> HP: > I suspect that you accept my logic that potentiality > is prior to actualization, but still want to side with the author on the > primacy of Quality. > > If I've surmised your position correctly, can you tell me why you remain > ambivalent on this issue? Does it have something to do with your theistic > persuasion? More directly, do you believe the Quality concept is more > fitting for a deity than what is implied by Essence? > > I'd appreciate your candor here.
MP: I'm candid in all my posts (although sometimes less so for the sake of social graces) I hope this is clear by now. In answer to the first paragraph; yes, I think you've got it about right, although I'd note that IMO the potentiality exists *always* and any actuality is only *a* realization of it. And yes, I tend to side with the author (but see below why) In answer to the first question; if I appear ambivalent, its because the stew is still cooking in my head. I'm still trying to sort out exactly what Quality actually is in a way I can hang on to it and not have it degrade into something less than it is. I have to this point understood it to be much like my analogy of magnetism, only a a magnetism with no source; it is an over-riding slant to reality that leads patterns to form one way or the other based on the pattern that already exists precisely at the point when the pattern cuts through an experience, and always in a direction of what we would see as being "better" relative to that pattern; a metaphysical bias of sorts. But a bias with no source; neither in the patterns, nor outside of them. That's a difficult concept to hang on to. I have a tendency to slip into considering it to be more "real" than that, and that's where trouble starts. I happen to have a far greater affinity to what I get from ZAMM in this same sense than I do from Lila. Lila seemed to bog things down where ZAMM left it all in a more Zen state. In answer to the second question; my "theistic persuasion" may be a stumbling block, and it may also be my only clear path. Its not clear yet to me which (if either) it is. My theistic beliefs are highly intellectual I think relative to what people here consider theistic. (In fact, I'm certain of this.) I don't believe they are in the way of my struggle with understanding Quality because I have, for now, largely separated the two. I am pursuing an intellectual path in my theistic pattern in theistic faith that I will come out the other end more whole than I came in. Call it "suspension of belief", call it intuition, but I see reflections in Quality of everything I have learned through my theistic understanding, and it is this which more than anything allows me to suspend my theistic hesitancy to enter such apparently atheistic intellectual pursuits. I'm not clear what you mean by Essence, so can't fully answer the third question. I'm also not sure what you mean by "fitting for a deity." I don't see that Quality has anything to do with a Deity. On the other hand, Quality has a perfectly good chance of IMO not just being "fitting for" theistic understanding, but actually being synonymous with it. But that sort of talk generates a lot of negative reactions here so I tend to not get far in exploring that concept in this context. Too bad, IMO because for me that is the most intriguing thing about Quality; its direct relationship to a pure, culturally unadulterated theistic experience. The recurring problem I see in all this talk is one of dogma. To realize the potential human evolutionary revolution something like MoQ offers requires a degree of dogmatic static latching that, ultimately, appears to be of a level that will kill any true MoQ understanding. Either we all go off and understand Quality in ever increasing ways, never latching any of them to the point of complete intellectual MoQ anarchy, or we latch one, some or many, and it begins to die. In my theistic context, this is a little like grasping that the Christian Churches as we know them are probably quite not what Christ had intended. Blasphemy in some circles, but if you read His words and those said of Him, even as the Churches would have us read them, there is little evidence that what we have now was what He was hoping we'd do with His teaching, life, sacrifice and if you believe resurrection. We haven't got much choice but to go with what we have, as we can't exactly ask Him to step in and sort it all out for us, so we go with what we have. But I see the arguments going on here today in MoQ and can't help but wonder how far off the track MoQ will be 1000 years from now. MoQ is not a religion, but its right on that edge that in 200 years it easily could be. Hope that helps. [Dons flak jacket, helmet and crawls into foxhole to await the fall-out...] MP ---- "Don't believe everything you think." 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/
