When you > only acknowledge that one direction, then you get yourself into all > kinds of trouble with questions like the Japanese have been asking on > TV, "What did we do to deserve this?" Well, nothing. They didn't do > anything to deserve it or not deserve it. That's the wrong question. >
And yet for millenia, the Japanese have used the facts of a weather phenomenon - the typhoon which helped stop the mongol invasion of the 13th century - to justify their existence in the eyes of heaven. What did they do to deserve such divine protection? > According to the MoQ, the earthquake and tsunami had value for the > Inorganic Level. That they happened to be bad for the Biological, > Social, and Intellectual levels is of no concern whatever to the > Inorganic. The Inorganic doesn't even 'know' those other levels > exist. > It seems to me that the inorganic doesn't know much of anything, when it comes down to it. Not even of its own existence. Self-realization is a function of life's complexities. > > > > [Mary] > Cancer has Biological Level Quality. It is a successful life-form, > apparently. That we don't want to get it is irrelevant to the values > of the Biological Level as a whole. > But cancer if fully successful, would wipe out the hosts that it needs for its existence. Thus cancer is a bad thing, even on the purely biological level. All life is dependent upon other life for its continuation and thus any life which obviates biodiversity, can be defined as "negative quality" imo. > > [Mary] > You are free to say nature is the source of values, but the MoQ says > Dynamic Quality is the source of Static Patterns of Value, and nature > is a set of Static Patterns of Value. I've never thought much about the nature of sq but with recent discussion, I've put some reflection into the concept and I realize that sq is connected to our desire. We want to see a certain stability in the immediate flux of experience and thus we pick out that which we want and call it "static". But such judgments are predicated upon our space/time perspective and desire - not any true fundamental reality. That's what I've been pondering lately. > What you are arguing for is a > metaphysics that differs profoundly from the MoQ. That's ok, as long > as you acknowledge that you won't be able to shoe-horn the MoQ into > it. > I'm not sure about that Mary. What I see the MoQ providing is the library of conceptualization and definition for pondering reality. A more flexible system than the old SOMish, locked-in-place objects of thought. So the fact that I think about reality in terms of "Quality" and "sq and DQ" seems to me to indicate that I'm within the boundaries of the "MoQ game" even if my formulations and questionings startle the preconceptualizations of others who deem themselves the real experts. > The MoQ can seem cold and unforgiving since it does not offer blanket > condemnation from on-high for bad events. Yes, I said 'bad', and this > is totally acceptable within the MoQ framework. I agree. But I'd say that's at the crux of my discussion with Arlo so... > Everything that 'is' > or 'happens' is good at some level. If it were not it would not > 'exist' or 'happen'. But a 'good' thing at one level is not a 'good' > thing at any other level. Again, I agree. I see the high value of this system, the ability to properly analyze, based upon the levels. > Intertwined with this rule, though, is > another that says the higher levels depend for their existence on the > lower, so had better respect them. It is a complex dynamic that is > stable (thus 'static') and balanced. At the end of the day, any level > that gets out of control with achieving its own 'good' will destroy > the higher levels like dominos, and then, I guess, the whole thing > would have to start over again. Who knows? Maybe it has multiple > times? > > Likewise, perhaps these discussions we engage in never truly go away or finish, but just keep comin' round and round. John 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
