Everyone
As has already been pointed out there is so much to deal with in this
program it's hard to know how to start. I don't feel quite ready to post
but we've reached the middle of the month already and often I find that
writing down what I think helps to clear my head anyway. So here goes.
One thing that's been bothering me this month, and last, is what I see as a
tendency to equate the subject with Dynamic Quality.
John asked the very relevant question:
>> What attends? Attending is a dialogue. Our experience is not just a flow of
>> sensory impressions. It is the interaction of a mind, an order
>> making entity, with its environment. "What attends"? What is the
>> order-making entity....etc
If you use MOQ terminology the question might take the form of "given that
everything is value, who or what is doing the valuing?"
And Bodvar answered:
>You are quite right in raising these questions, we don't experience a
>jumble of sensory impressions but an ordered reality: our
>consciousness a seeming UNITY focused on only one subject at a time.
>Earlier I have claimed that it is Dynamic Quality that directs our
>focus - and I still maintain this - but realize that it may sound
>as if we are leaves in a MOQ storm instead of leaves in a SOM storm.
It does indeed. There is still an "our" in "Dynamic Quality directs our
focus". And even if you take that away it's as good as saying Dynamic
Quality *is* our focus. In other words Dynamic Quality is the center of
experience. DQ is that which we never encounter because it is what we are.
That's pure subject-object metaphysics. William Barrett in his book Death
of the Soul describes the subject-object metaphysics as follows:
"Descartes dreams of the universe as a single machine, but there inside it,
at its center is that miraculous thing, his own consciousness, in the light
of which he sees and meditates. "
Horse seems to be thinking along the same lines when he says:
>Our selves experience the world, from the point of view of the levels -
>inorganically, biologically, socially and intellectually - continuously
>interacting with the world, experiencing these interactions as Quality
>events at all levels, changing, recombining, experiencing in a
>continuous dynamic process. The dynamic self experiences and
>records these experiences via the static self - growth, health, vitality,
>status, thoughts, memories etc.
Again it seems like Dynamic Quality is the center of experience which would
make it pretty much the same as the subject of the subject-object
metaphysics.
As for what the MOQ says about self and soul. Well, not much actually.
Chapter 15 is where he gets down to work on the question. First he notes
the difference Lilas within Lila. He sees the scars from her earlier
suicide attempts and then he notes that the scars have healed: "the mental
Lila had tried to die but the cellular Lila had wanted to live". He sees
her sleeping and he notes that "At this moment, asleep, 'Lila' doesn't
exist any more than a program exists when a computer is switched off. The
intelligence of her cells has switched Lila off for the night, exactly the
way a hardware switch turned of a computer program."
And then we have two key paragraphs:
"The language we've inherited confuses this. We say 'my' body and 'your'
body and 'his' body and 'her' body but it isn't that way. That's like a
FORTRAN program saying, 'This is my computer .' 'This body on the left,'
and 'This body on the right.'
That's the way to say it. This Cartesian 'me,' this autonomous little
homunculus who sits behind our eyeballs looking out through them in order
to pass judgement on the affairs of the world, is just completely
ridiculous. This self-appointed little editor of reality is just an
impossible fiction that collapses the moment one examines it. This Caresian
'Me' is a software reality, not a hardware reality. This body on the left
and this body on the right are running variations of the same program, the
same 'Me,' which doesn't belong to either of them. The 'Me's' are simply a
program format."
It's strong stuff and Pirsig is very clear that he rejects the notion of
the autonomous subject. But, like John, I find myself unsatisfied with it.
It's just not such an easy thing to accept. We're talking about our own
identities after all. I find it a little hard to give it up. Even if
intellectually I can see the irrationality of the subject-object
metaphysics, it's another thing entirely to decide that I don't exist.
Denis summed up the feeling when he said
>But first, a warning : the self wants to exist, it isn't an easy notion
>to give up, and is probably the hardest opponent to any mystic view of
>the universe. Huge forces of ego are supporting its reality, and they'll
>find their first allies in ourselves. We don't really want to be egoless
>: we want to feel proud of what we are, what we did, what we thought, as
>if it belonged to us the way a car belong to its owner. To say that it
>is not really so, that these are only useful concepts for everyday life,
>and that holding too much on them lessen the capacity for dynamic
>change, is a classic example of the static/dynamic battle that occurs
>daily in our lives.
You kind of lost me after that. Even if we accept that I am a process
rather than a thing then I can simply adjust my ego around *I* as a
process. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. I think we need a reason to
believe it.
The question, as John says, requires another Pirsig to answer it.
But back to the Pirsig quotes:
Chap 11
"It's quality that dominates and possesses Lila. She's created by it. She's
a cohesion of changing static patterns of this Quality. There isn't any
more to her than that. The words Lila uses, the thoughts she thinks, the
values she holds, are the end product of three and a half billion years of
the history of the entire world. She's a kind of jungle of evolutionary
patterns of value. "
And chap 14
"What holds a person together is his patterns of likes and dislikes,"
and
"You're a sort of culture, a culture of one. A culture is an evolved static
pattern of quality capable of dynamic change. That's what you are. That's
the best definition of you that's ever been invented."
So we're patterns, not things. I dunno. It always seems like a fudge to
me. There still must be some force or essence that holds these patterns
together. Maybe Pirsig's got it, but I think it needs a little more
explanation. Maybe a lot more explanation.
Diana
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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