Marsha to Steve: You are satisfied with the MoQ as a theory. I am satisfied with the MoQ representing insight and experience. I do not know if what Bo says is based on experience or not. For me, Quality IS reality; Quality being unpatterned experience and patterned experience. So maybe the MoQ is both theory and experience.
Andre: I think you are spot on Marsha, and Steve keeps voicing what many on this discuss are voicing...the gap, the unbridgeable separation of theory and experience i.e. the M and the Q. (A variant on the Mind/Matter issue). I came across the following last night ( a little bit of transposition and you'll recognise it as refering to the heart of the matter under discussion: 'The Protestant preacher, in repeating the old Christian doctrines of the immortality of the soul, the divinity of Christ, the Fatherhood of God, and the Trinity, has been even more guilty of the use of hocus-pocus and of idolatry. For hocus-pocus and idolatry consist in using the word and the symbol and repeating and worshipping it instead of referring to and worshipping that which it symbolizes. When modern Protestant preachers utter these traditional Christian doctrines, which they have really inherited from the Roman Catholic, medieval world, and suppose that their statements will take on meaning if they are merely repeated often enough, without going on to develop a theology and an empirically grounded scientific philosophy which gives them content and meaning in terms of present-day knowledge, it is they who are the real idolators. For they are giving us the symbols without specifying anything for them to symbolize. This is idolatry, pure and unadulterated; it is also hocus-pocus.' ( Northrop, Meeting of East and West, p286) The 'M' of the MoQ is filled with content and meaning by Pirsig himself, which, as he has stated is no papal bull. It is an 'empirically grounded scientific philosophy' reflecting Quality (Reality). No need to 'believe' in Quality! What a farce. It can be apprehended immediately and verified scientifically any time. The MoQ symbolises DQ/SQ directly. Some even dare to suggest that the Quality Pirsig refers to is HIS Quality, HIS idea. Christ almighty, how silly can you get! And poor Bodvar has had to endure this SOM grounded confusion with most MD subscribers for so long. Once you accept the DQ/SQ symbolism all sorts of problems and obstacles disappear... and even Pirsig's seeming contradictory statements can be understood. Not that I have done so with all of them. Just some. (e.g. the one in the Baggini interview). It is as clear as day. Cheers Andre ' 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/
