Platt Holden (pholden@worldnet.att.net)
Sat, 5 Sep 1998 03:59:35 +0100
Hi Bo, Jonathan and LS:
Two recent posts from Jonathan and Bo contained a couple of
sentences which struck me as profound.
Jonathan said: “Bo, I understand the moist eyes, but I hardly think
that will sell the MOQ to the world.”
Unrelated to that and in a different context Bo said:
“The ‘really out there’ and the ‘only in here’ are the two dead ends of
S-O-M thinking."
Dead ends and moist eyes. Those brief phrases strike at the heart
of the modern dilemma and the rescuing role of the MOO.
The S-O-M dead ends were reached some time ago with
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Goedel’s Incompleteness
Theorem.
>From Heisenberg came the revelation that the more you knew about
the position of a particle, the less you knew about its momentum. So
much for reality “out there"
Then Godel chimed in with the discovery that no logical system
could prove its internal consistency or validity. So much for reality
“in here.”
Godel and Heisenberq showed us that all our model building of
reality based on Q-Intellect was, in the end, inconclusive. We could
talk metaphysics in S-0 language ‘til the cows come home, but
there's really no point. We had reached the limit of knowledge. As a
result, college philosophy departments became moribund.
Then along came the MOQ and the SOM barriers were breached.
You know it and I know it, but how do we tell the world?
I think selling the MOQ to the world using old patterns based on SOM
dualisms will not work. Further, I think Pirsig recognized this by
casting his metaphysics within the emotive framework of a novel.
Mention emotion and you run the risk of being accused of
“emotivism." But, if something is really good (high value), you can't
help but have an emotional reaction. Even if you're a hard-bitten
scientist, you'll respond to a successful experiment with some sense
of pleasure, maybe even smile. -:)
With the MOQ comes, for the first time, the integration of science
and the humanities. The humanities are about joys and sorrows,
victories and defeats, chills along the spine and lumps in the throat.
Omit those things and you omit half of the MOQ.
So in answer to Jonathan, I don't think we can sell the MOQ to world
without moist eyes. To persuade the masses it's essential to strike
emotional chords. Fortunately, the MOQ appeals as much to the
heart as to the head.
Attempts to extend the reach of the MOQ should begin with a stories
like the New Yorker who suffers a heart attack, is taken off the train
at New Rochelle, regains consciousness in a hospital and gazes at
his own hand with a sense of wonder and delight (Lila, Chap. 9).
Only by employing the skills of a best-selling author will the MOQ
have a chance of entering the mainstream.
American poet Carl Sandburg once wrote, "It must evoke laughter or
tears, or what good is it.?" Unlike any other metaphysics I know of,
the MOQ contains the capacity to evoke laughter or tears.
And when you come right down to it, that, my friends, is why the
MOQ is better than all the others.
Platt
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