Arlo, greetings to you. Sorry for the late reply. Been a bit busy lately but on the bright side, I'm finally ensconced in Truck driving school, got to take the big rig out on the road yesterday and passed all my DMV tests and endorsements. Soon I'll be legally qualified to drive anything with wheels.
I started this earlier and I'll just polish it off and send it, despite its tardiness. Teachers are used to certain students who always hand in late work, right? I'm one of those. > [Arlo] > I think many people find value in the notion that the entirety of the > cosmos exists solely for them, that everything and everyone that has ever > existed was part of a divine plan to produce *them*. I don't discount this, > and I understand the impetus. John: I agree! And well stated. And thus to me an almost simplistically resonant arguement for Idealism, that I wonder oft' why (and I include a sweeping gesture, here, Arlo, including you) anybody turns their nose up in disdain? I mean, ya got "impetus". right? You see reason, for doing so. As do I. But you hold back. Hmmm... Arlo: > If someone has to think the universe's expansion is orchestrated for their > benefit, then I doubt any argument can convince them otherwise. And I think > it is the people who have this need who struggle to turn Quality into a God. > > John: I think there's an enlightened middle way. It's inclusive. Because as much as the universe was created for me, I was created for the universe. There isn't any real way to tilt the self-aggrandizement / self-abnegating scale. The more you do one, the more you end up in the other. But yes, I agree. I know those people. I question at times whether I am one. I mean, if you're going to have a god... and even bobby dylans agrees that ya gotta serve somebody, so ... why not Quality? I've heard of worse. You and your fear of the "Quali-god", Arlo. Why the phobia? Why not just go with that ole "impetus"? > [Arlo previously] > Since [Calvin] exists, the "logic" goes, it must be that everything > happened with the goal of producing his existence. > > > [John] > Exactly! You got my point. > > [Arlo] > The problem is, such a view removes agency (or "free will") from existence, > well for everything and everyone up to *you*. John: What? Piffle. Just because I can't control the universe with my will ( much) doesn't mean that I don't have free will and the same goes for those others. Free will is the basis of thought and rationality. It must be presumed or yer screwed. Free will can't be removed from existence. It plainly is. Whereas looking at the universe in this child-like, calvinistic way (watterson's calvin, not the other guy) is a Choice with pragmatic effects like any other. As long as it's understood as a choice, I don't see how it can do any harm. I believe fundamentally, that quality is co-dependent with free will. What good is quality when you got no choice? Arlo: > It might be comforting to look backwards and think the line you see means > that everything that occurred from the first atomic reaction to being > conceived by your parents was all "ordered" or "manipulated" by a cosmic > hand interested only in producing you, but when your children start to think > the same thing, you move from being the agenic pinnacle of the cosmos to > just another cog in the wheel along the path the hand made to make your kid. > John: Well that would be an alternative choice, or an evolving choice or a later choice. Really, what the wheel centers upon is choice - choice of perspective. I feel like the scientific materialism of SOM's perspective is to say that we have no choice. That we HAVE to look at it some certain way and that's the heart of my disagreement. > > [Arlo] > Your mistake is assuming the "common sense of terms" is static and > unchanging. What you now consider the "common sense" understanding of these > terms would be quite different from how these terms were used a hundred, two > hundred, or even more years ago. > John: Admitted, understood and irrelevant. What we deal with, in our communication, is understanding now. Where we live, in the venacular of the present meaning. And we oughta stick with that, don't you agree? And so when I explain something about the easy-to-be-understood phrase "a *quality*experience" that that simply means a *good* thing...even if That Quality has different meanings it doesn't wipe those ideas or conceptualizations out which run counter to or are different from the individual ritual of culture and class. Right now I'm Here and so are you. Two hundred years from now? who cares, Arlo? Let's dwell in the now, man. All pragmatic-like. Arlo: > > Remember in ZMM Pirsig mentions how the idea of "technology" changed from > its original "common sense" meaning among the ancient Greeks? > > The MOQ does conceptualize (okay, I won't use the word "define") Quality > differently than how most people you stop on the street and ask understand > the term. But that's GOOD! It is this difference that, when articulated, has > the potential to expand the vision of those unfamiliar with Pirsig's > reconceptualizing of Quality. > > John: "that's GOOD!", you say. Heck, you didn't only capitalize, you used an exclamation point, fer crissake. We agree then. It's good indeed. A translation from an idea, one mind to another, has two points in mind. The mind of the one, and then the other. Between those two minds is a process going on, called "translation". Translation is tricky. It's sort of a third entity, composed of parts of both, and a process of desire. That is, there has to be an urge for understanding. Or there will be no understanding. It takes creative effort. It just doesn't spring up out of the world on it's own. And it takes the efforts of TWO. I guess more could be possible, but two is so rarely achieved that to think of groups seems silly and hubristic. But to my thinking, that's not really a problem for me because I don't worry about it. I go one at a time in my dialogue, and think about who I'm talking to at the moment. You, for instance. And transcending the problems in translation that keep us from comprehending the other. Desire, tho. Or there is no being. No me, no you. There must be a will to translate, or there is no being. [Arlo] > I have no idea what "esoteric-ness" you think I'm promoting. Nothing I am > saying implies that Pirsig's ideas are, or should be, held behind a veil of > obfuscation. But when a word is used differently, because a concept is > constructed differently, then we should be able to explain that difference, > no? Esotericism would imply that we can not explain it, and I am arguing > precisely the opposite. We CAN explain why Quality conceptualized within a > MOQ is different from Quality in its non-MOQ "common sense" meaning. > > John: Yes, and so can I. But both fingers point to the same moon, right? And thus the "Quality" that both methods of description for the term "Quality", while each having as much relative utility as knowledge of polar co-rodinates was to ole Mercator, both are concerned with what is real, in the way we fundamentally mean it - apart from our mere descriptions and stories and definitional leanings. We agree, correct? That there are fingers? They point to a a moon? And I completely agree that "we should be able to explain, that difference" yes. Please do. I'd like to understand how the common meaning of "dang, that was a quality experience" differs (use big words, like 'epistemology' and stuff) fundamentally from the meaning that we take for the subject of this metaphysics of ... you know -- quality. This fundamental topic of all. > > [Arlo] > If you're implying that "negative Quality" is the immoral destruction of > higher level patterns by lower level patterns, then the phrase "immoral" is > good enough, I'd argue. > > John: Well, if "immoral" means the same thing as "negative Quality" then why struggle against it so vociferously? We surely can't merely be quibbling with terms. You almost come across as an atomistic materialist whose "stuff" is a concept you think you've got bagged. Quality as the new phlogostonic aether of the day. Honestly, if good ole Quality don't just mean, good old "Good" then I have no idea what I'm doing here or where y'all are comin' from. It doesn't make sense how you kick and you squiqqle, just to avoid such an obvious point. Unless there is a more fundamental problem than "merely" semantic. Which I think might be the case. Arlo: > I just sent thoughts on this in a reply to DMB, so I won't repost > everything here. Suffice it to say that I find the concept of "negative > Quality" to make no sense in a MOQ where Quality = experience. I can think > of no instance where saying "low quality" (as Pirsig does) does not provide > the same meaning while staying consistent with his concepts. > > John: Well, so a "lesser quality" is lower down on a scale. And isn't the lower being pointed at by a pointer? Isn't it that pointer, that is actually the scale? And not the mere relative distance of one point from another, but a direction, a vector, a value-able pointer. It has a positive direction, which leads to destruction, and it has a positive direction which leads to life. Its just that simple, really. Labels are admittedly a distraction. But the directions is that which the lables point to. They are the fingers. It is the moon. The moon is real. Is all I'm saying. > [Arlo previouosly] > > From within the biological level itself, killing for the sake of killing is > an empty concept. > > [John] > I'd say its more than empty, I'd say its negative. > > [Arlo] > This makes no sense. Biological patterns act in response to Quality, there > actions within the biological level are always a context-based evaluation of > moving towards "better Quality". > > John: You're obviously conflating, but at the same time refusing to see. This ambiguity in the term quality has to be resolved. If your Quality is no good, then what good are you? Diversity is good. When nature loses diversity, it dies, slowly and surely. There must be a balance of beings. Monocultures are like disease and cancer. Cancerous death is bad. Life is good. Is that so hard to understand? Cancerous death isn't merely a little less good than life, its not a qualitative question, it's a qualitative one. And that quality is fundamentally a completely different direction. > [John] > > I think "negative quality" is a pragmatically useful description of certain > anti-patterns I observe in the world. > > [Arlo] > I think its incoherent within the concepts you are trying to use. If one > pattern destroys another, from within that pattern it is moving "towards > betterness". An asteroid that snuffs out life on earth is not "negative > quality", it is responding within its inorganic repertoire to a path from > lower quality to higher quality contexts. > > John: Professor Arlo, if I was in your classroom, I'd storm out over that statement. It's as bad as that Benares professor dismissing the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It's just ludicrously out of touch with reality. Of course it's a good thing for life, our life and the lives of the appreciative beings with whom we share existence on this blue orb to keep on being and breeding and living. It'd be a real bummer to get whacked by an asteroid. That would be a bad thing. It'd be the opposite of a quality experience. A huge bummer. What's wrong with calling a spade and spade and admitting that that is some bad juju - negative quality, the wrong direction. the opposite way from where anybody in their right mind would want to go. Arlo: The catch is that it is not "negative quality" if something makes YOUR > context worse in the pursuit of its own betterness, it would only be > "negative Quality" if you make your own context worse (again without any > higher-level motive to make things "better"). John: such irrationality will never fully satisfy. What is, is good. NAture is the source of values. Nature is the end-effect of an anti-entropic, fundamental force of the universe which is self-responsible and self-explanatory. That's good. That which tears down, destroys and obviates those precious patterns of life, those are bad. Negative quality. I was thinking about this last night. My bed time reading of Sophie's Choice. I don't know if you ever got a chance to read that one, but there's a pretty good description of a man of truly negative quality in that book. True, he played with his kids and his dogs and made love to his wife, in his off hours. But he followed his orders to perfection, and helped his superiors to the best of his ability and (in the novel anyway) shuddered over the ugliness and evil he had to endure and to do in the service of his people and was hung as a war criminal, when it was all over, and I can't help but think, that it's not merely a little less good than other men, a lower score on the totem pole, but wholly a creature of a different scale and kingdom. His immorality seemed not just a matter of degree, of being a little less good than other men, but of going the wrong direction entirely. Being anti-good. Arlo: > An "anarchist", for example, may advocate the destruction of social > patterns of value, but he does so within a larger context that living under > "anarchy" is better than living under "governance". > John: The Nazi regime was about as far from "anarchy" as it is possible to be. Most times I'd view the anarchist as somebody who is fighting an evil, rather than perpetrating one. Arlo: > > The problem would be identifying this in experience, as a MOQ would suggest > that every pattern moves towards perceived conditions of betterness, and > "destruction" only occurs when there is conflict between two patterns each > moving towards betterness but with differing views on that context. > > > John: But there is so plainly, that which is bad. Even the perpetrators of this new system had an intuition that they were doing evil, no matter what intellectual justifications they published and convinced themselves and each other. The depravity of mass killing is as self-evident as Quality. In fact, it's an aberration only found in intellectual man, interestingly. Nowhere else in Nature. John, calling spades, spades. 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/md/archives.html
