JoVo, Denis and Group
I have this teacher-correcting-pupil's-papers habit (don't take me
too serious), however regarding Johannes there's no need or place
for corrections. A few comments merely.
JoVo wrote:
> I have never been and will never be a very communicative, let alone
> talkative person, although I can have long and intensive discussions,
> in case there is an interesting topic or meet an interesting person,
> but I have hard times to stand the usual 'smalltalk' not to mention
> talks about prominent persons of public life. But since I joined this
> discussion group, I spend sometimes whole days to think about Pisigs
There is a tendency to regard face-to-face communication as the
more REAL way of communicating, but this is not so ... I draw no
social/intellectual lines here.
> When I decided lately to spend again some time on MoQ, I expected my
> 'problem' to have diminished to a 'reasonable' size. But not so!
> Between Thursday 9th and today I've been writing down - or 'it' has
> been writing me (choose the one you like :-) ) - roughly 50-60 pages
> (handwriting) and there is much more in my mind. I have never before
> written down as much, let alone something, that is of no special use.
> I wrote and wrote, and it was somehow like driving with a car through
> a crowded city and all traffic lights showed GREEN; Go!Go! It was a
> sort of quality event.
Imagine Jo at a coffee-bar in Kassel (?), the sheets falling like
autumn leaves around the table :-)
> Some of it is weird stuff, but some of it, I think, is making a lot
> sense. I'm going to post some of it soon, to let you - specialists for
> weird stuff - give me your commment on it.
"Weird, but not weird enough" .... Niels Bohr once said to one
trying to explain the quantum observations.
> What I intended to outline is my observation (as far as this is
> possible ;-) ), that all this is becoming, or has already become an
> integrative part of me. The thinking about MoQ and related topics has
> changed my personal intellectual structure of patterns, i.e. MoQ is
> not a subject, a Johannes Volmert is operating upon, something he
> manipulates and spits out again, saying: "Oh,this is rather
> interesting stuff, but now I have to return to 'serious things'
> again", no I have changed those patterns(a sort of 'my personal MoQ')
> and they have changed me. It looks, as if I'm sorry about that; no, it
> is just a realization of my changing.
This is just RIGHT!!!!!
> Many people, to whom I talk, react often impressed and amazed on my
> considerations, when talking about politics, society or even natural
> sciences. It is only because of those reflections - people are always
I noticed your "amendment" to this passage, but did not react
badly to the original version at all.
> Another thing, that I kicked out of my head (almost), is 'absoulte
> categories'! That is 'absolute good' as well as 'absolute truth'. Not
> that I ever have been a follower of it - I always saw this being not
> the 'right way' - but MoQ made it clear to me, that these are
> practical 'static-intellectual-pattern' in situations where fast
> decisions could have been necessary to survive or to solve social
> conflicts in archaic time, but which are useless to pursue it as an
> end in itself. Lately I compared the 'absolute good' in a contribution
> to the discussion forum of the german conservatives, CDU, with the
> speed of light. If I remember correctly I stated,that to achieve
> 'absolute good' is very similar to the attempt of reaching the speed
> of light. You are able to come near to it, but to even 'almost' reach
> it, will cost you an 'almost' infinite amount of 'energy'.
Wish we could have continued the discussion on Relativity, firstly
because I have compared it to the MOQ (my "Mother of all
Relativity" piece), secondly because IMO the speed of light (SOL)
is an observation absolute - not for the actual spaceship, but this is
inconsequential regarding the MOQ.
A conclusion from my side is that JoVo demonstrates a MOQ
tenet that there is really no pragmatic/theoretic division (another
S/O offspring); Theory changes one's practice which in turn
influences theory.
******************** DENIS ***********************************************
Do I remember you? Sure!. I have read your introductory piece with
great interest and will just comment a few passages.
> While I'm no longer as enthousiastic
> about "the levels" as I once was, I still feel the MoQ is on the right
> track.
I fail to see what the MOQ is without the static levels. Please tell.
My own concern is that so many fail to realize the STATIC aspect
of the levels, and that - particularly Intellect - becomes something
far too loose. I will try to formulate it lower down.
> I can't say it has affected the *events* of my life, though. The
> important decisions I had to take were prior to my reading of Lila,
> and since then I've never used 'Lila' or the MoQ as a moral guide for
> any decision of mine. Lila as been an intellectual guide, pointing out
> similarities and important details, and generally getting me
> interested about this world by making it less mundane and bleak. But
> I'm careful not to let it become another static prison, and I'm
> carefully avoiding the self-contradictory "rational morality" Pirsig
> is preaching about : if moral decisions come from a sense of Quality,
> and rationalisation is what follows it, trying to put them in reverse
> will only spawn low-Quality answers.
Even if I praise the MOQ I agree with you about the "moral guide"
aspect of it, but - as said to JoVo the practice is influenced
imperceptibly.
> As a side effect, I must say that Pirsig's ideas made me more critic
> and skeptic than ever : when you understand how much of what you
> "know" is made of ingrained belief, how the power of rhetorics is
> basically "making" the world,
In ZAMM there is much talk about the Sophists whose obscure
spokesman Protagoras sounds as if the "making of the world" is a
human affair. In the MOQ however, DQ creates the "static worlds"
and Intellect is the "talk show host", the one that identifies a
subject and an object. This is MOQ's single great revelation and
what makes me so fanatic about the limitations of Intellect. It will
go on "creating" S/O variants until kingdom comes ...that is until
the next stage is recognized.
******** Later *************************************
Before I got this completed you wrote to Diana, from which I snip
this little bit as it relates to the above.:
> The institutional vision of intelligence (by which I do not mean the
> opinion of academicians and intellectuals, but of the deciders and
> people at large ; the ones who have a real influence, if you will :)
> is a static one.
It sounds to me as if you accuse the 'institutional vision of
intelligence' (is that identical to Intellect?) of not heeding its
dynamism, but IMO it's our (the students of the MOQ) failure to
heed its "statics" which is the problem.
Can there be a dynamic element in the static half of the except in
the sense that Q-evolution uses the last static latch as a stepping-
stone for the next break-out? NO! Intellect has for the said stepping-
stone reason an ambiguous slant, but the ambiguity isn't Intellect's
own. When/if a new value crystallize we will from that viewpoint see
the STATIC intellect more clearly.
I have been connected to the MD for a while and regularly there are
new-comers who have "discovered" Pirsig's great failure: He is not
aware of the observer/world problem - i.e. that intellect (as mind)
contains "it all" included his MOQ. This is to accuse him of not
recognizing (the truth of) SOM!
Conclusion: If the (Quality) Intellect isn't cut down to size it will be
starting at square one for each new "gunpowder reinventor".
Your last piece was great. I agree most profoundly with you on the
IQ test issue, and most else!
Thanks for reading.
Bo
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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