I'm still going over all the posts and will -- hopefully --
have a reply by the weekend. I just wanted to comment on
something that came to mind very quickly when I read Rich's
post.
Rich:
I think of the 'ego' as having two parts:
Social - emotional
Intellectual - rational
Social values are learned emotionally (mommy and daddy
and friends)
Intellectual values are learned rationally (self and
teacher)
Rob:
If social values are emotional then they are purely
biological. I never thought of it this way, but my recent
study of William James clarified exactly that emotions are
entirely physical states of the body. I will cite on
example:
"What kind of emotion of fear would be left if the feeling
neither quickened the heart beats nor of shallow breathing,
neither of trembling lips nor of awakened limbs, neither of
goose flesh nor of visual stirrings, were present, it is
quite impossible for me to think."
Another example you can see for yourself (I was shown this
in Tai Chi today). Sit in a very closed stance: fold your
arms in tightly, nod your head downwards and pull in your
shoulders. Now try to be happy. It is very difficult!!!
So, all of the great emotions we have as social beings are
-- in fact -- biological relations. One makes us laugh and
we feel the physical release of the body. One makes us mad
and we feel ourselves tighten up. Get my point?
This is another reason why I am skeptical of the MOQ. Would
we really care about being social, if there were no
emotional gains? If not, what is the intrinsic value of the
social level? Is there *really* a social level at all?
The more I think about these things, the more dualism makes
sense (but not the religious beliefs tagged to dualism).
There is an external world, which we infer from our
experiences, and there are points of perception to the
external world (consciousness). Reality is fundamentally
dual -- not four levels.
In other words, there is first the material world (which
includes our physical body) AND the self which is sensitive
to the material world. This is more simple than the MOQ
without the pitfalls of SOM/materialism.
BTW, Does Pirsig ever address dualism?
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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