? "DQ
is a symbol"? I assume you mean value is inherent in quality, in morality.
>Patterns of value are "real things." Whether people should respect people
>more depends I think on whom you designate as deserving more respect. I
>don't give a blank respect check to everyone.
Don't you have to jump back into SOM to say that? If you stay in MoQ land,
respect becomes just a pattern given to a pattern by a pattern, and it's
hard to see the difference between patterns, until you convert them to
subjects and objects.
>In MoQ, pain hurts. It's low quality.
A low quality experience doesn't matter to the pattern feeling it, because
it's just a pattern, pain is just a pattern. Nothing hurts because nothing
matters to the temporary patterns. It is a great ascetic and peaceful and
wise understanding of the world, and allows monks to calmly immolate
themselves famously, but I'd rather feel pain and be me, not a pattern.
>As for culture really existing, SOM isn't
>as sure as you seem to be. As Pirsig observes:
>"Some anthropologists were saying a culture is the essence of
>anthropology. Some were saying there isn't any such thing as a culture.
>Some were saying it's all history, some said it's all structure. Some said
>it's all function. Some said it was all values. Some, following Boas's
>scientific purity said there were no values at all." (4)
I think if we can infer quarks and gravity and other things that SOM has a
little trouble seeing directly, we can infer culture exists by seeing
buildings and roads and road signs and newspapers.
>Being lazy is morally wrong for a very rational reason. If you want to eat
>and live, you have to work. To survive you need need food, shelter and
>clothing. Those value patterns don't fall into your lap.
We could be slothful. We could still be living short hungry lives and not
working very hard. Americans work more hours than Europeans, and there are
some cultures where hardly anyone works ever. Is rationality different in
different places? Or is culture different in different places?
Actually, those value patterns did fall into our laps. You were never a
baby Platt? No one ever fed, sheltered and clothed you? We learned an
expected standard of living as babies - our expectations were implanted in
us before we had a chance to consider any other expectations.
>But far beyond that, the MoQ finds morality penetrating every aspect of
>the world, subjective and objective alike. Morality is the whole
>enchilada. But in SOM, morals are restricted to the subjective side of the
>coin. They're not objects, and only objects are real. So morals are up for
>grabs, and the door is open for postmodernists to come in to hawk their
>foundational principle of mob morality. :-)
This is why fragile morality needs to be nurtured and respected.
Postmodernists understand this, and though Matt says they don't advocate for
morality, I think they could and should, and some of them do: like Edwards
("God's Pragmatist" is one of the lectures at that symposium in October).
Supplementing SOM with quality at the top, explaining how everything emerges
from morality or quality, is in my opinion a better way to keep morals from
being subverted. The MoQ suggests that we should allow humanity to be used
to propogate so-called higher level patterns, which opens the door for
anyone with a delusion to advocate throwing out patterns that they think are
lower level. And because there are lots of people with different delusions,
the only thing they share is a common enemy - the shared static patterns. I
think the MoQ is misunderstood, people are too quick to dis social patterns,
which Pirsig goes to some pains to point out is necessary. But that
misunderstanding is a characteristic of tautological systems that are fitted
with warm fuzzies like DQ and its associated free will. We need cold
reality.
Johnny
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