LS Phaedrus' Knives

From: rich pretti (richpretti@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon May 10 1999 - 06:17:58 BST


  Dear
  Fellow Let's Split Quality
eValuating
  Metaphysicians,

"He who knows the Tao does not care to speak about it;
He who is ever ready to speak about it does not know it.

He who knows it will keep his mouth shut and close the portals of his
nostrils.
He will blunt his sharp points and unravel the complications of things;
He will attempt his brightness
And bring himself into agreement with the obscurity of others.

This is called the
'Mysterious Agreement'

Such a one cannot be treated familiarly or distantly;
He is beyond all consideration of profit or injury; of nobility or meanness;
He is the noblest man under heaven."
                                                         
(http://www.edepot.com/tao8.html)
translation: James Legge

A) Intro:

(all quotes: Bantam Paperback Editions: ZMM - Pink, Oct 1981, Lila - Teal,
Dec. 1992)

        Here in the "high" country of experience, Phaedrus' knife carves the
pumpkin of Quality delicately, finer than Occam's razor, able to leap tall
buildings in a single bound...

"A subject-object metaphysics is in fact a metaphysics in which the first
division of Quality - the first slice of undivided experience - is into
subjects and objects. Once you have made that slice all of human experience
is supposed to fit into one of these two boxes. The trouble is, it doesn't.
What he had seen is that there is a metaphysical box that sits above these
two boxes, Quality itself. And once he'd seen this he also saw a huge number
of ways in which Quality can be divided. Subjects and objects are just one
of the ways. The question was, which way was best?"(124 L)

        Practising the art of pragmatic sophistic truth, we must "keep in mind"
that,

"Trying to create a perfect metaphysics is like trying to create a perfect
chess strategy, one that will win every time. You can't do it."(125 L)

        However,

"Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part
of life."(74 L)

        Sounds like fun. Romantically Dynamic Quality.

        We are challenged this month to shed light on the meaning of Phaedrus' meta
-Qualitative split into Dynamic and static. Some decades ago, a secretary at
Bozeman college casually asked P whether or not he was teaching "quality"
that quarter. This same question can be applied to most any occupation,
substituting the relevant verb for "teaching", and time frame for "quarter".
Am I cooking quality meals? Writing quality philosophy? Building a quality
birdfeeder?
You could fairly say that the seed of a Metaphysics of Quality was planted
at the moment that Phaedrus experienced Sarah's questioning in the hills of
Montana. We will hold that event(s) "B" (P's metaphysical mountain climbing)
prefered -valued - precondition(s) "A" (Sarah's (subtly) Dynamic question).

     I will first outline my perception of the understanding of Quality
which Phaedrus came to in ZMM. I feel this concept must be carefully laid
out and grasped before we apply the blade. A stitch in time saves nine, yes?
We'll encourage the position that:

"...if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it becomes
possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one doesn't seek the
absolute "Truth." One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual
explanation of things...this explanation must be taken provisionally; as
useful until something better comes along."(114 L)

     There is a necessary first step in the metaphysical dance of Quality.
If one wishes to enter her mansions of ballroom value, one must willfully
believe that Quality exists. One must satisfactorily establish that Quality
exists. Stopping to smell the flowers of evidence near the gate, we ponder:

1) Empirically demonstrated in the classroom (185-187 Z)
2) Rhetoric instructors (and Professors of Aesthetic Philosophy) grade
papers on its basis(190-191 Z)
3) The world doesn't function normally when Quality is subtracted (194 Z)
4) Ask yourself if you can live without it
5) Play a favourite song
6) Play a despised song
7) Subscribe to LS/MD mailing lists

        Good. Quality exists. Now,

"Obviously some things are better than others...but what's the
'betterness'?...So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and
nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell is Quality? What is
it?"(164 Z)

        This, my friends, is the $49, 000 question. Let's peek behind the curtains
and see what we see, smell what we may, stepping lightly. I don't know about
your corner of the globe, but the trees and bushes here are blooming as we
speak! April showers are bringing May's flowers. Lilacs and all.

B) What is Quality?

I Quality is undefinable

"There the eye goes not, nor words, nor mind.
We know not, we cannot understand, how he can be explained.
He is above the known and he is above the unknown.
What cannot be thought with the mind, but that whereby the mind can think:
Know that alone to be Brahman, the Spirit.
He comes to the thought of those who know him beyond thought,
Not to those who imagine he can be attained by thought."(Kena Upanishad)

        Has P proved that Quality exists? Do You know what it is? Or do "I" just
think so? Need some time to think it over?

Quality = Infinitely-Eternally-Gumptious = Caring = Power = Knowledge =
Valuable

     The answer which the MOQ properly gives to such questions as the
existence of value should be Pragmatic, I feel. If the belief works well,
then it is good. If it is good, then it has quality. The "only" questions
left are those of ends and means. The concept that a concept may work better
or worse and therefore be more or less true depends on what? It's
immediately experienced Quality, (with rising emphasis in vocal shakin'
rattlin' an' rollin') which, as the Sophists seem to have understood,
encompasses the omnipresent moral creating and measuring process of life.

     The final answer is your experience of the concept's value.
     Truly.

     Herein, somewhere in the freely Choosing, Willing, Believing pattern
of human, moral activity, lies the Self, "I" think. It is neither "internal"
nor "external" ("mind" nor "matter"). It somehow simultaneously encompasses
and fits in the pocket of both. It is conscious of both, to greater or
lesser degrees, according to the equation: Quality Event = Conscious
Experience. The Omnipresent Dynamic element of the static "I"'s and "You"'s
is the ineffable tree around which James' human chases the squirrel. My
I-Eyes (mental and physical) You-Use value patterns for pleasure.

     So here at the end of the line, we offer to the question of definition
a "Radical Empiricism", with a provocation to experience the Dynamic leading
edge of Experience for one's self. Therein will ultimately lie the last
word. And the most moral. (Quality must be Graded, yes?) (We must push the
envelope of evolving static Quality "where no man has gone before", yes?)

"Actions and the self and his knowledge
Go into the Supreme everlasting.
As rivers flowing into the ocean find their final peace,
And their name and form disappear,
Even so the wise become free from name and form,
And enter into the radiance of the Supreme Spirit."
(Mundaka Upanishad)

     Having rambled so obtrusely about Quality and the Self, let's attempt
"serious" analytically classical intellectual ballads. At the same time that
P lets you know about Quality's taken-for-granted, under-rated and
passed-over existence, he shows you that it obviously can't be defined. Not
well, anyway. This is Crucial. You see in red: "Quality may not be defined."
In the not-so-dogmatic corner, wearing blue, weighing in at a mere 49
scrawny pragmatic pounds, we have: "Quality may be defined. However, it will
never be perfectly defined. Any attempt produces but only a certain degree
of patterned Quality, never quite reaching ground Zero - Mu." Analogous, I
believe, to approaching the speed of light. Anyways, P's only given attempt
was put on the chalkboard (presumably made in the United States of America)
thus:

"Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by
a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal
thinking, quality cannot be defined....But even though Quality cannot be
defined, you know what Quality is!" (184-185 Z)

        This is echoed in Lila thus:

"...when you try to use thought to approach something that is prior to
thought your thinking does not carry you toward that something. It carries
you away from it. To define something is to subordinate it to a tangle of
intellectual relationships. And when you do that you destroy real
understanding."(73 L)

     Okay. Now as you read this, I ask you to please stop, take a deep
breath, and reread the above quote, real slowly. I find this helps to really
grab hold of very important ideas - i.e. Dynamic Intellectual Values. So go
ahead - Breathe.........Good. The leading edge of that experience
which you just had... BREATHING, ALWAYS BREATHING... reading and reflecting
on the idea, was Dynamic, according the MOQ. It is there, at that infinitely
fertile, well-springING leading "edge" of the track of Quality, that a
Romantic (to a lesser), and a Mystic (to a fuller), degree, dwell ---
Dynamically, Undefinably Alive and Aware. I garner that this is some segment
of the message - patterns of Zen (& -Archery), the talks of J.Krishnamurti,
Advaita Vedanta...
     I invariably find clear contemplation of this concept very difficult.
Obviously, right? A koan, I believe, is meant (in Rinzai Zen) to bring one's
"self" to a very muddled, chaotic circularly-static logical nightmare
labyrinth by which a Dynamic moment of insight (into the "Real Quality of
the World") breaks your rational chains, and subsequent "entry" (metaphor
only) into Nirvana may thereby manifest itself.

"The Spirit without moving, is swifter than the mind;
The senses cannot reach it.
Who sees all beings in his own Self
And his own Self in all beings,
Loses all fear.
When a sage sees this great Unity,
And his Self in all beings,
What delusion and what sorrow can ever be near him?" (Isa Upanishad)

     Knowledge, empirically speaking, is only valid when coming from
experience. Right. So feed this to the platypus:

"Since a metaphysics is a kind of dialectical definition and since Quality
is essentially outside definition, this means that a "Metaphysics of
Quality" is essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity." (73
L)

        I am trying to illuminate the "Pre/Neither-Subject-nor-Object" reality
which we term "Quality" in order to point out the beautifully Dynamic
difficulty of this month's PROGRAM. Whatever it is we're splitting, it's
sure slippery. However, it is only a logical absurdity in the eyes of the
classic, intellectual "Church of Reason". P sees our experienced reality -
the world of which we are conscious - as analogous to a handful of sand
which we take from the endless landscape of awareness around us.

"...a process of discrimination goes to work on this handful of sand and
divides it into parts. Classical, square understanding is concerned with the
piles of sand and the nature of the grains and the basis for sorting and
interrelating them. Phaedrus' refusal to define Quality, in terms of this
analogy, was an attempt to break the grip of the classical sand-sifting mode
of understanding and find a point of common understanding between the
classic and romantic worlds. Quality, the cleavage term between hip and
square, seemed to be it. Both worlds used the term. Both knew what it was.
It was just that the romantic left it alone and appreciated it for what it
was and the classic tried to turn it into a set of intellectual building
blocks for other purposes. Now, with the definition blocked, the classic
mind was forced to view Quality as the romantic did, undistorted by thought
structures." (199-200 Z)

        Not quite Forced. Informed of their squareness, the English faculty at
Bozeman asked him a reasonable, left-brained, classical question. The ghost
rattles its chains thus:

"'Does this undefined 'quality' of yours exist in the things we observe?'
they asked. 'Or is it subjective, existing only in the observer?'"(205 Z)

        If Quality exists in the object, why are scientific instruments unable to
detect it?
        If Quality exists in the observing subject, it is just a term for "whatever
you like"

          (and therefore unreal)
                    ?
    This is the dilemma which is worked through on pgs 205 - 215 Z:
                                             ?
i) Answer - P had previously supposed that Quality was the subject/object
of romantic vision only. Classic understanding, or 'squareness', was seen as
the inability to see Quality before it's been "all chopped up" into words.
(199-200 Z)
    Platypus - Philosophy is the art of chopping reality into words.
Philosophical mysticism has its home, all right - in a monastery. Not in a
university. Hence his colleague's reasonable question above (205 Z) must be
answered as reasonably and logically as possible. ?
                                                                  ?
ii) Answer - Addressing the 'classical formalist' horn, he suggests that
there are two qualities: a romantic one, just seeing, and a classic one,
overall understanding.
     Platypus - now his "simple, neat, beautiful, undefined Quality was
starting to get complex"(212 Z) Quality had been split by the knife of
subjectivity/objectivity, corresponding to romantic/classic, respectively.
                                        ?
iii) Answer - "Quality is neither a part of mind, nor is it a part of
matter. It is a third entity which is independent of the two...Holy, holy,
holy...blessed Trinity."(213 Z)
       Platypus - Why three? What is the relationship between them?
                                                ?
"Training in Zen aims at the direct experience of breaking through to
concrete Reality. That breaking through to Reality has to be personally
attained by oneself. Zen can never be an idea or knowledge, which are only
shadows of Reality. You may reason out that "Mu" transcends both yes and no,
that it is the Absolute Oneness where all dualistic discrimination is
exhausted. While you are thus conceptualizing, real "Mu" is lost forever."
(Koller - A Sourcebook in Asian Philosophy)

II Quality is reality.

     (more or less...)

"Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true
precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of
philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process of breaking
something down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is
so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and
direct."(224-225 Z)

"In our highly complex organic state we advanced organisms respond to our
environment with an invention of many marvelous analogues. We invent earth
and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, language,
philosophy, engineering, civilization and science. We call these analogues
reality. And they are reality. We mesmerize our children in the name of
truth into knowing that they are reality. We throw anyone who does not
accept these analogues into an insane asylum. But that which causes us to
invent the analogues is Quality. Quality is the continuing stimulus which
our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of
it. Every last bit of it."(225 Z)

"Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it
within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That is why Quality
cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something less than
Quality itself."(225 Z)

       (-enter P, stage left, brandishing a book:)
    Phaedrus slays the SOMbre Fire-Breathing Platypus:

      --- Mission Impossible: (define the undefinable, show me the face
you had before you were born, and chase your tail in the moonlight)
      --- This message will self-reflect in "T minus 10..."

iv) Final Answers:

      - "Quality is not a thing. It is an event...(it) is not just the
result of a collision between subject and object. The very existence of
subject and object themselves is deduced from the Quality event. The Quality
event is the cause of the subjects and objects, which are then mistakenly
presumed to be the cause of the Quality!"(215 Z)

     - "The sun of quality...does not revolve around the subjects and
objects of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is
not subordinate to them in any way. It has created them. They are
subordinate to it!"(215 Z)

     - "It isn't Lila that has quality; it's Quality that has Lila. Nothing
can have Quality. To have something is to possess it, and to possess
something is to dominate it. Nothing dominates Quality...She's created by
it."(159 L)

     - "He simply meant that at the cutting edge of time, before an object
can be distinguished, there must be a kind of nonintellectual awareness,
which he called awareness of Quality...The present is our only reality...Any
intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal.
Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes
place. There is no other reality. This preintellectual reality is what
Phaedrus felt he had properly identified as Quality. Since all
intellectually identifiable things must emerge from this preintellectual
reality, Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and
objects."(221-222 Z)

        Summing things up, let's listen in on Platypus Dissection 101:

"Now we had two different kinds of Quality but they no longer split Quality
itself. They were just two different time aspects of Quality, short and
long. What had previously been asked for was a metaphysical hierarchy that
looked like this:

                               REALITY
                             _____!_______
                            ! !
           SUBJECTIVE(mental) OBJECTIVE(physical)
                _______!_________
               ! !
   CLASSIC(intellectual) ROMANTIC(emotional)
                ! !
     Quality Phaedrus Quality Phaedrus
    should be teaching was teaching

     What he gave them in return was a metaphysical hierarchy that looked
like this:

                        QUALITY(reality)
               ________________!_____________
               ! !
     ROMANTIC QUALITY CLASSIC QUALITY
      (preintellectual reality) (intellectual reality)
                                              !
                                   _______________________
                                                                             
                             ! !
                    SUBJECTIVE REALITY OBJECTIVE REALITY
                          (mind) (matter)

The Quality he was teaching was not just a part of reality, it was the whole
thing." (222-223 Z)

        Confronted with the question "what is Quality?", we have observed a few of
P's observations:

1) Quality is undeniable (re: radical, direct, present experience)
2) Quality is undefinable (re: temporally static quality of
                                  intellectual patterns)
3) Quality is indivisible (re: God, Tao, Dharma, Nirvana)

        We conclude that not only is quality real, Quality is Reality itSelf.

                      All of it. Every last bit of it.

     Numbers one and two are meant to go hand in hand, and explain each
other in a manner of "controlled folly" (poster? LS/MD). The reason that
Quality is undefinable is that Quality is defined, according to the
intellectual values of the MOQ, as primary, undivided experience, (of that
"really good part of life" (but sometimes scary and negative) which all
human cultures sense and celebrate in dynamic fashion, in glowing stabley
patterned masks and jewellery) prior to and independent of intellectual
constructions - definitions - which seek to impose order and pattern on this
immediate data of relatively "better or worse", "more or less", "higher or
lower" value - re: Quality. Any definition you can think of is ultimately
one about past events, and therefore is growing increasingly static,
inversely proportionate to the length of space and time since its occurence.
P suggests that these patterns are therefore unreal.
     I suggest, hesitantly, pragmatically pending further meditation, that
they (and any static pattern of values) are simply less real than the moving
Present Quality - the front edge of the train of experience. By "less real"
I have implied that it/they has/have less value, according to the equation:
Quality = Reality. Logic dictates, I believe, that these statements - the
MOQ itself - are by this standard - unreal when viewed beside the undivided,
lovely world of the mystic. If not unreal, then relatively degenerate. But a
lot better than dining with platypi three times a day.

     Number three is the thorny one. If Quality is the One transcendent
indivisible thing we call Real and we are asked to evaluate a man's division
of Quality, it smells like a platypus has hit the fan. However, there is a
way around these clouds of logic. For these are the clouds of classical
vision, raining logic and reason and technology and theology and philosophy
and philosophololillolilallogy. Put on your romantic helmet, slip on some
silly riding gloves, and fly through the storm straight unto the heart of
the matter.
     The primary and final substance, "that which is infinite", is Good,
True and Beautiful. It must be. The definition at least works. It may be
experienced as "Better" or "Worse", depending on the static analogous
history of the individual entities concerned. But it will always have
Quality.
     Rather, it will always have you.
     Seeing that Quality is indivisible, can we justify looking at
experience as occuring on different moral levels as patterns interact with
one another, both within a level and with other levels? The experience of
Quality may be understood as having it's existence definable as Being:

                        a - On a scale of evolution
                        b - On a scale of betterness
                        c - On a scale of awareness

        I think we split it, however we like, with no intent other than observing
the aesthetic dynamics of the resulting products...
        What I'm trying, somewhat lamely, to spit out, is this concept, that:

        Quality is Graded. There are Degrees of Quality.
                        This is my point.

        There are many ways one can conceive of Quality as having differing Degrees
of manifestation. Different subdivisions.
        Pick the ones you like.

Crazy Hindus - Four-Faced Brahman statues - way before Picasso

     To see how all this Reality fits in to our existential pockets, let's
put this in our pipes and smoke it:

III Quality is experienced events

"It is an experience. It is not a judgment about an experience. It is not a
description of experience. The value itself is an experience. It is
verifiable by anyone who cares to do so. It is reproducible. Of all
experience, it is the least mistakable there is...the value will always come
first, the oaths second. Without the primary low valuation, the secondary
oaths will not follow."(76 L)

"There's a principle in physics that if a thing can't be distinguished from
anything else it doesn't exist...if a thing has no value it isn't
distinguished from anything else. Then, putting the two together, a thing
that has no value does not exist. The thing has not created the value. The
value has created the thing. When it is seen that value is the front edge of
experience, there is no problem for empiricists here."(114 L)

                   / \ Dynamic Value = Experience |
  Degree
Quality = | (Empirically Provable Truth) | = Existence =
of = Experience
                    | Static Value = Existence \\ //
             Excellence

"The MOQ restates the empirical basis of logical positivism with more
precision, more inclusiveness, more explanatory power than it has previously
had. It says that values are not outside of the experience that logical
positivism limits itself to. They are the essence of the experience. Values
are more empirical in fact, than subjects or objects."(75 L)

"...we have a culturally inherited blind spot here."(76 L)

        Sew:

The thread of assumption that "...all the universe is composed of subjects
and objects and anything that can't be classified as a subject or an object
isn't real...is just an assumption...that flies outrageously in the face of
common experience...The low value comes first, then the subjective
thoughts...The value is the reality that brings the thoughts to mind."(113
Z)

     Quality is experience. Experiences are events. Quality, P tells us, is
"The cause" of "subjects" and "objects". At the same time, according to the
formula: "B" values precondition "A", Quality must be "caused by" the
"subjects and objects" which prefer different environmental conditions for
"manifestation" - in the analogous form of the wake of an object sailing
through water. Every Quality Event takes place within an environment. This
environment is composed of an infinite series of quality events, which occur
in patterns according to their relative values - likes and dislikes -
preferences - hence "likeliness to occur" = probability = causality.

     Well.
     What can we say about this alleged experiential and cosmological
"Quality" that is useful? What does it all mean? Here's a
Big-Ol'-Can-O'-Beans, which, when eaten and properly digested, makes you
smell like flowers. Lilacs, in particular. Pavlov's dog drools, as we open
the can to the sound of this music:

IV Quality is morality.

"Make no mistake about it."( L)

"Not just life, but everything, is an ethical activity."( L)

     I don't know about you, but THE question, the "big'un", that has
philosophically stricken me with intense concern, and I presume pokes all of
you having read ZMM or Lila, is this: What is Good? After science has told
you all about the how, where, what, when and with whom... Why? How ought we
to respond to this information?

     Ethics. Ethos. In Greek, "ethos" signifies "life-force", as opposed to
"thanatos", or "death-force". Hence, ethics, the study of how we ought to
live. Which Way is Best?

Question: My way or the highway?

Platypus: Wu-Wei

Response: Love

Synthesis: Dance

        I would like to split the question of Quality's blood-tied relation to
Morality into two parts, experiential and cosmological.
To introduce the division I want to show you what I have read about the
philosophy of Henri Bergson. All quotes and paraphrases here are from
S.E.Stumpf - Philosophy - History & Problems 5th Edition. The relations I
see so far to the MOQ are quite startling.

        According to Stumpf according to Bergson:
        There are "two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing."
            These are:

1) Intuition
Here we 'enter' into the object of knowledge, overcoming the limitations of
any particular perspective and grasp the object as it really is. This is
knowing the true movement, a continuous flow, where there are no points
being crossed. Bergson calls this "absolute" knowledge.

"There is one reality, at least, which we all seize from within, by
intuition and not by simple analysis. It is our own personality through time
- our self which endures."

"Intuition, bound up to a duration which is growth, perceives in it an
uninterrupted continuity of unforeseeable novelty; it sees, it knows that
the mind draws from itself more than it has, that spirituality consists in
just that, and that reality, impregnated with spirit, is creation."

"Analysis begins with the static and reconstructs movement as best it can
with immobilities in juxtaposition. By contrast, 'intuition starts from
movement, posits it, or rather perceives it as reality itself, and sees in
immobility only an abstract moment, a snapshot taken by our mind..."

2) Analysis
Knowledge thus derived depends on the vantage point from which we observe an
object, and therefore this mode of knowledge will be different for each
observer and on that account, relative. Both in observing and describing the
moving object, I am placed outside of it...I think of a line that is divided
into units, which the object crosses. "To analyze...is to express a thing as
a function of something other than itself."

"In every case, says Bergson, the analytic intellect learns, ironically, by
destroying the object's essence. Its essence is its dynamic, thriving,
pulsing, living, continuing existence - its duration. Analysis, however,
interrupts this essential duration; it stops life and movement; it separates
into several independent and static parts what in true life is a unified,
organic, and dynamic reality."

Bergson on Morality and Religion:

"...it takes intuition, a breadth of sympathy and feeling, to develop a
morality that extends beyond a closed society. Moral progress occurs, says
Bergson, only when mystics and saints, obscure heroes of moral life, appear,
people who raise humanity to a new destiny, who see in their mind's eye a
new social atmosphere, an environment in which life would be more worth
living."

        Recall the notion that Quality is Graded? Comes in differing degrees of
differing flavours? Now, look what Stumpf has to say:

"The difference between intellect and intuition is reflected also in the two
modes of religion, which Bergson calls static and dynamic."

"Religious concepts (intellectual - analytical - classical - static) seek to
provide security, confidence, and a defense against fear. But these concepts
soon become institutionalized, are converted into belief to protect them
against critical reason, are surrounded by ceremonies and disciplines, and
tend to become embedded in the social structure. This is static religion,
the religion of social conformity. Dynamic religion, on the other hand, is
more in the nature of mysticism. Bergson's definition of mysticism follows
closely his notion of intuition when he says that 'the ultimate end of
mysticism is the establishment of a contact, consequently of a partial
coincidence, with the creative effort which life itself manifests.' Just as
intuition grasps reality more completely than intellect does, so does
dynamic religion discover God more vividly. For, says Bergson, we must
consider static religion 'as the crystallization, brought about by a
scientific process of cooling, of what mysticism had poured, white hot, into
the soul of man."

(one) Experiential - Private - I

Ethical events which are radically experienced, ethical paths which are
dynamically chosen, fall under the category of Experience. I am thinking
here of Bergson's intuition, which might be the stage of which Kierkegaard's
either/or and the thrust of Heidegger and Sartre's philosophies play.
Morality here is a very tricky matter.
Love and Hate. These must be central. The highest quality actions you can
'perform' (rather - allow to happen) are ones in which there is no
'self'-interest which limits the extent to which Quality may manifest itself
dynamically. Really, if you want to get to heaven, be again like a child,
loving your neighbour unconditionally...
This first side of ethics is that which concerns ME, NOW, and YOU, WHEN, we
experience reality. Is there a paramoqical platypus? Throughout our
guidebooks, the language used by the author indicates that "behind" every
action is a "self" or an "I" which "chooses" to "do" this or that.

"To the extent that one's behavior is controlled by static patterns of
quality it is without choice. But to the extent that one follows Dynamic
Quality, which is undefinable, one's behavior is free." (180 L)

"These patterns can't by themselves perceive or adjust to Dynamic Quality.
Only a living being can do that." (185 L)

"What the record did was weaken for a moment your existing static patterns
in such a way that the Dynamic Quality all around you shone through. It was
free, without static forms. The second good, the kind that made you want to
recommend it to a friend, even when you had lost your own enthusiasm for it,
is static quality. Static quality is what you normally expect." (135 L)

Also throughout our guidebooks, we are told that Really, there is no subject
or object - not at the most important, beautiful leading edge of Experience.
P seems to suggest, along with Hume, that there is no "self".

"This fictitious 'man' has many synonyms: 'mankind,' 'people,' 'the public,'
and even such pronouns as 'I,' 'He,' and 'they.' Our language is so
organized around them and they are so convenient to use it is impossible to
get rid of them. There is really no need to. Like 'substance' {and
'causality') they can be used as long as it is remembered that they're terms
for collections of patterns and not some independent primary reality of
their own." (178 L)

I propose that their is confusion in use of the terms "subject" "self"
"mind" and "experience". Currently, I find the best description of "my"
"experiences" - i.e. life, is that a continuous, never perfectly graspable
"I" is "experiencING" Quality Events. These valuable events are experienced
as innumerable transactions/interactions between four levels of "my" "Self".

        a: "I" experience motion, gravity, heat, space, time, liquids,
solids, gases...
                = Inorganically patterned experience of Quality
               -most stable, 'sure', predictable and probable.
               -generally 'unconscious' experience. not always

        b: "I" experience thirst, hunger, lust, energy, exhaustion,
pleasure, pain...
               = Biologically patterned experience of Quality
              -stability correlative to statistical "quality of living" in
environment, in relation with body's ability to adapt, age, weight, lungs,
etc...
               -generally 'subconscious'. can be very conscious.

        c: "I" experience love, hate, friendship, pride, despair,
jealously, pity, television...
               = Socially patterned experience of Quality
              -stability related to childhood parents, environment, current
economic, political conditions, immediate ino'c, bio'l, int'l states of
value...
              -generally 'conscious'. can be subconscious.

        d: "I" experience curiosity, reason, logic, thoughts, ideas, swift
or slowness, analogues and metaphors, bright and dullness...
              =Intellectually patterned experience of Quality
              -stability related to social and chemical conditioning and
current states of eventual quality. Education, attention, caring,
intelligence...
            -generally 'very conscious'. Do you ever have
             thoughts you aren't aware of? How many forgotten?

        e: "I" experience these really crazy realities which are termed
"dreams". Every night. Guaranteed. What are these events, what do they mean?
I don't know. But, I think as of now that:

        "I" am "Quality".
        Make no mistake about.
        "I" am "Freely Stable"
        "I" am "Reality" - Judging. Measuring. Dividing. Playing and Dancing and...

        "I" am not my thoughts, nor social prestige, nor health, nor spatial
coordinates.
            "I" am "that" which Experiences so many Quality Events on so
many differently
            patterned levels of value.

        The "self", what I mean by subject, is that intuitive, preintellectual
"me", which has the experiences translated into and remembered as int, soc,
bio and ino patterns of value. "I think." When are we ever sure with words?

(two) Cosmological - Public - We

        This is what I consider the logical, classic, analytical side of Ethical
Philosophy. Here we are free to consider the relative value of any one or
more conflicting patterns of Quality. And our golden rule is thus:

"That event which is more evolved is more Dynamic and therefore better."

        And our catch is thus:

"No static patterns, no selves, need to be destroyed unnecessarily in the
process."

        I will save current and past moral analysis for another month. To sum it
all up, in order to cut it all down again, into Dynamic Dualisms.....

V Quality is the "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum"

                           -Split it Well, as you Will.

What is Quality?

  Undefinable \
                 Indivisible \
  Reality /
                    Ineffable Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum
  Experience \
                 Inescapable /
  Morality /

                   -static and Dynamic in many different ways:

"For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the
more you see." (171 Z)

"Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the source
of all things, completely simple and always new. It was the moral force that
had motivated the brujo in Zuni." (133 L)

"It contains no patterns of fixed rewards and punishments. Its only
perceived good is freedom and its only perceived evil is static quality
itself - any pattern of one-sided fixed values that tries to contain and
kill the ongoing free force of life." (133 L)

"Static quality, the moral force of the priests, emerges in the wake of
Dynamic Quality. It is old and complex. It always contains a component of
memory. Good is conformty to an established pattern of fixed values and
value objects. Justice and law are identical. Static morality is full of
heroes and villains, loves and hatreds, carrots and sticks. Its values don't
change by themselves. Unless they are altered by Dynamic Quality they say
the same thing year after year..." (133 L)

        Hmmm...

"Squareness may be succinctly and yet thoroughtly defined as an inability to
see quality before it's been intellectually defined, that is, before it gets
all chopped up into words...We have proved that quality, though undefined,
exists. Its existence can be seen empirically in the classroom, and can be
demonstrated logically by showing that a world without it cannot exist as we
know it. What remains to be seen, the thing to be analyzed, is not quality,
but those peculiar habits of thought called 'squareness' that sometimes
prevent us from seeing it." (196 Z)

        So long for now!

--rich

           Pending improvement.

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