From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jul 23 2003 - 05:49:26 BST
Hi Rick,
>J
> I like built on societies, because perhaps intellectual
> > patterns didn't develop until one society came into contact with
>another.
> > Or until people became aware that their society wasn't the only society
> > possible, there were other societies and why can't this one be
>different.
>
>R
>Why do you think that? I thought we agreed that intellectual patterns
>developed to help a society find food and such. Why would it matter if
>they
>had come into contact with another society or not?
Well, the "other" society could be a better version of the same society, one
that used this new method to find food. Maybe that seems like a cop-out,
but my feeling is that any thought that is about society is an intellectual
thought (or pattern) and thoughts about society are relational between this
society and other possible societies.
>R
>I agree (in fact, I think that's what I wrote).
probably :)
R
> It's just a different way
>of looking at the social patterns. You can see them in terms of their sum
>(the culture, the giant, etc) or you can see them in terms of how they
>specifically apply to given people or institutions. When the theory of
>relativity was born it wasn't "German culture" as whole that came up with
>it, it was that particular part of German culture called "Albert Einstein".
But who was Albert Einstein? If we cloned him and put him in the womb of a
woman in Toledo, would he come up with Realtivity again? I doubt it. (Have
you seen Star Trek Nemesis yet?) But that's what you are saying, Albert was
a particular part of the culture, that particular part came up with it.
>R
>I was using "contra" to refer to the way in which Pirsig defines the
>contours of the levels (not their relationship). "Social" in the MoQ is
>defined in contrast to it's relationship to biological patterns (ie. social
>means "not biological", not "not individual").
Would you agree that it is the relationships of or between biological
patterns? (or at least like-biological patterns)
>R
>As I said above, I'm not sure why two societies would have to interact for
>intellectual patterns to evolve if they evolve for the purpose of helping a
>society find food.
Find food *better* than the society already finds food, find food in a way
that a better society would. Hence, the two societies, this one and the
better one. ?? (Also gets back to Sermon on the Mount, Christ says that
God will feed everyone what we need, we needn't intellectualize a better
way, though of course, we'd have to accept starving to death every once in a
while)
>R
>Inorganic patterns interact with each other at various scales to form all
>sorts of inorganic patterns, some more complex than others. One of those
>is
>"carbon". Biological patterns are what form when units of carbon are
>configured by DNA.
That comes up a little short to me, though I confess it is concise. DNA
just replicates itself and replicates proteins.
>R
>I don't know, sounds confusing to me. I'm sticking with 'life' is carbon
>being configured by DNA.
I'm confused about it too. But I think there should be some unified manner
that all the levels relate to the one below, it shouldn't be different for
each level, else that seems arbitrary. I like to think that the higher
level is what evolves when the lower level patterns interact in a way that
isn't just another lower level pattern, but is somehow "about" the lower
level patterns. I will accept that DNA has something to do with how the
second level is about the first.
J
> > Wouldn't you expect something to do womething that was
> > better and more fun?
>
>R
>Well, yes. But I don't think it does it BECAUSE it's expected of it. Saying
>that something does something fun *because* that's what's expected of it
>seems to rob "fun" of all the fun. Fun is something we enjoy for it's own
>sake, not because we're expected to.
So when you go to the movies, you don't expect to have fun?
>J
> It is a simultaneous meaning: morality does what is
> > expected because it is better to do what is expected and that's why it
>is
> > expected that it will do it.
>
>R
>Ah yes, your familiar refrain. I still don't find it valuable.
Have you ever wondered about the dual meanings of those words? (Expected,
supposed, should) What came first, the imperitive or the probability? I
say that neither came first, the whole came first.
>J
>I translate that to expectation itself.
>
>R
>I don't. I translate it to Quality=Morality. Which means that "static
>quality" and "Dynamic quality" are just as well called "static morality"
>and
>"Dynamic morality". "Expectation" I would say is a creature of static
>morality only. It is not synonymous with Morality itself.
If you could see the whole, you'd expect the changes. As it is, you expect
that lots of changes will happen unexpectedly. btw, when people ask me
"whose expectation?" I should answer back: "whose morality?", or "whose
quality?"
>R
>Disagree completely. Fulfilling expectations is not always fun and the
>most
>fun things are usually unexpected (this is basically the subject of the
>'beauty' thread, no?).
OK, fun wsn't the right word, but "satisfying" might be. When the
unexpected is fun it's because we expected to be surprised. If we don't,
it's not. It's not fun when you find a mouse in your cereal, or the house
burns down.
> > In my mind, it must all start with an undivided whole.
>
>J
> > It did, back in the beginning. But it's been differentiated now.
>There's a
> > Europe that endures, and oceans, and crustaceans, and me and you. Yet
>there are still quality events that create all this stuff afresh each time.
>
>R
>To it's the whole of everything IS a part. Not a whole of which everything
>WAS a part.
There can't be two moons, or another continent, no matter how high quality
that might be. It's too late for that now.
> > >R
> > >How can something exist before it's "made real"?
>
>J
> > The patterns dictate what is made real, they are what carry forward.
>... THe patterns exist within that whole, and they exist as
> > patterns, ready to be made real if anyone were to look.
>... To get from one moment to the next, the PATTERN continues to exist
>within morality.
>
>R
>I don't Johnny. Sounds alot like SOM to me.
Why wouldn't it? The difference is that the subjects and obects are
creations of morality, and exist for the same reason that social and
intellectual morals do, with the same drive to be realized and repeated.
cool mark twain quote
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