From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Mon Dec 06 2004 - 17:06:04 GMT
Hi Platt, all,
>> I think there may be an important disagreement between the MOQ and
>> formalism, since the "absolute" of the MOQ is not to be taken as
>> absolute as the Christian God or the Founding Father's Natural Law but
>> rather as a high Quality intellectual pattern of value. What do you
>> think?
>
> Well, the scale of Quality from low to high is an absolute although
> where
> to place a particular idea or behavior on that scale is a matter of
> personal preference guided by Pirsig's hierarchy.
But there isn't a single scale of values. For example, biologically she
has quality, socially she doesn't. Context is important in the MOQ.
(We could find other scales besides inorganic, biological, social, and
intellectual, as well since Pirsig could think of many ways to divide
Quality.) Also, I don't see these scales as one-dimensional. We still
don't have a definition of Quality that allows us to rank everything in
the universe.
Chapter 12:
"Rigel was just pushing a narrow tradition-bound socio-biological code
of
morals which it was certain he didn't understand himself.
As Phædrus had gotten into them he had seen that the isolation of these
static moral codes was important. They were really little moral empires
all their own, as separate from one another as the static levels whose
conflicts they resolved:
First, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of
biological
life over inanimate nature. Second, there were moral codes that
established the supremacy of the social order over biological
life-conventional morals-proscriptions against drugs, murder, adultery,
theft and the like. Third, there were moral codes that established the
supremacy of the intellectual order over the social order-democracy,
trial
by jury, freedom of speech, freedom of the press.
> What I find interesting
> is your implication that belief in God can support an intellectual
> pattern
> just as belief in Quality supports the pattern of the MOQ.
Postulating an external judge of right and wrong supports intellectual
patterns such as "this or that is wrong because it says so in the
Bible." (I consider this an intellectual pattern since it involves
reasoning even though I think it is rather low quality reasoning.)
Beliefs of all kinds support reasoning since reasoning takes beliefs
and creates new beliefs based on them. Many of these sorts of
intellectual patterns are just intellectual support of social
authority, but I think there is high quality reasoning based on a
belief in God as well.
Belief in Quality has the virtue of being undeniable, as you've often
pointed out.
>
> This takes us back to my original question, "Until the MOQ is widely
> known
> and believed, what is the proper source of morality for a nation?"
>
I'm not sure where your question is coming from. Are you questioning
whether there should be a wall of separation between church and state?
I don't think I understand the question, but I'll give it a go. As I
see it, there are two general bases for morality: reason and tradition.
The source of morality for this and every nation is a blend of the
two. "The theme song of the twentieth century" (the battle between the
intellectual and social codes) plays on. I don't know what the source
*should* be, but I think I've described what it is. To me it sounds
like you are asking which direction rocks should fall when you drop
them. The source of morality doesn't sound like something anyone gets
to choose.
Regards,
Steve
Lila Ch 12 cont.:
"What was emerging was that the static patterns that hold one level of
organization together are often the same patterns that another level of
organization must fight to maintain its own existence. Morality is not a
simple set of rules. It's a very complex struggle of conflicting
patterns
of values. This conflict is the residue of evolution. As new patterns
evolve they come into conflict with old ones. Each stage of evolution
creates in its wake a wash of problems.
It's out of this struggle between conflicting static patterns that the
concepts of good and evil arise. Thus, the evil of disease which the
doctor is absolutely morally committed to stop is not an evil at all
within
the germ's lower static pattern of morality. The germ is making a moral
effort to stave off its own destruction by lower-level inorganic forces
of
evil.
Phædrus thought that most other quarrels in values can be traced to
evolutionary causes and that this tracing can sometimes provide both a
rational basis for classification of the quarrels and a rational
solution.
The structuring of morality into evolutionary levels suddenly gives
shape
to all kinds of blurred and confused moral ideas that are floating
around
in our present cultural heritage. "Vice" is an example. In an
evolutionary
morality the meaning of vice is quite clear. Vice is a conflict between
biological quality and social quality. Things like sex and booze and
drugs
and tobacco have a high biological quality, that is, they feel good, but
are harmful for social reasons. They take all your money. They break up
your family. They threaten the stability of the community.
Like the stuff Rigel was throwing at him this morning, the old Victorian
morality. That was entirely within that one code-the social
code. Phædrus
thought that code was good enough as far as it went, but it really
didn't
go anywhere. It didn't know its origins and it didn't know its own
destinations, and not knowing them it had to be exactly what it was:
hopelessly static, hopelessly stupid, a form of evil in itself.
Evil. . . . If he'd called it that one-hundred-and-fifty years ago he
might
have gotten himself into some real trouble. People got mad back then
when
you challenged their social institutions, and they tended to take
reprisals. He might have gotten himself ostracized as some kind of a
social menace. And if he'd said it six-hundred years ago he might have
been burned at the stake.
But today it's hardly a risk. It's more of a cheap shot. Everybody
thinks
those Victorian moral codes are stupid and evil, or old-fashioned at
least,
except maybe a few religious fundamentalists and ultra-right-wingers and
ignorant uneducated people like that. That's why Rigel's sermon this
morning seemed so peculiar. Usually people like Rigel do their
sermonizing
in favor of whatever they know is popular. That way they're safe. Didn't
he know all that stuff went out years ago? Where was he during the
revolution of the sixties?
Where has he been during this whole century? That's what this whole
century's been about, this struggle between intellectual and social
patterns. That's the theme song of the twentieth century. Is society
going to dominate intellect or is intellect going to dominate
society? And
if society wins, what's going to be left of intellect? And if intellect
wins what's going to be left of society? That was the thing that this
evolutionary morality brought out clearer than anything else. Intellect
is
not an extension of society any more than society is an extension of
biology. Intellect is going its own way, and in doing so is at war with
society, seeking to subjugate society, to put society under lock and
key.
An evolutionary morality says it is moral for intellect to do so, but it
also contains a warning: Just as a society that weakens its people's
physical health endangers its own stability, so does an intellectual
pattern that weakens and destroys the health of its social base also
endanger its own stability.
Better to say "has endangered." It's already happened. This has been a
century of fantastic intellectual growth and fantastic social
destruction.
The only question is how long this process can keep on."
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Dec 06 2004 - 19:19:05 GMT