John B, Roger and all Pirsigers:
I hardly know where to begin. There are three recent posts that really
got me thinking, and now I'm thinking of all three of them at once like
the guy who spins plates on the ed sulivan show. One of them is John
Beasley's post concerning what he called the survival, social and
artistic ways of knowing Quality. The second was posted by Bob Wallace
in the other forum. Bob's post was about the structure of our brains.
There are three levels of structure within the brain and they roughtly
correspond to John's three levels of Quality. They are the reptilian
brain, the limbic system and the neocortex. They correspond roughly to
Pirsig's organic, social and intellectual levels. You see what I'm
getting at?
Roger's late night rambling post is the third spinning plate. As if in a
dream or a poem, he knows what it is to be a primordial creature, one
that has not yet even evolved any sense organs. Still he knows the
yearning for sunshine and warmth. He indentifies with even the lowly
algea and is blissed out by it.
I've heard that there is an ancient microscopic organism inside of every
one of our cells. Its an evolutionary high-jacker who has essential
decided to make us it's enviroment. It is really kind of an alien within
us, but preforms fiological dunctions we can't do without. Its called
something like mitochondria, I think. it's not exactly the same as
Roger's tide pool algea, but there is primordial creature within each of
us.
Now add more complex biological patterns until you've got that reptilian
brain stem and all the knowledge of all the creatures that it implies.
Gators, frogs, snakes, etc.. Now add that limbic system and all the
groupthink, tribal behavior that is associated with all the animals that
have such a level in their brains. Hereby we can identify with dogs,
pigs, dolpins, wolves, apes and a whole host other social creatures. We
can relate to and identify with every creature under the sun.
And can't we identify with the inorganic level just as well? It's harder
to image cause we genally think of experience as something that requires
some kind of sense organ and that "matter" is just dead weight. But the
MOQ says its all Quality, every last bit of it. So inorganic patterns
are made og the same stuff as everthing else. "Substance" is made of
Quality too. And just as the three "life" levels are reflected in the
structure of our brains, the inorganic level is there too. There are
atoms and molecules and chemical reactions and electrical pulses and all
kinds of complex inorganic processes that are a part of the overall
structure. The structures of the universe are literally within us.
Amazing.
I think it is not so much that there is no mind and no matter so much as
they are the same thing. The shape of reality is the very structure of
experience. The more complex, higher level static patterns reflect an
inheritance of experience. Social and intellectual patterns are really
patterns upon patterns upon patterns that have been passed on for the
sake of further evolution.
They say the developmental stages of a fetus reflects the evolutionary
stages of our entire species. The cognitive stages of child deveopment
reflect the intellectual evolution of our entire species too. Amazing.
David B.
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
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