Greetings Joe (and Marsha) -- On Tuesday 6 May 2008 2:22 PM, Joseph Maurer wrote:
I realize, Ham, that there is no "evolution" in your vocabulary. However, as an act of courtesy you might acknowledge that the analogy of DQ/SQ is a metaphysical approach to reality in consciousness. I won¹t find it laying beside the road, of course, but it may usher in a way of thinking that is not so bloody as our current political strife.
Evolution is not only in the vocabulary of MoQists, it is their fundamental reality. Change, movement, development, progress, are all attributes of experienced reality. When they move in a direction that is favorable to mankind, we call them "moral". When they are unfavorable, we either ignore them or call them "bad" or, in Pirsig's analogy, "low-quality" events.
I accept evolution as the "law of natural selection" in biology and anthropology. But the flow of historical events is not the focus of my philosophy. Just as Pirsig has disqualified SOM as fundamental, my Philosophy of Essence is an attempt to transcend experiential existence. In my opinion, we can't "usher in a way of thinking" that will eliminate violence and political strife by telling people they aren't moral enough, or that they haven't evolved to an intellectual level commensurate with Quality behavior.
If man is to become a moral creature, he must understand why he exists and what his role in existence is. This has historically been the function of mythology, religion, philosophy, empiricism, humanism, and sociology. But they haven't been effective because they've been imposed on society as "authority". And while man can be coerced by authority to behave in certain ways, he will always resist such restriction on his freedom and find alternative ways to express it.
My approach is not to invent a new analogy but to get to the core values that drive mankind. Some of these values are instinctually derived, like seeking a source of food, self-defense, and sexual satisfaction. But experience presents an inexhaustible variety of value choices that we make every day, and they are all relative to our "being in the world". Our choices can be arbitrary, selfish, or indifferent probablistic). Or they can be based on our purpose as free agents of a primary source -- the moral axiom of 'rational self-directed value'. That won't happen until mankind has a belief system that is not only in harmony with Nature but with the essential source.
Euphemisms, metaphors, analogies, and paradigms all have their place in philosophical discourse. But they have little affect on the way we sense value. Only understanding based on a metaphysical concept of reality can change our value perspective. You may ask if such a perspective will be "for the better". To which I'd reply rhetorically, if it enables man to value the life and freedom of others as he values his own, can it be less than better?
Essentially yours, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
