To all Lila Squad
Time is running out for this month's topic, allow me a commentary
to some of the participants.
JOHN BEASLEY.
I was greatly encouraged by your message of 25 July. Joel Kovel's idea
of self as a continuum from ego to soul seems to be compatible with
the MOQ view as it has crystallized from this session.
The lonely self (as you understood the MoQ before) is now
brought into the fold again. I wish that Pirsig hadn't uttered
remarks like the "mirror" one, it's a lapse to SOM from which the
master should have refrained. If the SOLAQI idea is to become
"canonized", the ego/self of Intellect is no more - or less -
illusory than the rest of the static hierarchy.
The SOLAQI implies that the Q-idea is a tentative groping for
foothold beyond intellect and that fits your "healthy" self idea. A
movement beyond intellect will necessarily build on its (lone) self
(dualist) nature, but transcend it into a self who sees the
underlaying dynamic quality common to all levels (soul).
> In summary, Pirsig loses the opportunity to respond to the emptiness
> and lonelines of modern lives, by throwing out the self as just a
> collection of patterns of rather vague outworkings of Quality.
> The self is actually the 'baby' which needed rescuing from the
> 'bathwater', and Robert's pithy summary of Krishnamurti, and
> his application of the dynamic/static understanding to the self,
> produces the integrating concept needed to build a much more
> satisfactory (and satisfying) metaphysics. I feel a sense of elation
> at how this is coming together.
Well Phdrus (of LILA) did perhaps not get everything absolutely
right in his first effort, but let's distinguish him from Robert M
Pirsig who recently said (in a letter to the squad) that we are
exploring the territory that he opened up. Your allegory of the
self as a baby who needs rescuing from the bathwater was splendid.
This is perhaps what this month's effort has resulted in?
ROBERT STILLWELL
Thanks for accepting my criticism so positively. I hope
you'll be as magnanimous this time too, because, even if I appreciate
the time and effort put into your post of 24 July (LS Cartesian
- not SOM dualism) you keep reinventing the gunpowder.
Glassness as different from the physical thing! This is Aristoteles'
horseness vs the actual animal: Essence and substance two thousand
years thereafter.
This Aristotelian notion (not yet fully SOM, but more so than Platons
idea vs the shadows of appearance) hibernated through the Middle Ages
and re-emerged with the Renaissance and went through many phases -
first - Spinoza's God/attributes of God, later Descartes' less
theological and more epistemological doubt if there was an I (self)
at all. Then empiricism which found that there is no self only
experience, and finally Kant who tried to save the self by pointing
to its innate "a priori" (before experience) space/time/causality
qualities. After Kant nothing of interest has been said (until
Pirsig), everything seesawed between these two extremes: the world
our creation/we the creations of the world.
A non-dualistic SOM makes no sense. "Matter only" is materialism and
"mind only" is idealism. But - notice - no sooner has the two parties
made their claim before they are forced to invoke the counterpoint.
This is elemental, we cannot get hung up into these worn-out
positions lest the MOQ falls prey to a first grade philosophy
student.
The MOQ puts an end to all this, not by solving it inside the SOM
context (the paradoxes of Greek physics simply vanished in the light
of the new physics), but by jettisoning the subject-object notion -
as a primary reality (in whatever disguise it tries to sneak back
under) and adopting a new metaphysics: the MOQ.
However, the EXPERIENCE of old Greece didn't disappear:
spears flew, tortoises crawled and Achilles ran. Likewise, the
phenomena of SOM don't disappear: only their paradoxical
quality, we experience a SELF different from other (external world),
only now it can be seen as the natural outcome of the new
meta-PHYSICS. What we are discussing is how the SOM can be
incorporated in the MOQ. My claim is that the self/not self-dualism
IS the intellectual level itself. Other have forwarded less radical
suggestions. So has the master himself.
DAVID L THOMAS
You bring Pirsig's words to our attention (from a letter to Ant
McWatt I think) :
> "...the intellectual pattern that says there is an external world of
> things out there which are independent of intellectual patterns.
> That is one of the highest quality intellectual patterns there is.
> And in this highest quality intellectual pattern, external objects
> appear historically before intellectual patterns, not after, as is
> commonly presumed by the materialists." [RMP]
Pirsig doesn't exactly endorse the SOLAQI here, rather says that
Subject-Objectivism is ONE intellectual pattern. Yet, as this
definitely is its most important aspect I dare say that it can be
said to represent the whole Intellectual level.
DAVID BUCHANAN
You never let an opportunity pass to produce a masterpiece and I
am greatly impressed by the exposition of the social level's
importance. Of course I winced at the easy way you swept my SOLAQI
aside, but I will not be squeamish :-). Let me only add a few remarks.
You wrote:
> Maybe we can even start at the inorganic level. Its hard to say, but
> breath and thirst seem to have a feeling associated with them. There is
> an emotional Quality to even the first level, eh? I don't know why fresh
> air should smell like freedom or why curiosity feels like a thirst for
> knowledge or why can describe the weight of experience or the gravity of
> the situation. Maybe these are merely metaphors. Maybe not.
Be careful not to mix the term "feeling" with emotions. The quality
of all levels has to be perceived (or felt) somehow.Remember how
it once was suggested that the MOQ just as easily could be called
a Metaphysics of Feeling. The proverbial amoeba FEELS great when
close to nourishment and bad when near a drop of acid (ZMM p....)
> The organism itself exerts a force upon the psyche. The biological level
> is in the psyche too. You don't have to be a cigar smoking incest
> survivor to see that Freud was at least partially correct. The
> biological level is felt by the self as an unconscious urge or instinct.
> The psychic effects of the stomach and the genitals are most conspicous,
> but every part of the organism must exert its own pressure on the
> unconscious mind. This part of the self is entirley non-rational. We
> feel the urges and instincts as base emotions. It's very animalistic.
Psyche simply means soul and if soul is the quality (perception) of
the lower levels.....Ok. But your "unconscious"and "instinct"
terms make me cringe, they stem from your mind-body which is bridged
by the social level. All right, Intellect and Biology IS bridged by
Society, but not more mysterious than Society and Matter
is bridged by Biology ......and if there is to be a level above
Intellect, it and Society will be bridged by Intellect!
'Mind' and 'consciousness' are dangerous if brought into the
MOQ with their SOM load attached. I noticed your introductionary
remarks but I am not quite comforted ;-)
> It seems to me that the social level is still non-rational but is felt
> as a different type of emotional quality. There is still attraction and
> revulsion but its at a more evolved and refined level. Its closer to the
> surface of our conscious awareness and some of it can be expressed in
> terms understood by the intellect. And why should the intellect be left
> out? Don't we have feelings for the quality in ideas too? Aren't there
> elegant equations and beautiful machines? Our SOM intellect is
> supposedly a cold, calculating, rational analyst, but I don't think the
> MOQ intellect is divorced from the feeling associated with Quality at
> all the other levels. So I'm not sure if the distinction between
> thoughts and feelings is all that crucial. Feelings can be translated
> into thoughts and thoughts have an emotional compotent.
This is a great insight. We perceive (have feelings
for) Quality at all levels, perception of a great idea makes us FEEL
great. Our Intellectual level that overlays our social level
triggers its emotional apparatus which in turn triggers the
biological level's sensational apparatus which - finally - makes
the Inorganic dopamine (or whatever chemical stuff) flow. Except that
now we are released from SOM that makes us ask if reality REALLY is
chemical or spiritual.
DENIS POISSON
You gave my society-as-emotion idea a boost by telling that inFrench
the verb to sense is "sentir" and emotion is"ressentir". Which means
that emotions are sensations gone through a second quality
(perceptional) gate. Just as reason is sensation gone through a
third quality transformation. Or to start from the bottom: Intellect
is Matter gone through four value "transformations".
DIANA MCPARTLIN
Your great post of 19 July (Souled out) gave the key to this
month's success. Many thanks.
Bo
["Quality isn't IN the eye of the beholder.
Quality IS the eye of the beholder".
(Platt Holden)]
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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