Dear Margaret --
The 'effect or result of some greater power' sentence
does remind me of some ideas that I read in the
Buckminster Fuller book,'Intuition'....cause-and-effect
explanations leading to an infinity of prior causes.
I'm not too certain of the 'greater power'...and I'm
wondering if you mean this in a traditional 'God' sense
...What power does the Essence have?
How do you define Essence?
Educated people today are paranoid about belief in God because they've been
persuaded by intellectuals that theism is an outworn relic of the dark ages.
It's so much more sophisticated to attribute the origin of things to
Beingness, Consciousness, Probability, or even Nothingness. Yet, humans are
by nature spiritualistic creatures who feel the "need to know", which
accounts for the paranoia as well as the Quest for Quality.
Philosophy (which I'm astounded to see being demeaned in this forum) has
taught us that the primary cause or source of reality is indefinable and
beyond human conception, and postmodern philosophers like Pirsig tend to
dismiss it, even while proposing metaphysical theories. As an essentialist,
I have named this source Essence, and have borrowed a definition first
coined by the Neo-platonist philosopher Cusanas in the 15th century. His
'first principle' was the coincidence of contrariety which he called the
"Not-other". This cricumvents the neeed to describe the ineffable, yet
affords a convenient connotation by which to reference the creator.
I actually thought of Pirsig's definition of Quality as being
both a Value AND an Essence actually (as in the word
being both a noun and a verb).
Perhaps I do not quite understand it correctly. I read Lila
over 3 years ago now and don't re-visit it that often. So
everything I think about the MOQ comes from this foggy
recollection of ideas I gathered when reading it (and
everything I read here) - and maybe I understood it
incorrectly to start to start with.
But still, I always thought that where he went with Quality,
was that it was like what (I think) you are describing as Essence.
Like a prime directive of sorts...that exists even at infinitesimally
small and exponentially large levels. Atoms/cells colliding,
merging, separating based on the forces of nature (gravitation,
electromagnetism, strong & weak interactions - or the grand
unified theory)...BUT there is another 'quality'/Quality in these
interactions (as in my limited understanding of what Quantum
Physics is supposed to be about) that might influence the
behavior of an element where it (appears to) choose a
'direction' toward a state that is somehow 'better' than
another choice...but this 'better' is just in relation to the
other state in that system at that moment at time.
That's a logical concept, and you express it very well. I would submit
that your "prime directive of sorts" is not quality but a primary source
that encompasses directive. And the "other 'quality'" you refer to is what
I regard as Value. Pirsig himself equated Quality with Value, but didn't
posit it as the progenitive source. My own view is that Value is derived
from Essence and serves to bind the free agent (man) to his uncreated
source.
There has been much recent speculation in the scientific community about
Intelligent Design as an aspect of the universe. But intelligence, like
value, is a human precept that only man can appreciate. My theory is that
the "design" or form of reality is "projected through us" into experience.
(By "us" I mean our individuated, proprietary value-sensibility.) I've
concluded that the physical world we all experience is phenomenal -- that
is, the intellectualized apprehension or appearance of finitude as an
ordered system of beingness. In that sense, we each "create" our own
universe whose quantitative properties and relations are identical, but
whose qualitative values represent the individual's unique affinity for
Essence.
There are these moments of choices occurring all of the time - and in
those
moments the direction is made up of SOME decision...in that moment the
life force that compels us to do anything at all (also understood as
Essence
maybe???) is the force that compels the entity to choose a state that is
'better' than some other state.
I agree entirely. Man is the "choice-maker" of his universe, and all
voluntary decisions are based on value. The core morality of Essentialism
is that every individual is a free agent of value. But, in order to be
free, man is created as an "existential other", a cognizant entity connected
to Essence only by value.
In my mind, it was this notion of 'betterness' that Pirsig
called Quality, which works at multiple levels AND can
also be the same thing as an Essence
Like everything else in existence, Quality (Value) is always relative. It
can be "better" or "worse", depending on the sensibility of the individual
subject. We each have a wide range of values that drive us and a rational
mind to choose our actions. My moral axiom is "rational, self-directed
value".
- unless you are saying that Essence is like a traditional
view of 'GOD' sitting up there in space somewhere -
who gave the world a "cosmic Jewish Zombie who can
make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and
telepathically tell him you accept him as your master ...
I think you can safely dispense with that cartoon caption, but it does
illustrate the antitheistic paranoia I mentioned above.
I DO have a problem with the MOQ trying to fit everything
into these certain numbered levels - certainly everything can
be described at 'Biological', 'Social' and 'Intellectual' levels,
but I think we ARE all 3 levels at the same time and we are
EXPERIENCING all 3 levels simultaneously so trying to
label and categorize everything this way just doesn't make
sense to me.
Amen. (But do be careful with such criticisms, Margaret. They'll get you
into a lot of trouble here. Remember that the mystic philosopher Giordano
Bruno, arguably the most brilliant mind of the 16th century, was burned at
the stake for advocating moral relativism.)
Essentially yours,
Ham
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