From: Paul Turner (pauljturner@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Tue Jun 10 2003 - 09:41:32 BST
Hi all
Some thoughts on social and intellectual patterns of
value with relation to the MOQ Forum.
The MOQ Forum is a social pattern of value. It is
built on the biological patterns of the people who set
up the Forum and have, still do and will in the
future, contribute posts to the Forum. The biological
patterns manipulate inorganic patterns to use the
technology to create, send, read and store the posts.
Built on top of the social pattern of value are
intellectual patterns of value – the ideas that are
contained in the posts.
As long as two people are contributing to the Forum
the social pattern and the intellectual patterns it
supports will ‘stay alive’. If the posting stops it
will be a historic social pattern and a set of static
intellectual patterns which one could peruse at
leisure like a cultural artefact.
The MOQ Forum values a particular set of ideas
contained in the writing of Robert Pirsig. The MOQ
Forum does not value some of the ideas which are the
‘common sense’ of western culture. It will attack
ideas that oppose the MOQ.
The MOQ Forum would not value an idea that tries to
destroy it – for example, if it was suggested that the
Forum should be closed down, ideas would be produced
to oppose that idea and maintain the static social
pattern of the MOQ Forum.
The MOQ Forum has a charter and rules for conduct,
they are the intellectual rules created to maintain
the social quality of the Forum. If the rules were
severely broken, the Forum would remove the
contributor who broke the rules. That would be a
social response. Some of the rules are part of a wider
pattern of rules for social conduct. Racism, sexism,
ageism, profane language and so on are not accepted by
many social patterns of value. There are also customs
which are not intellectually defined but are followed
anyway.
The MOQ Forum has an authority hierarchy. Contributors
to the Forum with high authority will find their ideas
are accepted easier than ideas from contributors with
lower authority. Authority can be gained from many
sources. Quoting Pirsig establishes authority. Quoting
other well regarded authors establishes authority. If
Pirsig were to contribute to this Forum, his ideas on
the MOQ would be accepted almost entirely without
argument. In the Forum are those that respect the
authority and those that want to undermine authority.
Constructing compelling arguments establishes
authority. Social approval establishes and confirms
authority.
The authority hierarchy in the Forum can and does
change a lot quicker than many other organisations.
How does the social level interact with intellectual
level?
Sam’s suggestion that the Eudaimonic MOQ is a better
alternative to the ‘standard’ MOQ is an idea, and
therefore an intellectual pattern of value. It has not
yet been afforded social approval. If it doesn’t, it
will not become an approved idea and will be excluded
and/or ignored until the debate stops and it dies.
Many other ideas will go this way. Sam’s Eudaimonic
MOQ idea openly disagrees with some aspects of the MOQ
idea created by Pirsig, there’s a threat to the
‘common sense’ of the Forum, yet through compelling
argument the approval of the idea is still up for
debate. The Forum is open-minded, i.e. the static
filters are fairly weak.
The Forum is awash with ideas, some old and repeated,
some intuitive but not substantiated. The new ideas
are part of the Dynamic process of life. Speculative
thought is a Dynamic process. Some of the ideas latch,
some of them don’t.
If the Forum ignores new ideas, its static patterns
will close themselves off from Dynamic Quality and it
will freeze. If it accepts and approves all ideas it
will degenerate into a chat room. It would seem to
operate best at a balance between the two.
Some closing thoughts:
How does the social pattern of value that is the Forum
get better? Is it getting better? Is the MOQ as an
intellectual pattern of value gaining anything from
the establishment of the Forum?
Does anybody care? :-)
Thanks
Paul
__________________________________________________
Yahoo! Plus - For a better Internet experience
http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/yplus/yoffer.html
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries -
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jun 10 2003 - 09:43:34 BST