John said:
... For very, very many people, the whole GOD thing is a huge billboard
pointing them in a Quality direction. These people are your most primitive
types, admittedly. M. Scott Peck illustrates them as the criminals and police.
The drunkard and reformer. Often, from a life of pure hedonistic selfishness,
the only way to climb out of the chaotic patterns is to seek the structures of
religion or society. ... On the other hand, there are those who get to the
point where they're restless at this rest stop. The rituals become hollow and
meaningless, the priesthood venal and corrupt, the ideas stale and outworn.
For them, the rest stop with the big GOD billboard above it becomes a trap, a
trap they need to flee. ... And that's where I think the MoQ is most helpful.
dmb says:
"Phaedrus saw nothing wrong with this ritualistic religion as long as the
rituals are seen as merely a static portrayal of Dynamic Quality, a sign-post
that allows socially pattern-dominated people to see Dynamic Quality. The
danger has always been that the rituals, the static patterns, are mistaken for
what they merely represent and are allowed to destroy the Dynamic Quality they
were originally intended to preserve. Suddenly the foliage opened up and
there it was: the ocean."
"There was nothing in what he was reading that suggested James was some kind of
ideologue interested in proving some foregone conclusion about religion.
Ideologues usually talk in terms of sweeping generalities and what Phaedrus was
reading seemed to confirm that James was about as far as you can get from one
of these. In his early years especially, James' concept of ultimate reality was
of things concrete and individual. He didn't like Hegel or any of the German
idealists who dominated philosophy in his youth precisely BECAUSE they were so
general and sweeping in their approach."
As I see it, the first quote is about religion on the social level. Pirsig is
putting it in terms of rituals as static social values but I think this is more
or less the same as your phrase, "the structures of religion and society". I
think it is just a sociological fact that churches reduce vice crimes when they
move into a neighborhood that's plagued by criminal hedonism.
The second quote is about religion on the intellectual level. Pirsig is putting
it terms of German idealism, but make no mistake about it. Hegel was doing
hyper-rationalistic theology. Bradley and Royce too. He was on the watch for
this crypto-theology in James' work but he didn't find it. In the pages that
follow the second quote, Pirsig goes on to align himself with James and
identifies Quality with James' pure experience, adding that Quality is NOT
"some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute".
See it rituals can be mistaken for the DQ they're supposed to represent, then
so can philosophical concepts. That's why there is always going to be a
discrepancy between DQ and the MOQ. The MOQ is a system of philosophical
concepts too. It has to be full of concepts and definitions, Pirsig points out,
or there isn't any metaphysics. And yet his central term refers to something
that is not a concept and cannot be defined.
The moral code talks about things like this. Here we have two types of static
depictions, one social and one intellectual, one religious and one
philosophical. It's usually a no brainer to pick which one should prevail in
cases where they conflict, but in this case we are talking about depictions of
DQ and so its just a matter of worse and worser. In both cases, the danger has
always been that the static patterns will be mistaken for the felt, lived
reality that they refer to.
So, sure. Let the drunks have their 12-step programs. Let the former theist
grow into philosophers. But the MOQ is a philosophy that knows it has not
captured God in a bottle. The MOQ says, in fact, that it is immoral to do so.
The code of art says, basically, that it is evil to suppress evolution or
promote regression or put the higher levels in the service of the lower ones.
That's the sense in which the MOQ is anti-theistic. It's not against religion
if it stops people from drinking themselves to death. But then again, that's
not really religion is it? It's fine out in the world if it helps socially
pattern-dominated people catch of glimpse of the light behind the traditional
forms. If German idealism or New Age philosophy helps you escape the
gravitational pull of your dad's church, then we have to applaud the progress.
Ayn Rand has helped many oppressed fundamentalist kids find their inner sinner
and so she does provide a valuable service to the severely unhip. (We had a
love affair for most of my 19th summer.)
But let us not reduce the MOQ to these former stages of development, to these
cures, to these stepping stones. That would be a regression. DQ is not your
higher power. DQ is not God. DQ is not the Absolute. It is not supernatural or
transcendent and no faith is required. It's the primary empirical reality, the
immediate flux of life, direct everyday experience and so you already know it
by direct acquaintance. Let's keep it real, eh?
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