On 9 Jul 2000, at 12:35, Bobby Dillon wrote:
> Rick , Bo and foci,
> If one operates from the assumption that all is good and all is right,
> then what is there to inquire about ? The valid arena for that kind of
> indulgence is the church, or some form of meditation, not intellect.
> The purpose of intellect is inquiry.
> And he suggests MoQ as a means for this inquiry but warns :
> >Metaphysics is a restaurant which has a 30000 item menu but no food .
Pirsig is a bit self-depreceating. What he means is the kind of
restaurant where metaphysics is just a grander recipe, but still
mere "thinking as different from reality" (SOM). He did create a
new metaphysics for the reason of changing all that ....and he
succeeded!
> How appropriate indeed ! The MoQ.org is a restaurant where we bring our
> recepies(descriptions of experiences and visions) for the various items
> and compare it with the recepies of others. But we still have to go home
> every evening and cook our own food ! And every night as we digest the
> food, made from several recepies, we wonder if it tastes better or worse
> and what more we can do for it to become an ideal dish. But do we really
> know what we hunger for ?
A very good question Bobby. Also the one why some people are
concerned with such matters, and come to the "restaurant" in the
first place? As told I got 'no satisfaction' when young. Not that I
was able to point to anything wrong in particular, but I felt deeply
alienated with.....what ?? Not my mother's Christian faith or my
fathers scepticism, but the greater overall "metaphysics" that made
those two antagonists. I browsed the "menu", but found that the
SOM recipe had been used always - again: not that I knew about
any subject-object metaphysics, yet, now looking back I see that it
was my discontent.
So I sort of disagree with Pirsig that there is no "food" with the
menu, and with you Bobby that you have to go home to make it.
The underlaying metaphysical food we are force-fed in our younger
days is with us wherever we go. And the SOM gave me - at least -
bad digestion.
> An inquiry into what has gone wrong . If we
> come to the MoQ with some other goal and purpose then I wonder if I
> am wasting my time and of others.
That should be our goal.
> I hold the position that "DQ, the quality of freedom that creates
> the world in which we live" is primarily (though not entirely)
> the moral cutting edge of all experience or simply the "moral force "
> Yes in the MoQ, we can assume that everyone here is "with moral
> force" but the concern should be to identify the parameters that
> devours this moral force , or else how can the MoQ be useful for
> society ? or is that no concern of ours?
"...useful for society"? Is that moq's Social Level"? No, I guess you
mean (Western) Civilization and its values - Christian values as
they usually add here when this issue is raised. What can devour it
except for despotism and again my SOL-idea is fortified; Only
social value can corrupt intellectual value and as despotism is
social value refined .... (our) civilization is equal to the Intellectual
level.
> If we say that everyone
> is with full moral force in society too, then what distinguishes
> the Hitlers from the Einsteins?
The very point I made above. Hitler's despotism was social value's
last stand in Europe and thus he was evil compared to Einstein. I
don't mean E's scientific achivement, but as an intellectual value
representative.
> >I agree, but "synthesis" cannot be fully static. Why not simply
> >regard the Intellectual level as subject/object-analysis and the
> >Quality idea as the synthetical "lightning flash" that put all the
> >pieces of Pirsig together?
> What you are saying is not incorrect but in my opinion insufficient
> to deal with the problem at hand. For example how can you show the
> distinction between intellegence and quality unless the distinction
> is that of the difference in DQ.
Hope I get your objections right, but it depends upon how you
regard the Intellectual level of the MOQ. My subject/object-
metaphysics one is clearly different from the quality-metaphysics.
But the "mind"-intellect that haunts us cannot be distinguished
from anything else - and one is back in SOM's everything-in-the-
mind- deadlock (or at the intellectual level which refuses to see
anything except in its own light). The MOQ may be an intellectual
construct, but is something that will surpass Intellect.
> Of cource the synthesis tool is far more dynamic in nature than the
> analytic tool, but does that mean that everything dynamic necessarily
> is DQ and anything else is SQ ?
"Everything dynamic necessarily DQ"?. I wish you
would provide examples. If we look to the Social level and the Nazi
plan to exterminate the unwanted, it might be said to have been a
dynamic idea, but no; thats what "good old" social value is all
about: Picking and selecting among individual life, breeding,
refining for society's purpose, but DQ doesn't work at the lower
levels any more, that would make the whole Q-structure
impossible. What if a new natural law suddenly made itself felt?
Life would immediately vanish and thus the whole edifice. No, it's
only Intellect that - now - borders on to DQ, and what you call
synthesis is DQ viewed from Intellect. And the most recent
synthezising is the Quality idea.
> IN other words you absolutely rule out the possibility that DQ and
> SQ can be further subjected to Metaphysical splits ?
Subtle stuff this. Metphysical splits? DQ is "quartered" into the
known levels and is ready for endless static latches. Each static
level is fixed and not subject to changes. I fail to see what you
mean so please enlighten me.
> You may realise one day that DQ can also and does become STATIC.
> (But not for long - DEATH IS THE LIBERATOR )
DQ has been the source of the static levels and will spawn more
surely, but has not become less dynamic in the process.
Once you are inside a metaphysics it fills the universe to the last
nook, and death is no escape from it if that is the meaning.
> I would like to keep things simple, but I doubt very much if we can
> get the desired results that way. Incidentally you may be surprised
> to know that a similar Metaphysics like the MoQ has been around in
> different cultures around the world for thousands of years. Only
> the terminology is different and only for "technicians", terminology
> is everything, not for genuine explorers.
> I will therefore not harp on this issue anymore unless anyone is
> interested.
I am very interested in what similar metaphysics you mean. Pirsig
speaks of the quality idea as the oldest one there is, is it
something along those lines?
> All is not right.
I agree. Subject/object-logic has given us civilization as we know it,
but has alienated us terribly, that's why I embrace Pirsig's idea.
Bo
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