LS Self in the MOQ

From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jul 17 1999 - 23:06:48 BST


Are we too selfish? Are we to sell fish? Maybe I should shelf this.

Why not start with "the best definition of YOU that's ever been
invented"?

"You're a sort of culture, a culture of one. A culture is an evolved
static pattern of quality capable of dynamic change."

And Pirsig's description of Lila seems to say the same thing...

"She's a cohesion of changing static patterns of this Quality. ...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."

(Thanks for giving us the right quotes, Diana!) I'd like to encourage
the whole squad to keep them in mind through July. Pirsig himself says
it is the best definition. I ask for shell fish reasons too; the
computer metaphor is all but lost on me. In spite of the frustration
expressed, I think we are pretty close to sorting out the issue. In
fact, Rich pretty much nailed it in his "soul-daddy sources" post. Who
could argue with such solid advice as "smoke a hooley"? But
seriously....

East meets West! Damn straight! As pretentious as it may sound, Pirsig's
MOQ is a global metaphysic. It is both Eastern and Western. There is no
going around the Mysticism of it. If it is equated with DQ, then
mysticism is at the very heart of the MOQ. And this bears upon our
present discussion because the "Self" is a creation of DQ. But as Rich
said the "real difficulty is the incredible immensity of ground to be
covered". We're talking about three and a half billion years and the
entire world, after all.

So let me back up and address Diana's discomfort. She says, "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."
and comes to the conclusion that "we're patterns, not things". This
reminds me of Bo's "leaves in a storm" metaphor and my own early post
where I struggled to reconfigure the dictionary definition into MOQ
terms. But I think all this talk has helped.

The problem with SOM's Cartesian self, that fictional editor behind the
eyes, is that it is disconnected. In a world where only subjects and
objects exist, Descartes could say, "I think, therefore I am". But in
the MOQ he has to say, "French society exists, therefore I think,
therfore I am." The SOM self ignores the social level of values. The
Cartesian self has giant hole in it's center. This same misconception is
at the root of the mind/body problem, the amorality of "objective"
science and the terrible loneliness of our century. Its all part and
parcel of the same problem.

If the four levels in the MOQ's ontological scheme are imagined as four
bricks stacked with inorganic on the bottom and intellect at the top,
then the
SOM ego floats in thin air. The social brick doesn't really exist and
the Cartesian ego hovers suspended a brick's width away from the bio
brick.
Hence it is disconnected from its own body!

The MOQ's solution is not to deny the existence of the self, simply to
redefine it in such a way as to undo the fictional little editor, that
disconnected, lonely, objective observer. I think this is the stubborn
self that needs to be eliminated, but that is not the same as denying
our very existence. This gets at all those questions we've had so far.
What attends? What coheres? What unifies the stream of sensory
impressions? I think all these questions are due to a Cartesian hangover
from last night's SOM party. They all smell like little editors. The MOQ
gets rid of them.

Pirsig does this by showing how the intellectual level is the offspring
of the social level. Then the ego self, the Cartesian thinker, can be
re-imagined as deeply embedded rather than lonely, as a participant
rather than an objective observer and as a product of a value based
evolutionary process rather than a random occurance in an indifferent
cosmos.

The mind and body are joined back together by the social level. In the
five moral codes, conflict with the social level is exactly what the
biological and intellectual levels have in common. The social level
connects the mind to the body and connects our existence to "the history
of the entire world".

We are, like Lila, "a cohesion of changing static patterns". We ARE the
cohesion. We're each an "evolved static pattern of quality capable of
dynamic change" and a "jungle of evolutionary patterns of value". All
the levels of static patterns exist within each of us. Its a real jungle
in there.

When we ask the question of self in the MOQ, maybe we really need five
answers to five questions. What is a human individual on each of the
four levels and how does the coherence of it all ensure further dynamic
growth?

I think it safe to assume that we actually exist in time and space, as a
physical being with a mind, but lets not forget that we are social level
creatures too. And for God's sake, don't forget the entire evolutionary
process is led by DQ. Your evolution IS the evolution of the universe.

Nothin' lonely bout that. Thou art that. The center is everywhere, the
circumference is no where. Atman and Brahman. I think Pirsig has
intentionally informed his own view with those kinds of concepts, its
not just some fuzzy-headed new-age import. I can be certain of this
because my Astrologer saw it in her crystal ball under a full moon.

I think evolutionary change, DYNAMIC change is kind of a rare and holy
event, even if it happens constantly and is completely natural and
normal. I mean it seems to me that everything in the universe is static
most of the time. Which is not to say that everything is still and
motionless. Static patterns can change and move and act, but there is
necessarily anything dynamic about it.

A person, for example, might change their intellectual static patterns
by going to college or adopting a new metaphysical system. It might be
the case that said individual has only changed one set of static
patterns for another. But what if the second one is worse than the
original? Changing static patterns isn't necessarily dynamic or
evolutionary. I get the impression that most people are pretty damn
static most of the time, except in hurricanes and such. We should
organize a "Karmic Relief" benifit concert. There's a lot of
evolutionary garbage weighing folks down.

But if Pirsig is correct and the MOQ really is an improvement, then
maybe it really is evolutionary. Maybe you and I and anyone who
discovers it will have evolved to some extent? Maybe understanding isn't
enough and creative, original thought is required to claim any
evolutionary quality was involved?

What is genuinely creative and what is merely criminal degeneracy sort
of defines what is static and what is dynamic. It pretty tricky to tell
the difference sometimes, just once in a while, but its usually pretty
obvious.

Thanks for your time, David B.

MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jan 17 2002 - 13:08:47 GMT