Hi Lawry:
You asked:
> Could you say a bit more about your phrase, an 'evolutionary moral force'?
> Anything like de Chardin, or his notion that human evolution is leading us
> to 'God' or to be 'God-like', with or without the religious connotations or
> language? Or is the force a self-created moral one?
Pirsig explains his revolutionary view of evolution in Chapter 11 of LILA
so I won't repeat a lot of it here. He mentions Lamarck, de Chardin and
other proponents of teleology, saying their theories are acceptable
under the umbrella of the MOQ but pointing out they have been unable
to come up with any mechanism that accounts for their "Omega Point"
finalism.
I've done a little research on Chardin and can find no reference in his
work or in summaries of his work that he attributed evolution as Pirsig
does to "forces of value." Chardin said all energy is psychic in nature
which might be interpreted broadly as including the central role in the
MOQ of "experience." He also divides his psychic energy into tangential
energy and radial energy, corresponding in a loose way with static and
Dynamic Quality. But I have not been able to detect in Chardin any
thought that, as Pirsig says, " ... what is evolving isn't patterns of
atoms. What is evolving is static patterns of value." The idea that
atoms, molecules, jellyfish and human beings are moral patterns that
were created by moral force called Dynamic Quality is unique to Pirsig
as far as I know.
As to your question about DQ being self-created, I can only point out
that ultimate beginnings are shrouded in mystery beyond the ken of us
mere mortals. Underneath questions like "Who made God?" are a
whole series of assumptions about causes, mechanisms, space/time,
etc. So my best answer to you question would be that DQ is infinite and
that, like physicists tell us about the nature of energy, it can neither be
created nor destroyed.
Thanks for an interesting question. What do you think?
Platt
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