From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Mon May 17 2004 - 22:26:33 BST
Dear David B.,
You ended 13 May 2004 22:10:03 -0600 with:
'How is it possible for you to think that you can out think Pirsig? Must be
a cultural thing, I guess. I'm shocked and offened by that level of
confidence. If I assumed such an attitude in front of anyone I know, they
would only laugh. But if I persisted, they'd punch me in the nose.
How do you remain unharmed? ;-)'
1. I am only e-mailing. My nose is a quarter of a globe away from your fist.
2. I do not pretend to have outthought Pirsig. If we really have to talk
about debits and credits (bit isn't that a low-quality pattern of value that
we might leave behind in this discussion list?) I'm glad to admit that 90%
of the thinking I express on this list can be credited to Pirsig. 'My'
thinking is heavily endebted to his. The 10% changes/additions are offered
in a spirit that fully recognizes your right not to consider them
improvements. I welcome constructive criticism. In that way we build
together on a system of ideas that may eventually (and retrospectively)
prove to have superseded Pirsig's legacy.
3. Your criticism doesn't really 'touch' me, because I don't feel you
express much understanding of my views. You're not really attacking my
views, but your own caricatures.
You wrote: 'stop confusing things by using Pirsig's terms for your own
ideas'.
I did. I now call the 3rd and 4th level in my MoQ 'habitual' resp.
'symbolic' to distinguish them from Pirsig's 'social' and 'intellectual'.
When people are fighting each other with words or are motivating their wars
in which they employ more lethal weapons, they are operating fully within
the 4th level as defined by me as consisting of patterns of value maintained
by copying of motives for actions and explanations for experience and by
Pirsig as 'mind' and 'the collection and manipulation of symbols, created in
the brain, that stand for patterns of
experience'. I consider these definitions to be complementary. You are free
to consider them contradictory or to prefer not using Pirsig's definition at
all.
For me societies are held together primarily by collective habits. Only
modern societies (from after the date when people started using symbols) get
some additional stability and versatility from symbolic patterns of value
that motivate people to make their behavioural patterns more consistent over
time and space and that help them adapt these patterns to different
circumstances without essential changes.
This alteration to Pirsig's MoQ as described in 'Lila' works for me and
seems to work for Steve Peterson. It doesn't seem to work for you and for
Platt. We (or others after us) will see whether it survives in its struggle
for (4th level) life in this discussion list.
Your argument ran:
'Your third level sounds a lot like instinct. I think you're only making a
distinction between biological processes and organisms and the behavior that
results. You're talking about biological level of consciousness. I mean,
lots of animals exhibit innate behaviors that can't be located in the genes
or any other biological structure. A baby chick, for example, will hide from
a hawk but not a sparrow. How does it 'know' the difference? Its not in the
genes and its not premeditatiedly performed, so by your critera a little
yellow chick is a social level creature. That's just silly. Plus it leaves
us in the same SOM soup, without a distinction between science and myth,
intellect and traditon.
I'm convinced you've made this move in order to make sure there is no
important difference between intellect and your religion.'
We call behaviour instinctive when animals seem to be born with the
possibility to express it and don't need to copy it from their parents or
other group members. It may only come to expression in interaction with a
(specific) environment, but it is (must be) somehow latched in the genes,
even if we cannot locate it (yet). Among so-called 'social' animals (say
horses or wolves) living in a group is such a specific environment that
brings certain instincts to expression. The same instinct can come to
expression when a horse or a wolf is domesticated and lives in a group of
humans that can't learn it their typical 'horse' or 'wolf/dog'-like
behaviour. That 'social' behaviour is very different still from habitual
behaviour that 'survives' because of copying from generation to generation
and because of survival of the group that preserves its (material) culture
best and adapts it best to changing circumstances.
There are very important distinctions to be made within the symbolic level.
I claim that my (Quaker) religion (based in individual religious experience
that is tested collectively for DQ/sq content) is at a higher level of
symbolic evolution than a religion that is based in myths expressing past DQ
experience. Wilber's levels of consciousness (except for the speculative
lower ones) are very useful to clarify these distinctions. These
distinctions are not necessary to get out of the SOM soup however, as BOTH
non-instinctive copied behaviour AND symbolic motivations/explanations are
'subjective' according to SOM and as habitual, 'mindless' behaviour is
perfectly able to bridge between genetically latched instinctual behaviour
and the symbolic level.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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 - horse@darkstar.uk.net
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 : Mon May 17 2004 - 22:29:34 BST