DAVID B. MAGNUS AND ALL MOQ FOCUS.
(My mail program goes ape when using the >> so I'll merely
precede quotations with a dotted line .......as well as "". Hope it
makes sense)
Magnus wrote on 8 Oct:
".......We're still totally dependent on the intellectual level, we're
talking and exchanging ideas. We could just as well just confuse
the 5:th level with DQ, there's no way we could ever intellectually
be certain about that. But we might some day be 5:th level-wise
certain about it."
I will say no more than "amen" here!
Over to David B's 10 Oct post.
I nodded my way through it all and am reluctant to highlight some
parts as if better than any other.
" .............VICTORIANS, PATRIOTS AND NAZIS. Tor, Bodvar and
John, for different reasons no doubt, each close their posts with a
reference to good real-life examples of people who represent social
level values. I think you could add fundamentalists to the list that
includes Victorians, Patriots and Nazis. I don't mean to seem like
a sloppy thinker and am fully aware of their differences, but people
on the list are all the same the sense that they are the defenders of
social level values. They are all reactionary, anti-intellectual,
militant, authoritarian and more or less genocidal."
At first I winced. I thought your "...people on the list" was this
mailing list :-), but soon got the meaning. Of course you are right,
social value is a necessity, but these extreme cases are so much
easier to see than the "good" ones. As I have come to see Q-
society it's chief aspect.
" ...........suppose we could say that there is a battle within the
intellectual level, the battle between classical and romantic
thinkers, but I think it a big mistake to see the NAZIs as weavers of
intellectual fantasy. They only USED intellectual values to support
aims that were almost entirely based in social values. NAZI
"intellectuals" are like "creation scientists" in this respect. This is
neither intellectual nor scientific, both are just elaborate
rationalizations of their social values. As the conservative pundit
and columnist george Will put it, "You've got to understand that
Fascism is not a doctrine. It is a SENSIBILITY, and in Pat
Buchanan you're looking at it." (Buchanan is an anti-jewish social
conservative and U.S. Presidential candidate who practically
worships Franco.) The Victorians acted the same way, using
ornate and flowery language to express brittle and empty beliefs.
They used Darwinism to justify their cruel and rigid social values.
Thus we get social darwinism and the Native American genocide. I
don't have to tell John what this attitude did to the aboriginal people
in his country."
This is a good one - all of it. I think it more than anything else
demonstrates the problem with Intellect as "thinking", something
that necessitates phrases like "thoughtless thought" and the like.
The MOQ should be capable of doing away with such ambiguities,
You asked me:
" .........But there is one thing I really don't understand. You said,
"...control of a SOLAQI is wildly different from control of a
MIND-intellect. The latter would simply be impossible to control,
while S/O logic can be checked by another way of thinking - not
easily but possible." I don't see what it is we're trying to control or
what is doing the controlling? What does it mean?
By "control" I refer to the MOQ axiom that an upper level's purpose
is to check the lover level's freedom, and it can't be otherwise
regarding a fifth level's relationship with Intellect. What is going to
be controlled? Our Intellectual self controls our Social self which
controls our Biological self which controls our Inorganic self, so our
Fifth Level self will control our Intellectual self.
But allow me to to expand this to the dispute between Roger
Palmer and myself over the "The levels as Intellectual levels" that
resulted from his "Stand and be counted" thread. (A similar dispute
was between you (David B) and Roger in the "Reality and
Experience" thread at the MD some time ago.There has sort of
sedimented out two MOQ schools: The Chicago - and the Bodö
(my home town) interpretation. The former represents the mind-
intellect, the latter the subject/object-intellect.
I don't know if the good man Roger agrees to this, so please
correct me!!
As I see it mind-intellect is much like SOM's mind: the thinking
realm where reality is either reproduced (materialist) or created
(idealist)....or both (Horse)?
Each level of the MOQ is characterized by one overwhelming
trend.The Inorganic is - despite its many manifestations - about
maintaining the (material) WORLD. Biology has many forms, but it
is about maintaining LIFE.Social value manifest a host of different
communities, but is about maintaining CO-EXISTENCE.
But what is the overarching value of a MIND-intellect? To think?
What thoughts? Good thoughts, not suicidal or fascist thoughts? It
only leads back to SOM where "thoughts" are superstructures over
a bio-socio reality.
If MOQ is to stand on its own it must free itself from such SOM
residue, and I believe that Intellect as subject/object-logic fulfils
this. Thus seen the one value that characterizes it is the ability of
looking OBJECTIVELY upon existence. What's more it shows its
social origins. Social value becomes the subjectivity that Q-
intellect hates but never really manages to free itself
from ...another important MOQ tenet.
I can't find any social origin in a mind-intellect. There is no mind
without mind-about something. And what about a fifth level's
"control" of the mind-intellect? How can thinking (as such) be
controlled, and how can a new level have its root in such an
Intellect?
...........if we can think of the 5th level as an expansion of
consciousness and as a futher development in our cognitive
abilities, and I thnk we can, then the kind of post-rational
awareness we're talking about becomes more imaginable. It might
include an improved and expanded use of language. Maybe it could
be described as the ability to convey the meaning of distilled and
penetrating thoughts, to be clear about the meaning of paradoxical
and ironic truths. It would be a creative, playful and original
use of thoughts and ideas. Such a "mind" could create philosophy
like an inspired poet instead of a lumbering technician, yet
precision would not suffer. And sure, the fifth level will be static just
like all the other levels, but it will be an expansion of freedom too. It
won't be DQ, by definition it'll be a static level, but it will be more
dynamic with a small "d". And I can't help but think it will be
spiritual if not downright mystical. This feels like a pretty solid
extrapolation to me. Whataya think?
Methinks that not all all your 5th-level tidbits support my view (but
some do) I don't lean in the "expansion of consciousness" and
"development in our cognitive abilities" direction, but from here it
may look like that. However I agree very much that such a
development will be existence's new "frontier" to Dynamic Quality.
Bo
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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