From: SQUONKSTAIL@aol.com
Date: Thu Jul 17 2003 - 13:08:47 BST
I would have to go back over a couple of years to find out
specifically. I do disagree with the SOLAQI title, since I do not
consider S/O thinking to be the whole of Q-Intellect. Just its origin
(an origin that is still going on).
squonk: Think about it? Intellect can only be restricted to logic of a
very narrow compass. This is a good description of rationality - ZAMM
turned sour.
sq: Perhaps it will be good to state my view first, which is simple
enough:
sq: In my view, intellect is very much older than recorded history. In
my view, intellect and intelligence are the same thing. In my view,
the intellectual level of the MoQ existed and evolved simultaneously
with the social level for a period of time very much older than
recorded history. In my view, All levels are continuing to evolve
simultaneously, and interacting simultaneously.
sq: I feel the intellect is primarily an aesthetic sense of Quality. I
feel the creations of the intellect can be taken to be the mythos. I
feel our mythos is dominated by artistic creations of the intellect
which happen to be thought of in terms of subjects and objects. The
metaphysics of Quality is older than ancient Greek culture, but has
been modified to include evolution.
sq: I hope that has intellectual integrity enough for you?
Yes. My objection to the idea that the social and intellectual levels
are simultaneous is that it doesn't explain how the fourth level is in
conflict with the third.
squonk: They have to be simultaneous in order to be in conflict.
Since that is what the book Lila is all
about: how different people have different moral values depending on
which level they are evaluating on, I think this is an important
issue.
My position is that mythos, past or present, is third level, and logos
is fourth level.
squonk: The logos is a new mythos. There is no difference in kind or
type, only size.
It is when I rationally object to a social pattern
that I deem harmful (e.g., too much television watching among
Americans, too much "my country right or wrong", etc.) that (or so I
hope) I am in a fourth/third level conflict. When I shout "free love"
I am deluding myself on that score. And so on. There is no evidence
of this kind of rational objection to the contemporary mythos before
500 BC and plenty afterwards. Hence I see the emergence of the fourth
level at that time.
squonk: I agree, we are talking about rationality not intellect.
So, similarly, I question your succeeding statements:
"I feel the intellect is primarily an aesthetic sense of Quality." I
would say, rational sense of Quality. Aesthetic sense of Quality
currently depends on the S/O divide (this is complicated, so I won't
go into it now), and -- or so I conjecture -- involves its momentary
transcendence.
squonk: Rationality is an art in my view. It is primarily aesthetic
and requires no objects.
"I feel the creations of the intellect can be taken to be the mythos."
I see the creations of the intellect to be science, philosophy,
theology, art (not necessarily an exhaustive list). These activities
depend on the mythos, and change it (so now our current mythos is
dualistic), but the creations of intellect are -- like the MOQ --
often in conflict with the mythos. Prior to 500 BC I see no evidence
of such conflct.
squonk: Quantum mechanics is not dualistic. And Quantum mechanics is
rational.
"I feel our mythos is dominated by artistic creations of the intellect
which happen to be thought of in terms of subjects and objects." Why
artistic? I am aware that you think of mathematics (and I presume
science) as capable of "beauty", and I agree that mathematicians (and
myself) have expressed this idea, but I think it is a case of using
"beauty" (or "aesthetic") metaphorically. A work of art shows its
beauty from the outside, while mathematics shows its Quality from the
inside. I do not think they are the same. To conflate everything to
aesthetics is not what Pirsig did (he called his work a Metaphysics
of Quality, not a Metaphysics of Beauty) which is why I wonder why
you consider yourself to not be adding anything to Pirsig's work.
squonk: No, i am not adding to Pirsig's work. You are fighting
Pirsig's work.
Then there is the phrase "thought of in terms of subjects and
objects", and I believe elsewhere you say that the S/O divide is an
intellectual act. In some esoteric sense it might be, but it is not
an act that we make consciously, and (I believe) never did. It was an
evolution of consciousness, not some person's or group of persons'
idea.
squonk: Differentiation's are of value. What is you and not-you
involves inorganic, very much noticeable biological, and social
values. That intellect is called upon to assert the same value
differentials is hardly to be found surprising is it?
"The metaphysics of Quality is older than ancient Greek culture, but
has been modified to include evolution."
Yes, as Pirsig describes in Ch. 30 of Lila, the basic notion that all
comes from Quality is older. This stage Barfield calls "original
participation". But this "notion" was not an intellectual one, but a
perceptual one. Our current stage is one where this perceiving of
Quality has died out (with rare exceptions, one being aesthetic
moments, another being "Aha" moments), and (following Barfield) it is
this dying out that makes the intellectual possible.
squonk: The first indications of art (70,000 BC) suggest that
intellect is an aesthetic appreciation of Quality. Intellect creates
art in my view, and the one of the primary codes it must follow is
harmony.
But, with
the MOQ (and other philosophies, like Barfield's and Wilber's), one
sees the intellectual level rediscovering it. When (if) the MOQ
becomes ingrained (and we are a very long way from that), we
facilitate the recovery of that Quality in our everyday lives (what
Barfield calls "final participation"). But it will be different from
original participation, in that it will be seen as Quality from
within, not as coming from the gods.
squonk: We are off into Barfield country here aren't we. You will not
find it at all surprising if i wish to linger in MoQ country? To put
it simply, i don't think Barfield had a Metaphysics of Quality in his
back pocket when he wrote this stuff?
- Scott
Squonk: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/learnthink.shtml
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