Clark (clark@netsites.net)
Tue, 24 Feb 1998 10:09:06 +0100
----------
> From: Bodvar Skutvik <skutvik@online.no>
> To: Multiple recipients of <lilasqd@mail.hkg.com>
> Subject: LS Re: Morality
> Date: Monday, February 23, 1998 6:13 PM
>
> On Friday 20 February Lawrie Douglas wrote:
>
> > Sorry, I know this post is a bit late and that the discussion of
> > ethics expired about three weeks ago . . . I fell a bit behind then
> > - you know how it is, miss a few days and suddenly you've got thirty
> > or forty very dense little essays to get through . . . So forgive me
> > if this point was actually made before . . . although, judging by
> > lots of the comments I keep reading, I doubt it was.
>
> Lawrie!
> Being just as much behind as you are, I may well linger a bit longer
> on the morals/ethics issue. First. The immorality of a lower level
> "devouring" a higher one has been contested by several members. Donny
> Palmgren followed up by Maggie Hettinger and now you. You write:
>
> > It strikes me that it is silly to say that for a lower level to
> > overrule a higher is always IMMORAL; morality is an INTELLECTUAL
> > concept. ...
>
> A conditional "yes", but allow me a little lecturing. I have the
> sinking feeling that you regard the Intellect of MOQ as identical to
> the Mind of SOM. From the SOM point of view we have an objective
> amoral material world; an amoral animal kingdom and then a mysterious
> top layer of conscious humans. What is good - morality - is just in
> the minds of us demigods. This is the impossible 'cul-de-sac'
> that Western philosophy has been stuck with --most obvious since
> Kant.
>
> I have repeatedly admonished that it is the farewell with
> "consciousness" in this SOM sense that must be grasped before the
> quality idea is understood. The Intellectual level is not the ability
> to think. It is thinking all right, but only thinking as determined by
> our social condition! This top moral level has since gone its own way
> and strives to act as free of its social origin, but it's there.
>
> According to the MOQ humans are aggregates of all evolutionary planes
> and stepping down from Intellect is not leaving mind or thinking, but
> it is thinking purely collective values, we may call it EMOTIONS.
> Another notch down and we are "thinking" bodily SENSATIONS. Even the
> Inorganic level is not outside the moral universe. This is the
> enormity of the MOQ that makes it so exasperating.
>
> Intellectual Patterns of Value (InPoV) is not SOM's consciousness (or
> mind), but the other way round: SOM is the Intellect of MOQ! In other
> words: the quality idea is the first Dynamic effort to free itself
> from the rigidity of the highest static level. Pirsig does not
> explicitly say so, but I find it a natural extension of his teachings.
>
> Finally you write:
>
> >.... Certainly, in
> > individual cases, sometimes things will go backwards, and a lower
> > level will triumph over a higher. But this never holds for good.
> > Life cannot but get ever more structured. We could therefore simply
> > talk about the story of existence (any fans of Vico out there? He's
> > one of my favourites, and fits in with Pirsig very well. One of his
> > big ideas is the Ideal Eternal History - there is one big story of
> > life, things moving from anarchy to order, but also from dynamism to
> > inertia) and say this is the way things are. There's no need to
> > worry that progress might not occur, and no need to extend
> > intellectual concepts, which only have any meaning when applied to
> > the actions performed by intellectual beings, where they don't
> > apply.
>
> No objections. Things do not always follow a smooth path,
> evolutionary attempts do often slip back, but in that case the lower
> level is not "triumphing"; it is the safe ratchet lock that keeps it
> from slipping all the way down. Your example of a microorganism
> wiping out humankind is not possible, but a bacterium killing one
> human being is not a lower level's triumph over a higher one:
> Shakespeare is as much biology as the bug. A true example of the
> moral struggle between two evolutionary levels is an ordered Society
> succumbing to Biological "jungle law" or a Democracy's intellectual
> freedom being overwhelmed by social common causes. (like Germany's
> budding democracy was by Nazism in the twenties). The most convincing
> aspect of the MOQ is its ability to explain the riddles of SOM -
> most notably the one which is called "Evil".
>
> I do not know Vico, but he sounds most qualitylike.
>
> Do you feel I have omitted all your points Lawrie? For example the
> one about bacteria fulfilling an important role? It is so obvious
> that I did not care to affirm it and has no bearing on the quality
> level struggle aspect. I sense a familiarity with Ken Clark here, he
> wants to pull a Gaia context over the Quality one (humans as a bug of
> the earth that is better exterminated) Even so the Quality holds.
>
> Thanks for your interesting piece anyway.
>
> Bo
>
>
>
Bodvar,
No! No! No! I have no wish to exterminate the human race. I was just
reading my mail and came to your letter to Lawrie.
The point I was trying to make back there was that in my mind the
highest
morality in the universe is the system that resulted in us being here.
The
force for greater information content that is obvious in the workings of
the universe. I simply wanted us to recognize our debt to that force and
place it in the forefront of our thoughts as we perform our life
functions.
I think that it is the responsibility of the human race to honor that
debt
and to tailor our actions on the Earth stage to minimize our impact. I
cringe when I hear the "jungle law" mentioned when speaking of the
biological level. It is a beautiful interlocking system which functions
perfectly when not interfered with. We are simply an extension of that
system and the same evolutionary rules apply to us as applies to the
biological "Jungle".
Glad to have you back Bodvar. I still need some guidance on the MOQ.
Ken Clark
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