Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Mon, 30 Mar 1998 08:25:58 +0100
Fri, 27 Mar 1998 11:25:59 -0600
Ken Clark wrote:
> Squad,
> The silence here is deafening. Am I going to have to attack the MOQ to
> get the conversation going again? I hope the squad is not shell shocked.
> Ken
Hi Ken
You can't have enough mail or has the server quit on you? Well after
the great Struan shoot-out there had to be a little silence. But what
does it matter, we already know that Pirsig's ideas are new and
unknown and necessarily will be met with the furious cultural immune
defense system. But If one let oneself be sucked into the dialectics
and accept the SOM premises, you are floored before the gong has
sounded. I think that Kevin will see that throwing "the truth at the
world" isn't peanuts, and that Robert Pirsig is tired of - for a
quarter of a century - being abused (I have enclosed Kevin's
"petition" and a few other salient quotations in a letter to P.)
Notice also that once Struan was confronted with the basics there was
nothing he could do than withdraw under sarcastic cover. But it was
all insubstantial; a metaphysics rejecting emotions as a motive! No,
The enormous achievement of the MOQ is that it, for the first time in
"our" history, incorporates this enormous force into a credible
context. And Struan did not even touch the SAIOM part, that would
have put everything right, but he smelled danger there.
Re. your impressive cosmological piece. I will only take on your
assertion that the world is predictable. Sure it is as you point out
so well - even at the quantum level - but not in the "A causes B"
sense, but more of the "B prefers condition A" type. The quantum
equations predict the outcome of an experiment without a hitch; it is
the fact that it contradicts common sense that is THE PROBLEM. And
common sense is subject/objective --- for the time being.
Determinism/causality is gone but not predictability!
I will also comment on your putting things in a way that suggests
that the material universe be the "creator" of the rest of evolution:
that life, and - um - mind is part of its premises. In the Quality
context EVOLUTION IS HEADING AWAY FROM PREMISES. Life is
spiting matter, Society is going against Life and
Intellect is twarthing Society. The physical universe is the
Inorganic value level. There is no substance governed by laws; the
"laws" are the value patterns! And Ken really, how long do you think
the Chromodynamics, the Superstring or Wormholes or Inflationary
theories will last. This is insubstantial to the MOQ as a
metaphysics.
Finally to this quandary of yours: the sentient/insentient. You once
asked if 'mind' was a swearword! No, but in the
sentient=mind=consciousness=awareness sense it messes things up. If
the subject/object matter-becoming-aware-of-itself is transferred into
the MOQ it becomes little less that another NewAge mysticism. Compare
with the situation of pre- and post Copernican reality: to a person of
year 1000 'up' was absolute, to us it is relative. To you (at a point
in time) UP is towards Orion (you have it pretty high in the sky?),
but to me it is towards The Big Dipper (almost). Similarly: 'mind' to
a human being is Intellectual value, but to your dogs it is Biology
(perhaps modified by Social mind) while for a higher primate - living
in packs - Social value/mind is prominent with Biological mind
retreated a little. It is the ineradicable human hubris of seeing
objective reality from its free-floating subjective stance that the
MOQ opposes so fervently.
If you in addition uses the SAIOM and equalize Intellect with SOM the
full picture unfolds. Lets use the subject/object "mind" for all it is
worth, but the Quality Reality hovers above it.
Bo
-------------------------
TO BE IS TO DO (Socrates)
TO DO IS TO BE (Sartre)
DO BE DO-BE DO (Sinatra)
(Sign seen in a bar)
-- post message - mailto:lilasqd@hkg.com unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:42:58 CEST