Hi fellow Foci,
It produces me conflicts, as ever at the end of the month, to answer or to
comment on so many of your inspiring posts. Instead of writing a coherent
article, I'd like to comment on some of your postings, which I liked most.
Wether it depends on me understanding more of MoQ or an increase of
similarities
I can find in other members posts (or both), but this month has been the most
interesting to me since I joined in May '99 (although first contribution in
Aug.'99).
Whew, here we go! Experienced pathfinders walking ahead of us, speeding up
their
steps. Younger ones almost have to run to catch up with them. Now let's see,
whereto the chosen direction is taking us.
[Magnus]
>
> Hi MF
>
> > In short, define the intellectual level.
> >
> C'mon guys'n'gals! What's holding you back? I don't want a bunch of [...]
***********. I want a
> straight forward, cut to the chase and *** ;-)** definition! We have barely a
month to
> go. If we don't get started, we'll never get something out of it.
[...] No time to lose, the bell seems to ring...
> Positive example:
>
> A bushman follows a path in the woods and spots the same branch lying about.
He notices
> the branch because such trees don't grow in this part of the wood and
interprets it
> as a sign from his fellow hunters to follow the direction of the branch to
find them.
>
> Here, the branch is an intellectual pattern because the bushman knows the
language the
> pattern was written in.
>
> The hieroglyphs of old Egypt was also just carvings on stone before they knew
what they
> meant. They had a pretty good idea that it ought to be intellectual patterns
but they
> couldn't know for sure, neither what they meant, until they found the Rosetta
stone.
> They lacked the language, and since the lacked the language, the hieroglyphs
was reduced
> to inorganic value, because higher levels are dependent on lower.
>
> Any thoughts?
[Johannes]
Well, not for the moment, but I expect there is something to come. The first
thing, that comes to my mind now is Pirsig himself. A program, being also an
intellectual pattern, can exist on a hard disk (of a PC),in the RAM of a PC
(partly, depends on how much RAM you have), in a note book of a programmer, in
the grey cells of the same programmer as well as carved in a stone of old Egypt
(maybe, that is where Bill Gates got 'Windows' from, who knows? That also could
be the reason, why he just doesn't want to give the source code to others: He
doesn't know for himself, what those hieroglyphs actually mean!)
[Marco]
[...]
> <<An intellectual pattern is made of signs>>. Good, but not enough.
>
> Intellectual patterns are small pieces of Dynamic Quality turned into a
> static intellectual form. When we take a small piece of DQ and put it into a
> "made-of-signs" form we create an intellectual pattern. The tool we use to
> create intellectual patterns is IMHO intelligence (Latin "Intelligere"=To
> understand, from "In" and "legere"=to read ) that is the skill to "read
> into". Intelligence is just a biologic function, that becomes really useful
> when we need to analyze reality in a finer way than simply by sensation.
[...]
[Johannes]
Marco's explanation on the relationship, between intelligence and intellect,
seems to be IMHO the clearest. It did some rumours in my head and as a result
produced an image, an analogy (yes, a technical one! ;-) ). I see intelligence
as the CPU (the processor of a computer) or as the engine of motorvehicle,
while
intellect is the software (and partly the rest of the hardware) or the chassis
concerning the car. When your brain computer has a fast CPU, it allows you high
processing of information input, but there is no need of a high speed CPU if
your intellect is of poor constitution for example the program is to old or has
a defect in it (Bugs - we all know these, aren't we?). Concerning the
car-analogy: the engine itself is not good or bad, it just speeds your vehicle
up if you wish to do so. But any engine can work in a small car, a big car,a
motorbike,an ambulance car but as well in a tank or a military-car. So, bad and
really evil human beings, just like Hitler or other Mr. Hyde's and
Frankensteins
are not silly at all; their engine is strong, but it's working in murderous
vehicle.
I guess we need a change by now...
[David Buchanan]
> I called Bob the other day.
>
> Hi Bob. My friends and I were wondering how to define the intellectual
> level. We were asking questions about why it should be in charge of things,
> how it relates to the social level, and its relation to individual
> intelligence. You know, stuff like that. So I wanted to ask you about the
> intellectuals after WWI, the ones you wrote about in chapter 22. You said
> there was a flaw in their metaphysics and that it created a certain kind of
> terrible lonliness. How is this intellectual flaw related to existential
> lonliness?
[...] Well of course the whole piece!
[Johannes]
Wow, what can I say, I was simply just delighted. Answers and questions matched
almost perfectly. David, you should do more of that! Will you do so, if I vote
for your topic? Now that sounds a bit like bribery, isn't it? ;-)
[Cory Ramage]
> I sit. Here at this window I can watch the storms roll in over the valley;
> vast curtains of rain that seem to hang motionless in the air until,
> gradually, the undulating draperies move in closer and engulf the world in
> motion. I sit and watch the wintery snow-dead valley turn green in the
> spring, little by little, until it fairly bursts with the somethingness of
> life; the summer of life.
[...]
> Can you tell me, anyone, where does such sorrow come from? Was it always
> there deep inside of me, waiting to surface? Elephants weep, they say, but
> surely if they felt such exquisite sorrow as we they would all fling
> themselves into tar pits and off cliffs rather than face such anguish and
> there would be no more elephants to weep, to bother the universe with tears
> of uselessness. What keeps us from doing the same? I honestly can't say.
>
> I wonder. Sometimes it seems as if my life never really happened at all.
> There are no statues of me anywhere and no one seems to know my name. What I
> know, no one else cares to know, or so it seems. I reach out and no one is
> close to me, yet were they ever? Did I ever let them get close to me?
>
> I suppose this intellect we seek to define drives the hard bargain.
[Johannes]
Seems almost to be blasphemy, to garble it! I've been reading this many times
and it was giving me pleasure and melancholy at the same time. Especially the
second paragraph seems to meet my feelings during my melancholic periods. In
those moments I'm asking myself, why it has to be me, to whom all those
sometimes tormenting questions arise. There will be probably no answer
satisfying in the end and in case there is one, new questions arise. Cory, I
guess the same force that drives us to ask questions is also the reason for
Robert M.Pirsigs motivation for writing his books as well as for all of us
being
here. ( It's not new - just to recall it)
[Jonathan] (finding a treasure himself)
with a quotation from Salman Rushdie's new book
> "Love is the relationship between level of reality.
> Love produces harmony and is the ruler of the arts. As artists we seek
> to achieve, in our art, a state of love.
> Love is the attempt to impose order on chaos, meaning on absurdity.
> It is inventive, double-natured, holding the keys to everything.
> There is love in the cosmos.
> Love was born before, and is more potent than, the laws of nature.
> Love raises us above the limitations of our bodies and gives us free
> will.
> We assert the love of man for his fellows.
> We assert love as a cosmic force, bringing about creation.
> We transform constantly and we remain constant. Music is the bridge
> between our worlds. Music liberates and unifies.
> We are filled with the madness of love, which leads the mind beyond
> understanding towards a vision of beauty and joy. ..."
[Johannes]
I intended to get myself this book at that time, but finally I droped it,
because that would have meant to lose a whole week for my studies, from which
I
tend to drift away regulary for even minor causes or maybe another half-read
book in my shelf. Also this piece is the more touching, the more often you read
it. Pure DQ gets in sight.
But where to enter?
[Bobby Dillon]
[...]
> Anyhow, intellect senses that there is more to this world than known
> quality and strives to move towards that bridge that connects the two.
> On this bridge rests quality, intellegence, morals and values.
> Chunks, bits and pieces of unknown quality are accessed apperently
> at random that result in insights and revelations. Reason goes to
> work on these and dissects and breaks up these further by giving
> them form in terms of language, symbols , beliefs etc.and assigns
> them a place in its structure. There is however no well known
> and tested procedure to reach to this bridge except the unbending
> will of an individual to do so.
[...]
[Johannes]
Bobbys bridge
Bobby gives us very vivid image, about how our intellect is connected to DQ.
BTW
images rather more than theoretical models are quite helpful to me to explain
the world or whatever is unclear to me. I imagine a custom officer is
controlling those persons, who arrive at the border in order to cross it. He
looks at those passing foreigners trying to find out if they could bring in
benefit or destruction, or if they appear to be just harmless (i.e.can be
judgded as neutral). I wonder, if these 'custom officers' are behaving more
reasonable or more emotional concerning the passing persons (elements). I
guess
he might be both, depending on his momentary constitution (even custom officers
have bad days, believe me! ;-) ). I stated in a post to MD, that was meant to
go
for MoQ-Focus originally, that in my opinion emotions ( somehow dependent on
social patterns of value of human beings ) are mostly taking part in this
perception of DQ and therefore concluded social and intellectual level could
not easily
be distinguished. I may remark, that Jonathans suggestion to have a look
at Dec.'98's archives of MD are indeed most valueable to this month's question
( I hope I'm partly apologized, for I haven't been a member then). But am I
right
to say Jonathan, that there have not been found consensus? Interesting aspects
could be found up to post No.78, 79 - that far I got - exchange between Magnus
and Jonathan.
[John Beasly]
[...]
> As I interpret Pirsig's line above, the intellectual pattern that sees an
> external world as prior to the development of intellectual patterns
> actually constructs that "external world". Ideas are of their nature
> grounded in an intellectual matrix. Language is the bearer of this matrix,
> but not identical with it. It is useful to assume that 'scientific' ideas
> relate to a matrix which is identical with 'the world' or 'nature' or 'the
> universe'. Pirsig challenges this assumption. As he points out, gravity as
> we understand it today differs from Newton's understanding, and may change
> again as our intellectual matrix is further refined by new theoretical
> advances. In everyday common sense usage, we take for granted that 'we'
> exist in a 'world'. The old subject/object division. What Pirsig is doing
> is once again emphasizing that the 'world' we live in is an intellectual
> construct, and is no more 'real' than the intellectual matrix from which it
> is formed. That intellectual matrix is a static emergent from our primary
> experience of quality. While Pirsig refuses to define quality, he is quite
> clear that it is more fundamental than subjects or objects.
[...]
[Johannes]
If anybody did not understand, what I was trying (well,still keep on trying..
:-) ) to express with my 'german-english'-written article, look at John Beasley
last (not hoping ultimate last one) article concerning the Pirsig-McWatt
correspondence, which has been sended at almost the same time than mine, but I
swear that I did not copy him (except maybe via telepathy... ).
I fully subscribe to it and I'm ready to get your judgement for that, Bo,
whatever sort of intellectual it's making out of me! ;-)
Now back to more basic aspects
[Mark Butler]
[...]
> The brain need
> not know which particular connections to make, but by
> forming a large variety and number of new connections,
> it can select the combinations that work best. The
> long-term result is an overall addition to the number
> of synapses. But the actual selection process that
> fine-tunes the connections is a subtractive one in
> which the useful connections are selectively retained
> and less useful ones eliminated. This Îfine-tuning of
> connectionsÌ sounds very much like the ongoing
> restructuring of schemata through assimilation and
> accommodation of new stimuli. Cells that fire
> together, wire together.
[...]
[Johannes]
I put some of my interest on that subject, too, because I think some of our
problems with the intellectual and the social pattern could use some more of
considering aspects like this. I believe this could very well fill more than
even one month of discussion here in MoQ-Focus. In a (non-technical)
philosophic
lecture, I'm taking part in, we've been discussing different aspects of brain
activity(the lecturer is normally dealing upon experimental physics - he's
doing
it just for the fun of it, but serious). I consider the human brain, and
therefore man as well as a kind of trinity: Most of the time, we behave
intellectual, sometimes we behave social and sometime we behave biological,
i.e.
our archaic roots break through. To be found in sentences like this: women
don't
understand men, but men don't understand women either ( put to the extreme -
you
know what I mean, do you? ) And those different parts doesn't live in peace
with
each other, When one part is active, at least one of the two other parts is
silent. (?)
Just like Mark, I believe we can achieve a much better understanding, of what's
going on in our heads, in applying the MoQ on it(the levels, DQ, SQ)
a bit more about DQ and SQ now
[3rdWavedave]
[...]
> One has to get to this point in the MoQ hierarchy , understand and accept the
metaphysical premises
> to this point in its development, in order to be able to understand and
accept what occurs further
> down the hierarchy.
>
> Or in context of the design quote:
>
> Life is a hybrid activity which depends, for it successful execution, upon
the proper blending of
> DYNAMIC AND STATIC QUALITY and is most unlikely to succeed if it is
exclusively identified with any one
>
> So Dynamic Quality is always the cutting edge of the PRESENT and in the wake
of this cutting edge,
> the PAST, are all these static patterns of value. As one participates in the
design our reality
> (which I believe we do) we are forever bound to treat as real, these STATIC
PATTERNS OF QUALITY,
> intellectual qualities, which exist in the PAST, so that we can specify ways
in which FORESEEN
> things can be made to exist in the imagined FUTURE
>
> In order to do this we must construct:
> First, intellectual patterns of value, an intellect.
> Followed very closely by:
>
> ".. one of the highest quality intellectual patterns there is... ...the
intellectual pattern that
> says "there is an external world of things out there which are independent
of intellectual
> patterns".
[...] (snipped - not very much)
> But this highest quality intellectual pattern itself MUST and DOES come
before the external world,
> not after,..." as it does in every human child between birth and walking age.
>
> Why?
> Because, the intellect, or intellectual level, is the medium which evaluates,
orders, conveys,
> communicates,
> reconciles, and archives static patterns of value. So without intellect and
this "reject" high
> quality intellectual pattern the rest of the MoQ could not be designed, let
alone built.
[Johannes]
I liked very much, the way 3rdWavedave has connected the development of the
intellectual pattern to patterns of time as far as human beings are concerned.
Altough the static patterns of value and also intellectual patterns, somehow
condensed DQ, only could be found between PRESENT and PAST, they in fact have
an
impact on the future for we are trying to generate from this 'frozen positive
DQ' necessary 'models' (i.e. intellectualizations) to be prepared for the
FUTURE. I hope I got you right, 3rdWavedave, did I?
Well, unfourtenately I have to close for now, although there are still aspects
to mention in some of your posts. I did not refer to any of Bo's contributions
and the reason is, Bo, that I still do not quite understand your SOLAQI-idea,
which seems to be understood by everybody else here, except me. I hardly tried
to find out during this month, but still couldn't get this clear (which has
nothing to wether I would agree or not). Maybe you or any other member of
MoQ-Focus could give me short summary of it or give me a hint where in the
archives I can probably find the most visualizing, compact explaination about
it.
I hope,I can pick up some more, before month is over...
Thanks for taking the time,
Regards, JoVo
PS.: Looks as if for me, MoQ is shifting from part-time to full-time
employment...
PPS.: My personal 'custom officer' is obviously in humorous and good mood to
day
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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