Dear Marsha [re: Krimel's slant]--
In recent years our understanding and control of the external world have
increased enormously. There has been a remarkable increase in material
progress. I grant you that. Yet there has not been a similar increase
in human happiness. There is no less suffering in the world. There are
no fewer problems. If anything there is more suffering and more
unhappiness than ever. I think there is a basic flaw in the way we
understand the world. And that is where I believe the MOQ's value lies.
It's in a new understanding of the world. Where science is certainly
beautiful, it is changing the conceptual framework that the West most
needs.
An accurate analysis of the present state of mankind, diplomatically stated.
However, I think you're being too kind to Krimel by overlooking his
existential ontogeny which is antagonistic to the MOQ. Consider these
statements, for example:
[Krimel]:
I do indeed think that mind arises from matter. I regard life as an
emergent
property of matter. I regard "mind" as an emergent property of life.
I have stated so many times that I am perfectly willing to call my
personal acceptance of this view a "skip of faith".
I would say that materialism, in a broad sense of the term, provides a
monism that, as it is being pursued by science, offers a fairly
comprehensive view of the life the universe and everything. Thousands of
the brightest and best in a wide variety of disciplines over the past 400
years have united in the task of providing explanations of how and why
we are here. I see no serious flaws in either the approaches being used,
the assumptions being made or the results that pour forth from them.
Nor do I think the MoQ is in conflict with this view. In fact I would say
the MoQ supports and enhances it. Consider even the secondary issue of
levels in the MoQ. We begin as does science with the inorganic level.
Within science this level of physics and chemistry was the first to yield
its
secrets and the best understood.
Pirsig never presented his Quality thesis as materialism, and I believe he
would be distressed to see it represented as such. Surely you can see that
Krimel wants to replace DQ with the materialistic monism of science, arguing
that it is a "comprehensive view of life, the universe, everything", is
supported by "thousands of the brightest people...for over 400 years," and
"has no serious flaws."
Krimel's attempt to portray the MOQ as an "enhancement" of scientific
objectivism is disingenuous, to put it kindly. "We begin as science does
with the inorganic level," he says, yet Pirsig's ontogeny begins with
Quality = Value, improvising "the secondary issue of levels" as his
metaphoric hypothesis for the categories or "patterns" of experience. In
Pirsig's philosophy experience is primary to matter.
In short, this long, thoughtfully written essay is an homage to scientific
objectivism and its "symbolic representations", and not all representative
of the MOQ. By his admitted "skip of faith" Krimel reintroduces a
perspective that is neither SOM nor Quality-based, but is the very ideology
that Pirsig spent a lifetime trying to rise above -- namely, the
positivists' objectivism which stands in opposition to the Quality thesis.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, Marsha. Am I being too hard on the
Krim, or am I simply evaluating his statement from my own essentialistic
viewpoint?
Regards,
Ham
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