MOQ Foci.
Today is 25th April and as my server has been down a few days I
got all the Easter posts in one batch and am glad to see so many
good inputs. Only now may I get this my reply to Rick off.
Rick wrote (to Jaap about Thoreau)
> Amazing you should mention this. I've been working on a post
> concerning Pirsig and Thoreau in the last couple of days in
> connection with freedom and order and Bo's SOLAQI idea. I wasn't
> quite ready yet, but what the heck... I guess I'll just say it here.
> The first thing I think worth mentioning isn't so much an idea as an
> historical tidbit. The last project that Thoreau worked on (which
> was never completed because of death) was about American Indians.
> According to several biographies of him that I own, he took HUNDREDS
> of THOUSANDS of pages of notes on Indians and was planning something
> big. What was it??? Unfortunately, much like the number of licks it
> takes to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootisie pop... the
> world may never know. I pulled my copy of Thoreau's essay on "Civil
> Disobedience" from the shelf and skimmed through it. I was at once
> struck by this quote: "Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last
> improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a
> step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?
> There will never be a really FREE (my emphasis) and enlightened
> state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher
> and independent power, from which its own power and authority are
> derived, and treats him accordingly." This quote threw me for a
> while because of two mixed elements. First, I see the idea that the
> right to govern comes from the governed. No real problems there.
> But, the individual as a higher and independent power... than
> Society??? This seemed wrong. According to the MoQ, individuals
> are not a "higher and independent power..". The only SQ higher than
> Society is Intellect. I reread the quote substituting in some MoQ
> terms, and I got this: "Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last
> improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a
> step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?
> There will never be a really FREE and enlightened state until
> [Society] comes to recognize the [Intellect] as a higher and
> independent power, from which its own power and authority are
> derived, and treats [the individual] accordingly."
Rick
I really liked your Thoreau essay and my defence of the SOLAQI
(subject-object logic as Q-intellect) idea is no criticism of it, but at
this point I had worked myself into great expectations believing it
was here that you would introduce the SOL as THE key, but no!
To get to your final question for me I must start with a sort of a
beginning.
You are one of the old ones and will probably remember that in the
beginning many tended to see the MOQ intellect as something
similar to "mind" (directly imported from SOM). During our
honeymoon days there was no problem with this mental intellect,
but if intellect is to be a higher value than the common myth
(society) it did not seem right that ideas is what constitutes
intellect: No, intellect is ONE particular overarching "idea".
At no level must any material/mental distinction enter the static
sequence. Everything is mind or nothing is mind, it does not matter
for the MOQ. This was the birth of the intellect=subject/object logic
idea. Admittedly speaking of a mind-intellect is not your "problem",
but something related enters your treatise here.
> That's more like it... it jives with Pirsig's notion of Intellect
> containing such "truths" as freedom of the press and habeas
> corpus...etc. I looked through the rest of Thoreau's essay to see
> if this substitution was really what he meant. I first found this
> and stuck in some MoQ terms: "It is not desirable to cultivate a
> respect for the [Social] law, so much as for the [Intellectual]
> right. The only obligation which I have an [Intellectual] right to
> assume is to do at anytime what I think is [Intellectually] right."
> I would now guess Thoreau is talking about gaining FREEDOM from
> Society through an Intellectual ORDER. I suspected he saw the moral
> chain in one way or another.
I agree with ...gaining freedom from society through an intellectual
order ...., but the intellect as a vessel "containing truths" is dubious
You'll soon find that it contains such sub-intellectual truths as
censorship, slavery, fascism ..... as well as such super-intellectual
truth as the MOQ itself. What is the overarching pattern - born out
of society - that eventually spawned the rights and freedom ideas?.
Not thinking as such. Thinking about freedom? Not in the days
when "society" was the primitive protection against the void
beyond. No, social patterns had to develop through tens of
thousand of years before giving support for the next value step.
They had to grow through tribes, clans, the nepotisms of the
historical kingdoms. Only with the city states in Greece was
"society" capable of harbouring ideas of freedom from itself.
As society notoriously are the many, escape from such an order
must necessarily involve the individual, but an organism is biology,
what characterizes the citizen from the tribe member? IMO its
capability of distinguishing between what's subjective (the myth)
and what's objective (truth).This is in my opinion the Q-intellect.
Fundamentally different from SOM's mental realm that tend to recur
in our MOQ understanding.
> I was sure when I found this---MoQ terms added:
> "Those who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its
> stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible [Society]
> and Constitution [Intellect], and drink at it there with reverence
> and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling in this
> lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their
> pilgrimage toward its fountainhead [DQ]." The man was definitely on
> to something.
Yes, this is an impressive piece and it has a MOQ-like ring to it as
you point to, but even if Thoreau was far-seeing (all seers seem to
have had some quality-like visions) - he could not get beyond the
log-jam of subject-objectivism. Yet, the thing about a higher
fountain-head is almost an experimental MOQ.
One thing though. The dynamic source is impossible to "behold"
permanently - nor desirable. Seeking it will always result in a new
STATIC betterness. Part of the SOLAQI idea is that intellect - once
the great liberator from the religious(social) bigotry - has also
become a limitation, and that evolution has started to (try to) free
itself and that the Quality idea is the way out - necessarily as a
fifth level.
> SOLAQI (mainly for Bo):
> After reading the Thoreau I thought (for whatever reason) about Bo's
> SOLAQI. I thought about Pirsig's deliberate assertion that the
> Intellectual gives us freedom of the press and freedom of speech....
> Can these things really be determined using the tool of S/O logic?
> What deduction or induction guarantees us freedom of speech? Or the
> right to a fair trial? Or freedom of the press? I can't find these
> things in SOL anywhere. These concepts are neither generalizations
> of experience, nor are they formal necessities. So I put it to
> Bo--- How does one get freedom of the press from SOL???
I had to write the long piece above to answered your question Rick.
You can't go directly from pre-historic society to caring about a free
press: some grand shift had to take place first. This upheaval is
what is described by Pirsig in ZAMM. It may even have had some
earlier start; what Wavedave talked about in his time-shift message
or like Jaynes' "bicameral" idea. But the Q-intellect and subject-
object metaphysics are intimately connected.
Don't you see how it fits the MOQ. Any level's evil is the level
below. Intellect is subject-object logic, but that's seen
from the higher Quality point of view. From intellect (as SOM) itself
"objectivity" (a free press among other things) is what everything is
about while "subjectivity" are all the bad collective myths (religion
for instance as presented by the fundamentalists of all
denominations) we are supposed to shun: Social values in a
nutshell! The problem is that nobody outside our small circle
recognize any 'intellect' or 'society' or the MOQ for that matter.
Tearing myself away from the keyboard I thank everybody for
having read this far.
Bo
------- End of forwarded message -------
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