Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Sat, 29 Nov 1997 16:57:51 +0100
[1] Martin:
"Each level is evolutionarily advanced from the ones above because it is
more free. DQ is of course absolute freedom and spontaneity, and all
values are trying to reach it (because it is the ultimate Good)."
[2] My thoughts on this are a little different (if they are contrary to
Pirsig please enlighten me):
If Dynamic Quality is the source of everything, like Anaximanders
Apeiron
(the limitless), then how can it also be the goal? As a source, a
potency,
of origin, 'absolute freedom' can be used to describe the idea that
'anything is possible' in the sense of 'the freedom of no constraints'.
When some actuality springs from this source, this 'freedom of no
constraints' is gone, transformed into a 'constrained and founded
freedom'.
The actual serves both as a constraint on the freedom of potency, and as
founding of not previously accessible possibilities. Hence I don't find
the
'absolute freedom' metaphor to be quite adequate.
[3] Let me give an analogy in form of the famous Danish toy, LEGO:
Initially we have a homogeneous plastic substance, and we are absolutely
free to give it any form we like. We choose to make a lego-brick form
and
produce little lego bricks. These actual bricks now founds and
constrains
our freedom; we cannot anymore reach the possibility of playing
ping-pong
with little plastic balls made from our original plastic substance -
this
is a constraint, but we are free to construct a host of new possible
forms
based on the new substance of our actual bricks - this is the new
freedom
founded by the actualization of lego bricks. And, off course, had we
chosen
to make little plastic ping-pong balls, this would have constrained us
from
building toy houses and so forth.
[4] Get rid of the conscious choice above and insert a 'spontaneous
breaking of symmetry' or some other term for a divide with no conscious
choice involved, and this is a fair analogy of my view on Quality as a
source of origin.
Do note the use of the Aristotelian terms substance and form here, used
in
the analytical sense he intended, and not in the absolute sense of
materia
and idea later adopted. And the potency-act analytical tool is
Aristotelian
too, alas ;-)
[5] Martin, you wrote further on:
"But, what allows social values to be above biological values? It seems
that social values do not introduce more freedom, but rather, they take
it
away. Social values are all about life values adhering to rules,
regulations, laws, mores, principles, belief systems, relationships,
etc.
etc."
[6] Following my outline in [2], we have to look both for the
constraints
imposed by social relations, and the new possibilities they found.
Social
relations is what makes our societies possible in the first place, this
we
cannot close our eyes to.
I will give an example, which presupposes the view that sociality is to
be
found in most of life, not only in higher animals or humans:
Life on earth, the dynamic system of interrelating organisms which we
may,
with some sense of awe and wonder, call Gaia, is a dynamic structure
resting on social patterns. The speedy flight of the hare and the
conning
ability of the fox are aspects of one and the same social relation,
which
has evolved through co-evolution. This wonderful dynamic relation (if
you
are not the prey) between prey and predator is not the result of some
kind
of neo-darwinian optimization towards a fixed goal, it is the result of
the
evolution of mutual representations, the evolution of social values.
Regards
Hugo
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