Hi Mel, Krimel, and all,
I was reading Lila and I came across these passages at the end of chapter 7
and the beginning of chapter 8:
<snip>
7 (end)
³That¹s why Phaedrus got such a weary feeling from all this. All the way
back to the beginning. That¹s where he had to go.
Because Quality is morality. Make no mistake about it. They¹re identical.
And if Quality is the primary reality of the world then that means morality
is also the primary reality of the world. The world is primarily a moral
order. But it¹s a moral order that neither Rigel nor the posing Victorians
had ever, in their wildest dreams, thought or heard about.
8 (beginning)
The idea that the world is composed of nothing but moral value sounds
impossible at first. Only objects are supposed to be real. ³Quality² is
supposed to be just a vague fringe word that tells what we think about
objects. The whole idea that Quality can create objects seems very wrong.
But we see subjects and objects as reality for the same reason we see the
world right-side up although the lenses of our eyes actually present it to
our brains upside down. We get used to certain patterns of interpretation,
we forget the patterns are there.
Phaedrus remembered reading about an experiment with special glasses that
made users see everything upside down and backward. Soon their minds
adjusted and they began to see the world ³normally² again. After a few weeks
when the glasses were removed, the subjects again saw everything upside down
and had to relearn the vision they had taken for granted before.
The same is true of subjects and objects. The culture in which we live
hands us a set of intellectual glasses to interpret experience with, and the
concept of the primacy of subjects and objects is built right into these
glasses. If someone sees things through a somewhat different set of gasses
or, God help him, takes his glasses off, the natural tendency of those who
still have their glasses on is to regard his statements as somewhat weird,
if not actually crazy.
<snip>
End paragraph of Lila
Good is a noun. That was it that is what Phaedrus had been looking for.
That was the homer, over the fence that ended the ball game. Good as a noun
rather than as an adjective is all the Metaphysics of Quality is about. Of
course, the ultimate Quality isn¹t a noun or an adjective or anything else
definable, but if you had to reduce the Whole Metaphysics of Quality to a
single sentence, that would be it.²
IMO Quality is morality in that evolution is from lower to higher, creating
a moral hierarchy. As to glasses, the difficulty lies in interpretation. I
am upside down, or right-side up, asleep or awake, mechanical or conscious.
An awareness of gravity in which you feel the pressure of weight on your
head or feet and the sensor in the brain may give the brain further
information to create a proper orientation for the Social level of
self-awareness, but there is no guarantee. I am conscious or
asleep/mechanical. I have no morality in my sleep. Unfortunately I can
ignore the glasses and pretend I am awake in what I see.
Joe
On 10/17/08 9:50 AM, "ml" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Good morning Kimel
> <snip<
>
> [Krimel]
> <snip>
> ...I am not at all convinced the "efficiency" is as desirable as many
> claim it is. I think much creativity and growth arises from inefficiency.
> In fact in many organizations I suspect that inefficiency is a source
> of dynamic quality.
>
> m
> Very good point about creativity. In a low quality SQ situation people
> can respond with higher quality DQ and compensate for what was
> a low quality state.
>
>
>
> K
> To my knowledge there is no meaningful distinction between the terms "not
> for profit" and "non-profit." As a devotee of Strunk and White I prefer the
> later term. Both refer to 501C status with the IRS.
>
> m
> sorry, had not meant to get that deep in legal structure, I was speaking
> of the organizational purpose. There are numerous so called for-profit
> structures C and S and LLCetc that are in fact set up to make no profit.
>
> I was peripherally associated with a charitable operation for a short
> time, which consisted of three people and used an LLC structure
> because it did not involve the over-burdensome reporting of a
> non-profit structure. They operated not-for-profit and when the work was
> done they folded the organization. Resoures to service was a 100%
> conversion. So, that is one example of the difference in operational
> not-for-profit and organizational 501non-profit.
>
>
>
>
> <snip<
>>
>> [Krimel]
>> I am not sure what you are getting at but I would be interested in seeing
>> such studies.
>
> m
> The point was a contrast showing the link between
> efficiency and the ability to generate surplus.
> (Any university library should be able to steer you in the proper
> direction.)
>
> <snip>
>
>> [mel]
>> That is indeed a key question. Who is it who will hold the surplus?
>> Do we trust the individual to hold the profit agianst lean times?
>> Do we trust the corporate entity to hold the profit against lean times?
>> Or do we trust a central planning/government to do so?
>>
>> That is the nature of the difference in political philosophy.
>>
>> [Krimel]
>> Yes but non-profits are an integral part of the capitalist system and have
> a
>> long history within it. Churches have been around since before there was
>> capitalism.
>
> m
> surplus is an integral part of the operation of most enterprizes
> except as pointed out earlier: charities. I did not bring churches into
> the discussion and see no reason to.
>
>>
> <snip>
>
>> [Krimel]
>> First I would say that politicians should push some kind of agenda. That
> is
>> what they do.
> m
>> From the above you've not specified if, for you a social agenda or a
> political agenda are what you expect of politicians. Spending
> public money to push moral agendae is definitionally Liberal,
> classical or progressive. One side pushes anti-Roe v Wade and
> the other pushes pro Roe v Wade. One side pushes its so-called
> 'conservative' social agenda the other a so called 'progressive' one.
>
> if you believe in the government as the source of social value,
> then you are embracing a liberal mode of thought it just remains
> for you to choose which flavor of liberalism.
>
> However, if you see the agenda as political only, this is different.
> Improvement of the highway between city A and city B.
> Making an attempt to exempt food from sales tax.
> Specific infrastructural support changes or taxation formulation
> or standards coordination or modiications of liability are all
> clearly political and likely to interest all stripes of politician.
>
>
>
> K
> But I don't think it is true that both parties act to run up
>> debt in the way you describe at least not judging by recent history.
> Reagan
>> came into office preaching fiscal responsibility, ran up more public debt
>> that all of his predecessors combined and called it a victory for the
> "free
>> market". Clinton, by the time he left office had balanced the federal
> budget
>> and was running surpluses. Bush, another free marketeer started with a
>> surplus and has managed to double the national debt.
>
> .
>
> m
> You have helped prove my point, thanks Reagan, was a classical
> liberal shading toward post-classical he ran up the budget.
> (There is considerable confusion in language as to what a
> Conservative or a Liberal is. My prior post classified how I see
> the R's and D's in their operational philosophies as both being
> Liberals, but of differing camps...hence the animosity they evince)
>
> Clinton never balanced anything in full budget terms, he simply
> divided the budget and renamed the parts to service debt as
> something else and pretended it was not part of the whole, so
> for the operational year he could pretend the inflow and outflow
> matched. The debt, recategorized, continued to grow.
>
> Bush is neo-con, which is a misleading label for his fully post-
> classical liberalism. He never met a budget dollar it did not
> make him gleeful to spend.
>
>
>
>> K
>> It would seem the real difference is between "tax and spend" liberals and
>> "charge it to the grandkids" conservatives. At least the liberals can
>> balance the budget.
>>
> m
> Sorry, both of these are simply disingenuous burden shifting.
>
> <snip>
>
>>
>> [Krimel]
>> The purpose of our form of governments is to be a static latch. It is to
> act
>> as a buffer or moderating force in the face of change. That is what checks
>> and balances are all about. Their function is to prevent rapid and radical
>> changes in public policy. It is to prevent one form of power from
> dominating
>> the others. From on MoQ perspective it is the static quality of public
>> policy that allows dynamic opportunity for individuals. The government
> sets
>> the rules and people play by them. It is no fun to play a game where the
>> rules are always changing.
>>
>
> m
> That's a nice model. We ought to try it sometime.
>
>
>
>> [Krimel]
>> Isn't "raiding of Social Security" just borrowing from it? It is not as
>> though the money just gets spent with no accounting.
>
> m
> The difference is that in stealing the principal you've also stolen the
> possiblity for interest and even if you pay back the principal, you will
> never replace the interest. SS was intended to be a trust. No one
> uses that term anymore. (Speaking for myself, if a thief leave me
> a receipt for the watch he steals from me, I'm still saying he stole it.)
>
>
>
>>
> <snip>
>>
>> [Krimel]
>> Private enterprise does not necessarily eliminate or interfere with other
>> Values. It is simply that they are irrelevant to it. Private enterprise
>> Values profit. All others considerations are not only secondary but are
>> calculated in terms of profit.
>
> m
> People operate enterprises according to their own values.
> While an intellectual model of free enterprise may view anything
> not profit as irrelevant, you often find in a company's mission
> statement some pretty amazing language about responsibility
> that boil down to "if we succeed everyone will benefit"
>
>
> K
>> Witness Ford's assessment of the cost or [of]
>> fixing the design of Pinto gas tanks as opposed to defending suits by
> crash
>> victims.
>> In the private sectors Values are means to the end of profit.
>> Non-profits on the other hand are mission driven. They state what their
>> mission is in their applications for 501C status and for them money is a
>> means to an end.
>
>
> m
> Excellent example of individual managers using profit as an excuse
> to embrace a low quality behavior. They knew damn well what they
> did was wrong, but regardless of the structure of the organization,
> the cowardice of people will "shine through."
> You could have as easily chosen a non-profit insurance provider
> decision to deny a proven treatment on the bureaucratic basis
> of "experimental" and given us the same result.
>
>
> thanks for the help, Kimel.
>
> thanks--mel
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>> 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/
>
> 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/
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/
