John to Andre:
Well you and Lu are on the same page there. She hates macdonalds with
a deep passion and feels it to be entirely an insult to intelligence.
Andre:
Hi John, Lu and All. (sorry for the delays that will occur in my
responses; this weekend have spent a good old-fashioned traditional
St.Nikolaas with my girlfriend's family..sharing presents and poems,
dressing up as witches, having sing-alongs and not quite getting drunk
on lovely Austalian red wine...plus the event that will finally get my
visa-application out of the sludge and into the Chinese
Embassey...hopefully I will start work there next weekend!) OK.
I do not hate MacDonalds and wonder where you get that from?
John:
Well I'm not sure, Andre. I think you are wrong. I think you can live on
DQ alone, although it's a very high standard to reach for - to kill all your
intellectual patterns, all the time. It's an ideal. You seem to express it
as chaos - something to be dreaded. I think we have a difference in our
understanding of DQ. In fact, I know we do.
Andre:
I think you are right John. Your 'challenge' has brought me to re-read
the LILA episode where Phaedrus is challenged by Rigel (p 80) and
Rigel asks; 'You are in contact with this 'universal source of things'
aren't you?' And the reply is: 'Yes' ....'You are too, if only you'd
understand it'.
I assume that, what is meant here, is DQ but stand corrected.
John:
See, the idea that DQ is amoral is equivalent to saying Quality isn't any
good.
Andre:
I think that this is where the problem/mixe-up lies John. Let me quote
Anthony from his PhD where a distinction is made between Quality and
Dynamic Quality:
'In the MoQ then, reality (as a whole) is denoted by the term
'Quality' which Pirsig divides into Dynamic Quality and static
quality. Quality (with a capital Q) is used to denote reality (by
which Pirsig regards as the totality of what exists) in addition to
its traditional context as a term for excellence...while Dynamic
Quality denotes the unconceptualised part of reality. Consequently,
the term 'Dynamic Quality' is not meant to be a concept but only a
referring term: (and here Pirsig is quoted)...
It's important to keep all 'concepts' out of Dynamic Quality...' (
McWatt, PhD pp 34/5).
What this suggests is that there is a difference between Quality and
Dynamic Quality (from a conventional point of view) and there isn't
(from a Buddhist point of view).
I meant it from a conventional point of view ( Ha!...PoV!). My sin in
trying to keep the 'concept' out of it was in using the term amoral'
but should simply have stuck to 'not this not that'....'no
thing'...BUT in keeping with the quotation,'Within nothingness there
is a great working'. (McWatt, ibid).
What this 'great working' exactly means, which way it is going to
'tilt' 'good, or 'bad' (to keep things within the context of our
conversation) is......?
John:
DQ - oriented values are good- oriented values. What you call DQ, I call
SQ.
Andre:
Well, DQ for me is unpatterned and SQ is patterned.
John:
Right. DQ can't be captured intellectually, but sq certainly can.
Andre:
Static PoV's are intellectual constructions.
John:
But sq patterend levels ARE patterns of morality and in and of
themselves have no moral referee to appeal to. Might makes right is
not a morality pattern.
Andre:
Without wanting to put too much of a point on this one ...this is my
criticism (if I understand you correctly) of Platt's noe-con idea of
freedom which is to be spread all over the world, by force if need be.
It is the imposition from the top down, through violent means of Big
Mac's interpretation of freedom! My qualm is Platt's unquestioned
acceptance of the similarity/equivalence of freedom (the American
way/view) and DQ.
John in answer to(There are over one billion people starving on this planet!):
I think you got carried away.
People are starving because macdonalds isn't giving out enough free
hamburgers? How do you connect the dots in your indictment?
Andre:
Of course not John! (though it would not be a bad idea!!). Actually it
would be a very elegant solution to a problem at the social/biological
level which appears to fuel such disappointment/hatred/disillusionment
in some quarters of the globe, with the intellectual level.
I can almost understand 'people' turning to God and asking for the
answer to why the intellectual/technological supremacy of the West is
capable of allowing this state of affairs of allowing to happen. (Yes,
I know it is presumably without morals...)
And now you are correct in saying I am getting carried away.But,
intellect must look after its parents and grand-parents. If it doesn't
the threats, real or perceived, will not go away and you cannot impose
intellectual PoV's from above and force it down the throats of people
who have absolutely no experience of these values.
Put very pathetically: ask a hungry person what they value most, a
hamburger, or the human right to choose between a hamburger or a Big
Mac.
I know what the answer will be.
Andre to John:
All our fucking intelligence is being used and abused by MaC economic
and MaC political PoV's and this is a classic example of a lower
evolutionary level dominating and subjugating (for its own gains) a
higher level of evolution.
John:
Point out to me the higher levels of evolution, if you please.
Andre:
A bit in the spirit of the above John, that intellectual PoV's are
being distorted,bent, compromised, watered down etc, etc by and
through social value considerations (eg economic and political).
(Why do the United States still not recognise the International War
Tribunal in The Hague?{ making genocide for example, also by leaders
of governments, a criminal offence]
Why has the US still not signed the International Declaration of the
Rights of the Child?)
Once again I stand corrected on some of these laterally drifted notions.
Must go.
For what it is worth.
Andre
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